It’s not just Hamas – now CNN, MSNBC and other media are attacking Israel, accusing us of ‘war crimes’
2 Israeli officials warned me on Monday that the media would attack us and forget Hamas’ savagery, and they were right
JERUSALEM, ISRAEL – It didn’t even take a week.
In the first few days after Hamas began their barbaric and genocidal attacks on Israel, the American and international media mostly did a good job reporting on the atrocities committed by Hamas.
To their credit, they reported that more than 1,000 Israeli Jews had been slaughtered just on Saturday, Oct. 7 alone.
They reported that dozens of Israeli babies had been murdered and that some of them had even been decapitated.
And that hundreds of Israeli youths were gunned down at a music festival.
And that other Israelis were set on fire and burned alive in their homes and in their cars.
And that Israeli girls and children were raped.
And that more than 100 Israelis were kidnapped and taken to Gaza where God only knows their fate.
The reports I read – and many journalists I watched on TV – were genuinely shocked, truly horrified, and even emotional.
I was moved when I saw CNN anchor Anderson Cooper visibly moved to tears while hearing an Israeli woman share her horrific and heart-wrenching story as an eyewitness to such atrocities.
But on Monday, two Israeli officials that I interviewed for my prime-time TBN TV show – THE ROSENBERG REPORT – warned that the situation was going to turn soon.
The media was going to shift from sympathy to attack mode.
And so it was.
A LONG-TIME SENIOR ADVISOR TO ISRAEL’S PRIME MINISTER WARNED ME THE MEDIA WOULD ATTACK ISRAEL
One of those Israeli officials was Ambassador Mark Regev.
Regev served as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman and media advisor.
Later, he served as Israel’s ambassador to Great Britain.
“On the day of the provocation, and the day after the provocation, and with Hamas doing what it did and exposing itself for what it is – a brutal extremist terrorist organization that butchers innocent civilians – so, today and tomorrow, there's understanding and sympathy for Israel [in the media],” Regev told me.
But watch, he told me, as “the narrative changes.”
“As Israel starts to strike back, the first shocking days are sometimes forgotten by the international media,” Regev noted. “Then they focus on the Israeli response and they forget what led to this response. And they make this false analogy.”
They say, “Israel and Hamas are fighting and, you know, there's rights or wrongs on both sides of the argument.”
“No, there is no moral equivalency,” Regev rightly insisted. “We are a democracy fighting to protect our people. They are a brutal terrorist organization that has no qualms about committing crimes against humanity, about attacking and killing innocent people. And that should never be forgotten.”
On last night’s special wartime episode of THE ROSENBERG REPORT, we aired excerpts of my interview with Regev.
A SENIOR ADVISOR TO ISRAEL’S FOREIGN MINISTER WARNED ME THE MEDIA WOULD ATTACK ISRAEL
Fleur Hassan-Nahoum is another Israeli official who warned me that the media would open a second front of attack against Israel.
For the last several years, she has been the deputy mayor of Jerusalem.
Now she is a senior advisor to Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs.
She and her husband and family live in Jerusalem and she has a unique perspective on the challenges facing Jews, Christians and Muslims in the Holy City.
“Joel, just to give you some perspective, I moved here with my husband in the middle of the second intifada when there were buses being blown up every other week,” she told me. “Cafes been blown up every other week, and yet this feels so much worse."
"I'm not sure if it’s the surprise element, or if it’s the hostages – the sheer cruelty of taking children, elderly or disabled…but I'm, this feels a lot more traumatic to me than six months of a protracted urban warfare that I experienced when I first moved here,” even with all the suicide bombings.
“It is the worst civilian casualty attack in the history of the State of Israel,” she told me.
“Normally in a war, you have 80% or 90% combatants as the fallen and about 10% or 20% of unfortunate innocent casualties.” But she noted that “these terrorists came to look for the innocent civilians – they are cowards – they came looking for the little children to kill and the old ladies to get in their beds.”
“This is a completely different scenario” from anything Israel has faced in the past, she said.
“This is ISIS, Joel – that is what this is.”
