The Foreign Ministry released a comic clip pointing out the often skewed coverage by foreign journalists regarding Hamas-ruled Gaza, and in particularly calling out the coverage on last summer’s counter-terror operation in Gaza.
The 49-second cartoon clip, entitled “Open your eyes about Gaza,” was posted on YouTube on Sunday, and quickly drew condemnation from the Foreign Press Association (FPA) in Israel.
The video features a blonde-haired television correspondent in Gaza with an American accent declaring to camera “there are no terrorists here, just ordinary people,” while a masked terror fires off a rocket, presumably towards Israel.
Another scene has the reporter describing tunnels that Hamas fighters used to stage attacks into Israeli territory as “the first Palestinian subway.”
A female character then gives the reporter a pair of glasses, allowing him to see the reality of “life under Hamas rule.”
The reporter then faints. “Terror rules Gaza,” a caption reads.
While the clip was meant to address the international condemnation leveled against Israel largely due to news coverage that often failed to present the context of Hamas’s violations in embedding its terror infrastructure in its civilian population, the FPA was evidently not amused.
The foreign press body said it was “surprised and alarmed” by the “misleading and poorly conceived” clip, adding “it is disconcerting that the ministry would spend its time producing a…video that attempts to ridicule journalists reporting on a conflict.”
Hamas often fired rockets near sites where journalists were present, putting them in danger and indeed several journalists died in the conflict.
The terrorist organization Hamas claimed 17 journalists were killed covering the July-August Gaza war, a claim that the the privately-run Israeli Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center disputed, showing how Hamas-linked media operatives or combatants were counted as journalists.
The International Federation of Journalists says at least 13 media workers were killed.
An Italian photographer working for the Associated Press was among the journalists who died during the war, as Hamas accidentally detonated a dud rocket that the terrorists were trying to disarm.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon defended the video, saying it was “poking gentle fun at the phenomenon” of Hamas using “human shields” during fighting and the “partial reporting” of this by international media.
