Despite History of Fabrication, Press Uncritically Covers IDF-Provided Documents on Hamas
By Bryce Greene / Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)
Earlier this month, the New York Times (10/12/24), Washington Post (10/12/24) and Wall Street Journal (10/12/24) each published front-page articles based on different sets of documents handed to them by the Israeli military.
Israel claims it seized all the documents—in the form of meeting minutes, letters and planning documents—in its ground invasion of Gaza, and that they reveal insights into Hamas’s operations prior to the October 7 attacks. The documents include alleged evidence of Hamas’s pre-10/7 coordination with Iran, plans to blow up Israeli skyscrapers, and even a scheme to use horse-drawn chariots in an attack from Gaza.
Documents received directly from intelligence agencies should always be treated with skepticism, and that’s especially true when their government has a well-documented history of blatant lying. Yet leading newspapers took these Israeli document dumps largely at face value, advancing the agenda of a genocidal rogue state.
A history of lying
Israel’s use of fabrications to shape public perception is well known, and was put on display early in the assault on Gaza that began last October. After an explosion at Al Ahli hospital killed and injured hundreds (misreporting of which caused a great deal of confusion), the media naturally pointed the finger at Israel. The Israeli government, concerned about the public backlash, denied responsibility, claiming that the explosion was caused by a misfired rocket from Palestinian Islamic Jihad. (See FAIR.org, 11/3/23.)
To back up their claims, Israel released a recording allegedly capturing two Palestinian militants discussing Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s responsibility for the strike. However, an analysis by the firm Earshot found that the audio was the result of two separate channels being edited together (Channel 4, 10/19/23). In other words, Israel engineered a phony audio clip in an attempt to clear itself of war crimes in the public mind.
Investigations based on open sources have since come to various conclusions about the attack (Guardian, 10/18/23; Bellingcat, 10/18/23; Human Rights Watch, 11/26/23; AP, 11/22/23; Michael Kobs, 2023; New Arab, 2/19/24), but Israel’s fraudulent attempt to manipulate evidence certainly suggests that they had something to hide, and demonstrates their lack of reliability as a media source. Recently, the UN released a report accusing Israel of systematically targeting healthcare infrastructure in Gaza, making their denials of this earlier attack far less credible.
In another instance, Israel presented 3D renderings of a supposed Hamas “command center” beneath Al Shifa hospital, claiming it was based on intelligence. However, no such command center was ever found (FAIR.org, 12/1/23). Upon storming the hospital, Israel staged scenes in order to bolster claims that the facility was used by militant groups. The deception was so blatant that mainstream outlets were openly calling it out.
Recently Israel was caught actually providing fabricated documents to the press with the aim of manipulating public opinion. Earlier this year, the Israeli government provided documents to both the Jewish Chronicle (9/5/24) and the German paper Bild (9/6/24) that purportedly showed that Hamas had no interest in a ceasefire, and had a plan to sneak the late Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar out of Gaza to Iran, along with some of the remaining hostages. The reports were then uncritically repeated in outlets like the Times of Israel (9/6/24).
Shortly after these documents were published, the Israeli paper Yedioth Ahronoth (9/8/24) reported on an internal IDF investigation that found that they had been leaked to foreign media as part of a campaign to “shape public opinion on Israel.” The documents were determined to be forgeries, after a comprehensive search of all databases containing documents found in the wake of Israel’s operations. The IDF told the paper that an investigation was underway to determine the origin of the leak.
This non-exhaustive list of examples demonstrates a pattern of Israel engineering misleading narratives to shape public opinion, and fabricating the evidence needed to do so.
Questionable authenticity
Whether they are authentic or not, it is clear that the documents leaked to the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post serve the same purpose of propagandizing on behalf of Israel. In an attempt to preserve some journalistic integrity, the Post and Times both gave separate justifications for why they believed the respective documents leaked to them were authentic.
