Author: Mick Hartley

en civilian and combatant deaths. The report corroborates IDF estimates that over 17,000 Hamas combatants have been killed in the conflict — a figure largely excluded from global reporting.

The impact of uncritically reporting these flawed figures extends beyond misinformation; it has stoked antisemitic rhetoric and violence globally. By perpetuating narratives that disproportionately cast Israel as the aggressor and dismiss Hamas’ culpability, media outlets have legitimised hatred against the Jewish diaspora. Many reports emphasise inflated civilian casualties while ignoring or questioning Israel’s data on militant fatalities, further skewing public perception….

The misreporting of Gaza’s fatality figures is more than a journalistic failure; it is an ethical crisis that has fuelled global antisemitism and polarised international discourse. Our report is a vital reminder that truth is the first casualty of war, and it falls to the media to guard it zealously. In a world increasingly shaped by disinformation, upholding journalistic integrity is not just a professional duty — it is a moral imperative. After 14 months of antisemitism sparked by irresponsible reporting of the war in Gaza, the Jewish community in the UK knows that better than anyone.

“Puberty blockers are medicalised euphemism for chemical castration… why does the government think it’s appropriate to do a trial on children?” https://t.co/l2q9lMlqRM

— Venice Allan (@roseveniceallan) December 17, 2024

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A grim tale from the Daily NK on the killing of a North Korean defector in China:

A North Korean defector woman was murdered by her Chinese husband in rural Liaoning province, with the killer facing no legal consequences. The case has sparked outrage among the defector community in China.

The victim, a woman in her 30s from North Korea’s Ryanggang province, was beaten to death by her husband, an ethnic Korean Chinese national in his 50s, after he discovered her plans to escape to South Korea. When she resisted the beating, he attacked her with a knife, killing her on the spot.

The woman had defected in 2010 and was sold through a human trafficker into a forced marriage with the man. During her years in China, she endured constant domestic violence while performing hard agricultural labor. “She worked in the fields all day under her husband’s surveillance and abuse,” a source in China told Daily NK recently. “Despite the severe treatment, she endured it to send money to her family in North Korea.”

After years of abuse and a life without hope, she planned an escape to South Korea with another defector. Her attempt to leave triggered the fatal confrontation with her husband.

Following the murder, the husband buried her body on a hillside behind their home. He eventually turned himself in to police after rumors of her disappearance began circulating among her acquaintances in the defector community.

However, Chinese police released him without detention or proper investigation, prompting anger from local North Korean defectors. “How could they release someone who confessed to murder?” the source asked. “They protected him simply because he’s Chinese and she was a North Korean defector.”

The case highlights the precarious legal status of North Korean defectors in China, who are considered illegal immigrants and lack basic protections. “They live in constant fear of deportation back to North Korea,” the source explained. “Even attempting to reach safety in South Korea, as this woman tried to do, can have tragic consequences.”

Robert H. McNeill, May 1949. Washington, D.C. "Charles Farrar on Harley-Davidson motorcycle."

[Photo: Shorpy/Robert H. McNeill]

you want a glimpse of Iran without the Islamic… https://t.co/I25810vpeL pic.twitter.com/dDuoT3MhV1

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) December 15, 2024

"If you want a glimpse of Iran without the Islamic regime, look no further than these images. Brave women inside the country are already building that vision: a secular Iran rooted in peace, justice, and friendship, at home, in the region, and across the world.

"The regime can try to silence them, but their voices will echo louder than its oppression."

Featured on MEMRI TV a couple of years back singing the old Italian protest song "Bella Ciao".

o one lost his life, but for the Jews who had just escaped the Cossacks it was terrifying….

See also, Terry Glavin last year.

But there’s something else in the Irish psyche that’s impolite to mention in the comfy Dublin pubs and bistros of Portobello, Ranelagh and Rathmines. Not a few of Ireland’s gallant and celebrated champions of the underdog, its heroes of Irish freedom, were vulgar antisemites and Nazi collaborators….

Just one awkward thing buried in the Irish psyche is the Limerick Pogrom of 1904, a series of incitements led by a renegade Redemptorist priest that resulted in mob assaults on Jewish businesses and the beatings of several Limerick Jews. The republican pamphleteer Arthur Griffith approved, calling Jews “usurers and parasites.” Griffiths was one of the founders of Sinn Féin, in 1905, and he served as Sinn Féin’s president in 1911….

t intellectual predecessors not only against the Jewish people but against Europe as a whole. This is carried out at top universities and in books published by top publishing houses without even the pretence of exploring the Jewish worldview rich in wisdom and thought that has been established for thousands of years.

tal/status/1868578578637762862?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>December 16, 2024

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See this from last December, with Collier taking apart another of Lucy Williamson's reports where she quotes one Raed Debiy, "a political scientist and youth leader for the West Bank's ruling party, Fatah", who was in fact a Hamas fanboy.

This same Lucy Williamson, also last December, reported breathlessly on the abuse Palestinian prisoners received in Israeli jails, citing the case of Mohammed Nazzal and his supposedly broken arms, sustained, he claimed, after brutal beatings from sadistic Israeli prison officers – despite the video footage of his release where his arms, and everything else, were clearly just fine.

Long Room. As an important tourist attraction, also representing a valuable source of income, Trinity decided to fine the students’ union, knowing full well that the sums involved could not be met by the union who had no intention of ending their protest. It was Trinity who buckled with little resistance, agreeing to review all their financial connections with Israel, promising to withdraw from all funds that could be associated with the IDF or the occupation or with Israel, in general. The students union also received support from a number of Trinity academics….

Last November, in a Guardian article, written by Rory Carroll and Lisa O’Carroll, the following remarks were ascribed to Niall Holohan, a former high ranking Irish diplomat with long experience in the Middle East as he explained Ireland’s especially vocal pro-Palestinian stance:

Holohan claims that another factor in Ireland’s outlook has been its tiny community of approximately 2,500 Jews – barely 0.05 per cent – that contrasts with sizeable and influential Jewish communities in Britain and France. ‘It’s given us a freer hand to take what we consider a more principled position,’ he said.

So easily the mask slips, endorsing the worst kind of antisemitic conspiracy theory; that Jews act as a cabal influencing governments and economies and (therefore) Ireland with its minuscule Jewish population is ‘freer’ to govern itself independently. Here is a reflexive antisemitism which blindly sees all Jews as a monolith tied duplicitously to Israel, although in this case, we are deemed not large enough to threaten the state. His short statement drips with contempt, revealing how such antiquated anti-Jewish racism presents itself in contemporary political commentary, without the least self-doubt….

one thing that Germany did, and that was to rout…

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) December 16, 2024

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Full text:

Irish Parliament, July 9, 1943: “How is it that we do not see any of these [Emergency Power] Acts directed against the Jews, who crucified Our Saviour 1900 years ago, and who are crucifying us every day in the week?
There is one thing that Germany did, and that was to rout the Jews out of their country. Until we rout the Jews out of this country it does not matter a hair's breadth what orders you make. Where the bees are there is the honey, and where the Jews are there is the money.” (Oliver J. Flanagan)
https://oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/1943-07-09/8/…

Lovely to see how Ireland has progressed!