Thousands of Israeli reservists have flown home on El Al flights from New York, Madrid, Bangkok, and Dubai to join their mobilized army units.
The Israel emergency funds of the Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish National Fund have raised hundreds of millions of dollars to help the resettlement effort of more than 300,000 Israelis who have been evacuated from their homes in southern and northern Israel.
The Hadassah Women’s Organization has raised millions to expedite the completion of the construction of its Gandel Rehabilitation Center at Hadassah-University Medical Center on Jerusalem’s Mount Scopus to help the wounded recover from the war. And tons of supplies have been sent to soldiers in one way or another.
But not everyone is in a position to make a significant donation, and the soldiers that the army needs have already returned to Israel.
So how can the average Israel supporter around the world help? I am currently in West Bloomfield, Michigan, on a nine-state speaking tour, during which I’ve met countless people who desperately want to do something to enable Israel to defeat Hamas.
The answer is that anyone on Facebook, X (formerly known as Twitter), Instagram, Telegram, Snapchat, TikTok, or LinkedIn can help Israel win the uphill battle on social media. It takes courage to identify with Israel and risk losing friends and alienating colleagues at work or fellow students on campus. But if there ever was a time worth taking that risk, it’s now.
Social media can be used effectively to highlight the worst mistakes the mainstream press is making in its coverage of the conflict – reporting which has gotten worse every day since the October 7 atrocities. It can also be used to correct the misinformation that spreads like wildfire when left unchecked.
The worst mistakes, misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war
The egregious mistake made by almost all the top media outlets regarding Gaza City’s Al-Ahli Hospital proved the need for monitoring coverage of Israel more than ever. The justified outrage over headlines that accused Israel of bombing a hospital and killing 500 innocents cannot undo the tremendous damage illegitimately done to Israel’s image, but it can raise future doubts among the unopinionated masses to think twice before deeming Israel guilty based on even the most reputable news sources.
Britain’s Sky News even outdid Hamas’s health ministry by upping the victims purportedly killed by Israel to 800 without a shred of evidence. Reuters concealed the fact that Hamas was its source by cryptically attributing the information to a “civil defense official.”
"Times editors should have taken more care."Is this @nytimes editors' note a lame excuse for an "apology" over its abysmal coverage of the Gaza hospital blast?Not good enough--the damage has already been done.https://t.co/LSX10O2qOz pic.twitter.com/7z4AdpQEIw
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) October 23, 2023
The New York Times admitted on Monday, five days late, that it “relied too heavily on claims by Hamas and did not make clear that those claims could not immediately be verified.”
The Times’s mea culpa failed to apologize for manipulating readers by furnishing its initial piece with an image that showed a completely destroyed building in the Gaza Strip that had nothing to do with the hospital that was struck.
And any credit the Times attained for its half-hearted apology was nullified by its shameless rehiring of Nazi sympathizing freelancer Soliman Hijjy, who contributed to the deceitful coverage about the hospital days after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
Last year, the pro-Israel media watchdog HonestReporting exposed Hijjy’s Facebook post in 2012. “How great you are, Hitler,” Hijjy wrote, sharing a meme of the Nazi mass murderer. Six years later, he wrote that he was “in a state of harmony as Hitler was during the Holocaust.”
Hiijy’s byline was not seen for a year after the newspaper announced that it had “taken appropriate action.” But he has been back at the Times since October 12. This was their explanation:
“We reviewed problematic social media posts by Mr. Hijjy when they first came to light in 2022 and took a variety of actions to ensure he understood our concerns and could adhere to our standards if he wished to do freelance work for us in the future. Mr. Hijjy followed those steps and has maintained high journalistic standards. He has delivered important and impartial work at great personal risk in Gaza during this conflict.”
Israeli ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan rightly groused: “The New York Times has just rehired a NAZI. Let that sink in.”
The @nytimes has just rehired a NAZILet that sink in.Soliman Hijjy praises Hitler, and the NYT rehired him.We all saw how the NYT immediately parroted Hamas’ lies regarding the al-Ahli hospital (which Hijjy contributed to) and still refuses to retract these fabrications.… pic.twitter.com/7WaCDm2YdX
— Ambassador Gilad Erdan גלעד ארדן (@giladerdan1) October 20, 2023
Unfortunately, the Times is not alone in outrageous hiring.
HonestReporting has also revealed that the main Associated Press reporter covering the war in Gaza has called publicly for the annihilation of Israel and a “Palestinian revolt” and has compared Israel to the Nazis.
The social media history and pro-Palestinian activism of Issam Adwan, who joined the wire service in August after working for Al Jazeera English and anti-Israeli non-governmental organizations, reveals some disturbing and antisemitic content, demonstrating that he cannot be relied upon for objective coverage of the conflict.
Is this who the AP believes is meeting its own journalism standards of “accurate, fact-based, nonpartisan reporting”? Unlike the Times, the AP has taken action, temporarily removing Adwan from reporting; but an HonestReporting petition signed by thousands has demanded that both Adwan and Hijjy be removed from reporting on the Jewish state.
The media watchdog also exposed on Monday that Reuters’s regional head of video and pictures in the Middle East has publicly supported terrorists while working for a pro-Palestinian organization, demonized Israel, and criticized the US for providing military aid to Israel.
Labib Nasir, who is currently based in Dubai and editorially supervises Reuters’s visual content coming out of the region, openly praised terrorists at a media conference in Beirut in 2004 while he was working for the pro-Palestinian organization Miftah. According to the conference proceedings, in his public remarks, he said:
“The militants, or as they are now more commonly and frequently known as ‘terrorists,’ that attack Israeli military tanks bent on destroying Palestinian homes are, in fact, defending their people and have an inalienable and internationally recognized right to resist attacks on their homes and neighborhoods.”
Nasir said Israeli communities in the West Bank were not “civilian,” thus suggesting they were legitimate targets. He labeled as “silly” Israel’s right to defend itself, criticizing it as “a myth whereby the occupier is defending itself by invading and killing the occupied.”
Anyone who believes that someone with the views of Hiijy, Adwan, and Nasir cannot be trusted to provide objective, unbiased content on Israel can write their employers or use social media to highlight the problem and demand action.
It’s not the same as hopping on an El Al plane en route to the front or donating a thousand ceramic vests, but getting enlisted in the fight for Israel on the media battlefield is a small but effective step to help Israel win the war.
The writer is the executive director and executive editor of HonestReporting. He served as chief political correspondent and analyst of The Jerusalem Post for 24 years.