The Post was quick to note that “the documents’ authenticity could not be definitively established,” but gave readers the impression there was reason to believe they were real. First, it claimed that the contents of the documents it received were
“broadly consistent” with US and allies’ post–October 7 intelligence assessments about Hamas’s long-range planning and complex relationship with Iran.
Then it wrote that unnamed US and Israeli officials they shared the documents with did not express concerns about their authenticity. (Iranian and Hamas officials they consulted didn’t comment on the documents but accused Israel of having a history of “fabricating documents.”)
The New York Times consulted former Hamas member Salah al-Din al-Awawdeh, whom the paper frequently quotes on matters related to Hamas, and an unnamed Palestinian analyst with “knowledge of Hamas’s inner workings.” It also said an internal Israeli military report concluded the documents were authentic, and the paper “researched details mentioned in the meeting records to check that they corresponded with actual events.” It said “Hamas and Hezbollah did not respond to requests to comment” and that Iran “denied the claims made in the minutes.”
The Wall Street Journal story did not describe any attempt to verify the authenticity, and only reported that the paper “hasn’t independently verified the documents.”
But given Israel’s track record, there is no epistemologically sound way of verifying the validity of documents provided by the Israeli government without confirmation from Hamas itself. Citing sources who say that the documents resemble Hamas documents, without noting Israel’s history of creating credible forgeries, creates a patina of credibility without actually substantiating anything.
Advancing Israel’s agenda
The Israeli paper Haaretz (10/14/24), which took the documents as authentic, argued that their release by Israel was “Aimed at Aiding Netanyahu.” While both the Times and the Post have largely advanced Israel’s agenda over the past year of bombing (FAIR.org, 10/13/23, 2/1/24, 10/7/24), both papers are considered to be on the critical end of the press spectrum in the US, particularly towards Netanyahu. As Haaretz explained, this perception enhances the propaganda value of the document leak: “The Times and the Post enjoy greater credibility when they fall in line with Israel’s narrative.”
While Haaretz made no note of the leaked documents provided to the Wall Street Journal, the article ironically acknowledged that
having them published by Fox News or even the Wall Street Journal would have looked like an Israeli public diplomacy operation rather than a legitimate journalistic investigative report.
Haaretz noted that the documents promote narratives that “Israel would be happy to burn into the world’s consciousness,” namely the well-known propaganda effort to equate Hamas with organizations that are universally reviled by Americans. The Post documents purportedly outlined a Hamas plan to blow up a skyscraper in Tel Aviv, evoking the September 11 attacks against the World Trade Center:
The Hamas documents are supposed to bolster Netanyahu’s claim that Israel isn’t fighting against a liberation movement seeking to free the occupied Palestinian people, or even against a paramilitary organization that is poorly funded and trained and lacks planes, the Iron Dome anti-missile system, tanks and artillery….
Rather, it is fighting a terrifying “axis of evil” led by Iran that threatens to destroy Western culture as a whole.
Haaretz also argued that this kind of propaganda campaign was designed to ensure that the violence continues to escalate:
In this spirit, the documents are supposed to justify Israel’s counterattack, which has so far caused enormous death and destruction in Gaza and, to an increasing degree, also in Lebanon.
Obvious PR value
While Haaretz overlooked the story from the Wall Street Journal, the same logic can be applied to the documents given to that paper as well. The Journal was apparently curious about the political purpose of the documents, noting that “the officials who provided the documents declined to say why they were releasing them now.”
The Journal wrote that the documents “suggest that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was negotiating with Iran over funding for a planned large-scale assault on Israel as far back as 2021,” and gave specific dollar amounts that Iran provided to Hamas’s armed wing. The obvious public relations value of these documents was that they boosted the negative image of Iran prior to Israel’s recent attack on that country.
Israel’s campaign of genocide in Gaza and greater war in the Middle East has been successful in part because the Israeli government can count on Western press to present and contextualize facts in a way that advances their narrative. Despite Israel’s long history of fabrications, the corporate media will dutifully republish documents, statements and explanations with complete credulity.