NYT Propagandist Tom Friedman Gives Yellow Journalism a Bad Name
by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman)
No responsible editor would touch his rubbish. The Times disgracefully features it – disinformation, Big Lies, and fake news its defining character, truth-telling banished from his propaganda pieces.
He outrageously blamed Hamas for Israeli mass murder in Gaza. According to its health ministry, since (peaceful) Great March of Return demonstrations began on March 30, Israeli forces slaughtered 112 Palestinians, injuring over 13,000 others – including women, children and the disabled from earlier Israeli aggression.
Over 7,600 Palestinians, threatening no one, were shot with live fire or rubber-coated steel bullets. Hundreds of injuries are critical, the death toll sure to rise.
Countless numbers of Gazans are maimed for life. Journalists and medical personnel were targeted for doing their jobs.
The numbers are shocking: 223 medical personnel attacked, 37 ambulances, and 175 journalists.
Weeks of Israeli violence against defenseless civilians constitute high crimes against humanity – demanding accountability not forthcoming.
Friedman: “If there were an anti-Nobel Peace Prize…for Cynicism and Reckless Disregard for One’s Own People in Pursuit of a Political Fantasy – it would surely be conferred on Hamas, which just facilitated the tragic and wasted deaths of roughly 60 Gazans by encouraging their march, some with arms, on the Israeli border fence in pursuit of a ‘return’ to their ancestral homes in what is now Israel.”
Despicable stuff, turning truth on its head, a Times and Friedman specialty. The number of killed Palestinians is 112, not 60, along with many thousands injured.
No Gazans were armed with weapons, according to human rights fieldworkers observing what went on!
Israel bears full responsibility for Nuremberg-level crimes, Hamas victimized like other Gazans. Friedman mocked their suffering under suffocating/illegal blockade, blaming them for Israeli-inflicted misery.”
Friedman: Hamas “seized on (the march) to disguise its utter failure to produce any kind of decent life for the Palestinians there, whom Hamas has ruled since 2007.”
Hamas is Palestine’s legitimately elected government, not the Israeli-created PA led by illegitimate puppet head Abbas, installed to serve its interests.
Hamas officials have been brutalized, arrested, imprisoned, and assassinated by Israel for refusing to bend to its will, for demanding fundamental Palestinian rights, for accepting nothing less than what they deserve, including an end to occupation harshness, theft of Palestinian land and resources, along with illegal settlement construction.
Blockaded Gazans are suffering from Israeli-inflicted slow-motion genocide. Its regime is entirely to blame for what’s going on, not Hamas.
Friedman: “Israel ended its occupation of Gaza in 2005.”
False! It relocated settlers there to stolen West Bank Palestinian land.
After Hamas democratically won a January 2006 parliamentary majority, Israel waged war on its officials without declaring it, including three hot wars of aggression since December 2008 – in mid-2007, imposing an illegal, suffocating blockade solely for political reasons.
Friedman: “…I get why Israel has no choice but to defend its border with Gaza with brute force.”
No one threatens Israel’s (undeclared) borders, not Hamas, Gazans, other Palestinians or anyone else.
Claiming otherwise is a bald-faced lie. So is calling Israel a “Jewish democracy.” A nation affording rights to one religious or ethnic group at the expense of others in the country is a lawless apartheid state – Israel a ruthless Ziofascist one.
Friedman: “Repeated Hamas rocket attacks…led to an Israeli blockade” of the Strip.
False! No evidence suggests Hamas ever used rockets preemptively against Israel – only in self-defense, its fundamental right when attacked, Israel the repeated aggressor.
Friedman is an embarrassment what journalism is supposed to be, winning awards for being a wealth, power, privilege, and imperial mouthpiece – for featuring rubbish over truth-telling.
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