Israeli unit tasked with smearing Gaza journalists as Hamas fighters – report

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/15/israeli-military-unit-reportedly-tasked-with-linking-journalists-in-gaza-to-hamas

by NomDePlum • 11 months ago

160 28 11 months ago

theguardian.com

duxup4• 11 months ago

Not much would surprise me these days.

I find it's impossible to talk about this topic online, even in unrelated forms where I haven't seen the topic come up I've seen moderators suddenly decide to announce that they won't tolerate "antisemitism" and inexplicably the topic comes up where it never did before and their definition of antisemitism seems to be anything other than pro Israeli news and messages and pithy "those people" type comments.

HN is not much different, any story is flagged almost immediately. No discussion allowed.

Meanwhile Israel seems to bet actively trying to drive every last Gazan to have a reason to join some extremist group. I don't understand where they think this is going ...

jiggawatts• 11 months ago

It’s pretty clear that October 7th was the excuse the Israeli leadership was waiting for. They finally have causus belli to pacify Gaza one way or another. They might not raze it to the ground, that would have bad optics, but they’re certainly going to try to make life there unpleasant enough that the locals won’t protest too much if they’re forcefully relocated elsewhere.

A lot of western commentators are up in arms about the mistreatment and suffering but they’re missing the bigger picture: that’s the point. The suffering is the goal, not a side effect. The quiet part has been said out load enough (thanks Trump!) that we can’t act surprised.

What actually happens in the next couple of years hinges on how much political capital Bibi has left and how hard the general populace of Israel protests the atrocities committed in their name.

propagandist• 11 months ago

The "western commentators" were instrumental in enabling this crime by yielding to "authority" and not questioning the claims of the occupying entity.

Decades of propaganda got us here, and the nature of the operation was clear from day 1. The leadership in almost all of our states are accomplices to this crime.

stemlord• 11 months ago

They might not raze it to the ground, that would have bad optics, but they’re certainly going to try to make life there unpleasant enough

Did you hit send on this message on Oct 8 and it just went through?

hobo_in_library• 11 months ago

One minute after you made that statement, the Israeli propaganda brigade seems to have discovered this post and seems fully dedicated to proving your claims

duxup4• 11 months ago

Yup, the post is flagged again.

7402• 11 months ago

I don't understand where they think this is going ...

This statement could be taken two ways: 1) it's purely rhetorical, i.e., there is no possible explanation for what Israel is doing and there literally is no possible way to do any analysis of it, or 2) it's a statement of lack of knowledge, i.e., I don't understand this; maybe someone else can explain it to me.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume #2.

The way to understand the Israeli point of view is to read the Israeli press and listen to Israeli political analysts, of which there are many. That shouldn't be a controversial statement.

For English-language news and commentary from the Israeli point of view, you can read the Jerusalem Post https://www.jpost.com and the Times of Israel https://www.timesofisrael.com . No firewalls.

I found this recent podcast particularly informative. You don't have to listen to it; if you open it in an appropriate podcast app you can get the transcript:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/defining-victory-with-...

Ancapistani• 11 months ago

I don't understand what's happening on either side, honestly - even as someone who pays fairly close attention, almost none of the reporting strikes me as reliable.

For example, this article is referencing another, published by "the Israeli-Palestinian outlet +972 Magazine". Right off the bat, I'm suspicious of their motives due to their location and its politics. The Guardian article couches statements as "reportedly" and gives an example of "[...] at least one case the unit misrepresented information [...]"

So I went to the source. It relies on unnamed sources. That's understandable, but this isn't an outlet that I'm familiar enough with to judge whether or not they're trustworthy.

The specific example the Guardian mentioned read like this in +972:

    “They said: during the day he’s a journalist, at night he’s a platoon commander. Everyone was excited. But there was a chain of errors and corner-cutting. 

    “In the end, they realized he really was a journalist,” the source continued, and the journalist wasn’t targeted.

I... can't see anything to be upset about there. Israeli intelligence investigated someone, found insufficient evidence to believe they were guilty, and did not target that person. That sounds pretty reasonable to me.

This is not to say I trust pro-Israeli media, either. I don't. Articles I read there are similarly couched in "weasel words", making unsupported assertions and insinuations while carefully avoiding concrete statements.

DiogenesKynikos2• 11 months ago

+972 Magazine is reputable. They have broken several major stories during this war, which have held up under scrutiny.

They revealed the Israeli "Lavender" system, for example, which is used to carry out mass AI-driven targeting of supposed Hamas members (and it turns out they target tons of tenuously related people, as well as anyone who happens to be in the vicinity of those people).

The reason why +972 Magazine has been able to break these stories is because it has anonymous sources inside the Israeli military and intelligence establishments. There are still people in Israel who do not agree with everything their government is doing, and some are willing to talk to journalists.

+972 Magazine is pretty rare, in that it's a collaboration between Israeli and Palestinian journalists. Their "motives" are that the Israeli journalists at +972 are much more sympathetic to the Palestinians than most Israelis are, and the Palestinian journalists believe in working together with Israelis to end the military occupation.

NomDePlum2• 11 months ago

"Israel did not attempt to justify killing his three colleagues."

ciconia• 11 months ago

Original report here: https://www.972mag.com/israel-gaza-journalists-hamas-hasbara...

How unsurprising...

asdefghyk5• 11 months ago

T his articale includes ..... Al-Sharif wrote in his final message, posthumously published on his social media accounts. “I have lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification.”......

Did he ever post criticism of Hamas?

DiogenesKynikos2• 11 months ago

Even when a journalist is murdered by the Israel Defense Forces (as the IDF itself admits), people still try, "But what about Hamas?"

slantedview• 11 months ago

This is timely, coming the same week that Israel assassinated a prominent group of Al Jazeera journalists because they claimed one of them was Hamas.

tguvot• 11 months ago

claims predate death of hamas and pij members by almost 1 year https://www.ynetnews.com/article/hjiotyul1x

ByteMe95• 11 months ago

What’s this doing in hackerrank?

duxup4• 11 months ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

flyinglizard• 11 months ago

The article doesn't even claim al-Sharif wasn't a Hamas operative. Such evidence of journalists being part of Hamas has surfaced before: https://x.com/EFischberger/status/1955682343337005467

Some are embedded media, for example journalists which raided Israel together with Hamas on October 7th.

viraptor• 11 months ago

Photos of someone holding weapons in an effective war zone is not evidence of any group membership. There's so many reasons why a journalist would be talking to soldiers and talking about their weapons/training. Not even limited to journalists and war - obviously these are terrorists, right? https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-congressman-posts-family...

afroboy• 11 months ago

They didn't raid Israel on 7 Oct, they raided own stolen homes.

nodra• 11 months ago

Why is this flagged?

duxup4• 11 months ago

Every non favorable article about Israel is flagged on HN eventually.

asdefghyk5• 11 months ago

It is said, "The first casualty of war is truth".

How would anyone know what is propaganda and what is not, from either side. Both sides would be releasing propaganda. plus lots misleading statements from both sides , I would say.

asdefghyk5• 11 months ago

There is no independent media to speak of in Gaza, and journalists operate at either the direct command or the mercy of Hamas and other terrorist groups

bigyabai• 11 months ago

This is misinformation. There are independent journalists in Gaza, many of them have died reporting on the war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_in_...

asdefghyk5• 11 months ago

What is definition of independent. How many published media critical of HAMAS? How would we ever know they not working with Hamas. We do not. Did any ever report on HAMAS killing some of the protestors. I guess Hamas would have allowed it to shut Gaza's people up ?

Israeli unit tasked with smearing Gaza journalists as Hamas fighters – report

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