JERUSALEM \u2014 A spokesman for Gaza\u2019s second-largest terror group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), shared inside information on the organization\u2019s propaganda tactics and its cynical manipulation of the media\u00a0during an interrogation with Israel\u2019s military intelligence agency following his arrest at\u00a0Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City last month.<\/p>\n
An eight-minute video of the interrogation of\u00a0Tariq Salami Otha Abu Shlouf, a spokesperson for PIJ\u2019s political bureau, was published by the Israeli army on Monday. In the clip, Shlouf can be heard detailing how\u00a0the U.S.-designated terror group uses both Arabic and international media to create a false narrative about what is happening in the Gaza Strip.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He also spoke about how terrorists have widely used all of Gaza\u2019s hospitals and many of its ambulances while battling Israeli forces during the six-month war.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In one admission, the spokesman said an explosion in one of Gaza\u2019s main hospitals early on in the fighting was caused by a misfired PIJ rocket, not by Israel, as many international outlets rushed to report.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Shlouf said the PIJ\u2019s leadership \u2018fabricated the story about an Israeli strike on the hospital\u2019 in an attempt to \u2018erase\u2019 the group\u2019s direct involvement in the incident, which killed more than 100 people, according to U.S. intelligence agencies.<\/p>\n
\u2018It is true that the story is false, but we wanted to promote it,\u2019 the spokesman said, describing how the terror group\u2019s communication department made decisions based on \u2018certain interests\u2019 and \u2018to leverage a certain narrative.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018We relied on the stories in the international press,\u2019 Shlouf told the interrogators.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018Most international media will undoubtedly not even mention the revelations of this Islamic Jihad spokesperson in their reporting,\u2019\u00a0Simon Plosker, editorial director at\u00a0HonestReporting, an Israeli organization that monitors coverage of Israel in the international press, told Fox News Digital.<\/p>\n
\u2018If they did mention it, then they\u00a0would have to\u00a0call into question their entire coverage of the conflict, which would\u00a0highlight how the foreign press has either been manipulated or even willingly participated in a sophisticated terrorist propaganda operation at Israel\u2019s expense.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Terrorists affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad joined the thousands of Hamas terrorists who infiltrated southern Israel Oct. 7, participating in the widespread massacre of some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and in the kidnapping of another 250.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The mass terror attack, which both Hamas and PIJ terrorists documented with GoPros and their cellphones, sparked a war with Israel.<\/p>\n
Since the start of the war, the terror groups have operated in tandem to distort the images coming out of Gaza and blame the documented suffering of more than 2 million civilians only on Israel, Shlouf told Israeli interrogators.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He admitted that the PIJ\u2019s goal was to deflect attention of Palestinian civilians suffering from the dire living conditions caused by the ongoing war it helped to ignite. And the group used standard talking points, including telling journalists, \u2018It\u2019s our right to live,\u2019 \u2018we want the situation to return to normal,\u2019 and \u2018we want our children to live like any other children in the world.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Shlouf also described how top PIJ leader Ziyad al-Nakhalah was in daily contact with the organization\u2019s communication department, which also worked closely with its counterparts in Hamas to carve the desired narrative. He confessed that PIJ\u2019s communication team checked over journalist\u2019s stories prior to their publication. If they did not fit the group\u2019s desired narrative, then they would prevent them from going out.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018So, if it\u2019s not to your liking, it doesn\u2019t get published?\u2019 the interrogator asked Shlouf.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018Of course not, because the journalist needs us for more interviews,\u2019 he responded.<\/p>\n
\u2018This is hardly surprising, for years\u00a0we\u00a0have\u00a0observed how Islamist terror groups use civilian infrastructure to recruit terrorists into their ranks, promote terrorism and launch attacks,\u2019\u00a0Khaled Hassan,\u00a0a political risk and intelligence analyst with over 13 years of experience working in the Middle East, told Fox News Digital.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said that,\u00a0consequently, in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and many majority-Muslim countries,\u00a0\u2018mosques and hospitals affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist terror groups are closely monitored 24\/7, 365 days a year.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018Moreover, their modus operandi also fundamentally relies on creating the impression that they are the victims of oppression and tyranny,\u2019 said Hassan.\u00a0\u2018For that purpose, the killing of their own and civilians generally is to them an aim that serves a greater purpose.<\/p>\n
\u2018Western governments largely overlook these widely recognized facts when dealing with Israel\u2019s war on Hamas,\u2019 he added. \u2018They empower and embolden terrorists,\u2019 making it a successful strategy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Israeli Canadian author Matti Friedman, who previously worked as a correspondent for The Associated Press in Jerusalem, said that much of the\u00a0mainstream press was clearly \u2018telling a story from Gaza based on information that isn\u2019t just wrong but is propaganda.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Groups like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad know exactly what they\u2019re doing \u2014 causing extreme harm to innocents by exploiting civilian cover, then blaming Israel for it and using the resulting international outrage to tie Israel\u2019s hands,\u2019 Friedman, who explored the international media\u2019s bias on Israel\u00a0in an explosive 2014 column.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018This interrogation gives us a glimpse of this system, but the real answers to the question of media malfeasance lie with the Western editors, journalists and NGOs who\u2019ve been playing along for years,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
International media covering the war in Gaza have been highly critical of Israel, especially over its refusal to allow journalists to enter Gaza independently to cover the war. Instead, most of the foreign press has relied on the reports of local Palestinian journalists, some of whom have been accused of being\u00a0complicit in Hamas\u2019 propaganda machine even as they complain that Israel has purposely targeted them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On Monday, the Foreign Press Association (FPA), a nonprofit organization representing journalists from international news organizations reporting from Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, released a statement criticizing Israel\u2019s policy and pointing out the \u2018unprecedented threats and harm\u2019 faced by Palestinian journalists inside Gaza who are \u2018courageously covering the story.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018The decision whether to be on the ground in Gaza should be up to each individual international media outlet,\u2019 the statement said. \u2018The blanket ban has limited the world\u2019s ability to witness the true cost of the war to all sides.\u2019<\/p>\n
Lahav Harkov, a veteran journalist, told Fox News digital that while she agreed\u00a0Israel should allow foreign journalists to report from inside\u00a0Gaza, \u2018that doesn\u2019t mean journalists should shirk the responsibility to consider their sources\u2019 motivations and verify the facts.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018It\u2019s been apparent for well over a decade that Gaza is the place where journalistic ethics go to die,\u2019 she said. \u2018In 2014, you had journalists reporting on Hamas using the Shifa Hospital for its terrorist operations and then backtracking because Hamas threatened them.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
She said the situation had only become worse over the past six months, with major media organizations defending \u2018photojournalists who rode along with terrorists who committed the Oct. 7 massacre.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
Harkov also noted how\u00a0reporters were treating the spokespeople for Palestinian Islamic Jihad as \u2018credible sources.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018The proof is in the kind of reporting they are doing,\u2019 she said, highlighting the Al-Ahli Hospital strike in which the PIJ spokesman \u2018spoon-fed them the\u00a0message\u2019 that it was Israel,\u00a0when, \u2018in reality, it was\u00a0a PIJ rocket that had misfired.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n\n
JERUSALEM \u2014 A spokesman for Gaza\u2019s second-largest terror group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), shared inside information on the organization\u2019s propaganda tactics and its cynical manipulation of the media\u00a0during an interrogation with Israel\u2019s military intelligence agency following his arrest at\u00a0Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City last month. An eight-minute video of the interrogation of\u00a0Tariq Salami Otha Abu <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":17942,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17941","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}