“Of course, we can compare it to Pearl Harbor or to 9/11. But the numbers in terms of the proportion of our size are way higher than those horrible, heinous attacks on American soil.”
“The worst thing is that, you know, we have had a little bit of sympathy from the world for a couple of days,” she noted. “But now, as we start to retaliate – we want to get back our people, our hostages – and you can feel the tide of the press beginning to turn.”
They keep asking, “Why are you retaliating? Is this a proportionate response?”
“Are you kidding me?” she asked. “We're not there [in Gaza] to kill for revenge. We're there to dismantle the terrorists' infrastructure that is an existential threat to our country.”
On last night’s special wartime episode of THE ROSENBERG REPORT, we aired excerpts of my interview with Hassan-Nahoum.
SURE ENOUGH, A CNN ANCHOR IS ACCUSING ISRAEL OF “WAR CRIMES”
Sure enough, Regev and Hassan-Nahoum were right.
And it didn’t even take a full week.
Yesterday, CNN launched its attack on Israel and I witnessed it with my own eyes.
At a press conference I attended, held in Jerusalem by Israeli President Isaac Herzog, CNN reporter and anchor Becky Anderson accused Israel point blank of committing “war crimes” in the Gaza Strip.
“The collective punishment of a civilian population amounts to a war crime under international law,” Anderson said to President Herzog. “The U.S. has warned Israel to uphold laws of war.”
It wasn’t a question.
It was an accusation – and a sick one at that.
“I'm quite disappointed that that's what you're asking instantaneously,” Herzog replied, getting visibly angry. “Haven't you seen...? You've seen [the crimes of Hamas]! You've seen, you were all there."
Foreign reporters were brought to several places this week where Hamas terrorists slaughtered Israeli Jewish men, women, children, and babies.
These reporters were shown Israeli Jews burned alive, shot point blank dozens of times, and hacked to death.
"So now we're starting with the rhetoric about [Israeli] war crimes, really?” Herzog asked.
“Truly? Truly? I just said that Israel abides by international law; operates by international law. Every operation is secured and covered and reviewed legally.”
But Anderson and other foreign reporters didn’t want to hear it.
They have a narrative – a Hamas narrative – that Israelis are the real monsters.
And that’s the story they are going with.
MSNBC AND OTHER MAJOR NEWS OUTLETS ALSO ATTACK ISRAEL
In his new column, “Truth Under Siege By US Media In Gaza War Coverage,” my colleague Tom Tradup cites several of the latest examples of the anti-Israel, even antisemitic reporting of several so-called “mainstream media” outlets.
He shares examples from the New York Times, USA Today and the Washington Post.
But he pays special attention to the sickening anti-Israel bias at MSNBC.
Consider this section of his column:
On MSNBC, Jonathan Greenblatt – CEO of the Anti-Defamation League – blasted the network for rationalizing terror attacks and for calling Hamas terrorists “fighters.”
Greenblatt quietly but firmly stated: “I’ll be honest. I am angry with a world that allowed the dehumanization of Israelis and sanitized the terrorism of Hamas. I must say I love this show, and I love this network. But I’ve got to ask who’s writing the scripts?”
It was a classic, spellbinding takedown of MSNBC. As anchor Jonathan Lemire sat in stunned silence, Greenblatt added: “Guys, get the story right. And all these pictures of missiles. Or the rubble in Gaza? Please talk to the Israeli mothers and fathers who lost their children. Talk to the children whose grandparents were seized as hostages. And please stop calling this a retaliation. This is a defensive measure against an organization that is committed to one thing: Killing Jews.”
All of this is so sickening.
And it’s only the beginning.
Brace yourself – the media war against Israel, against Jews, against Christians, against truth, is going to get much, much worse.
That’s exactly why ALL ISRAEL NEWS exists.
To report and publish the truth.
Come what may.
Joel C. Rosenberg is the editor-in-chief of ALL ISRAEL NEWS and ALL ARAB NEWS and the President and CEO of Near East Media. A New York Times best-selling author, Middle East analyst, and Evangelical leader, he lives in Jerusalem with his wife and sons.
