CNN Just Can't Print an Honest Report

For full report see https://honestreporting.com/cnn-exploits-arab-israeli-familys-death-to-push-narrative-of-bomb-shelter-discrimination-against-palestinians/

In the early hours of Sunday morning, a missile launched by Iran struck the northern Israeli town of Tamra, near Haifa, killing four women from the same Arab Israeli family.

But CNN wasn’t content to report the tragedy with facts. Instead, it used the Khatib family’s death to push an ugly and misleading narrative: that Israel is running a system of bomb shelter “inequality” between Israelis and “Palestinian citizens of Israel.”

In a report titled “Iranian strikes expose bomb shelter shortage for Palestinian towns inside Israel,” published after Chief International Correspondent Clarissa Ward’s visit to Tamra, CNN describes the town as “somber, compounded by anger over a lack of adequate bomb shelters—an issue that Palestinian citizens of Israel have long warned was a glaring inequality.”

They cite the town’s mayor, who claims just 40% of Tamra’s 37,000 residents have access to a safe room or shelter. CNN offers no evidence that the Khatib family lacked a shelter. In fact, other international outlets—including The Guardian—have reported that the family had two safe rooms, one on each floor of their home. Yet CNN builds an entire narrative on the unverified assumption that they did not.

Instead of establishing facts, the report relies on implication and generalization—using one family’s tragedy to frame a broader accusation of systemic discrimination.

But here’s what CNN doesn’t tell its audience:

·        Over half of all Israeli homes—Jewish, Muslim, or Christian—lack access to a safe room. According to the Israel Builders Association, as of late 2024, roughly 1.67 million of Israel’s 3 million residential units still have no reinforced shelter.

·        Many Israeli cities—including Bat Yam, Tel Aviv, and Rishon LeZion—have huge populations living in older buildings without safe rooms. Bat Yam, where two children were killed by Iranian missiles, has long been flagged for its vulnerability.

·        In 1992, Israel amended its Civil Defense Law to focus on private shelters, aiming to allow people quicker access within their homes instead of forcing them to run through streets. But the effort has been uneven. Israel’s aging population—over 1.2 million people above age 70—still faces serious risks. These are not comfortable statistics. But they are the reality for millions of Israelis—Jewish and Arab alike.

So when CNN isolates Arab towns like Tamra from this broader national picture, it doesn’t shed light on inequality—it distorts it. The result is a politicized narrative built on omission and insinuation.

To wield the unspeakable loss of one family as a political cudgel, as CNN has done, is not only dishonest—it’s disgraceful.

What Israel has Achieved in Iran

 

Wake Up World- It's Coming to You!

 They say what they mean. When is the world going to wake up?

Flotilla Boat Towed to Israel, Activists to be Deported

 

This photo follows an interception of the "Aid" boat.

Greta Thurnberg receiving a bottle of water and a sandwich
from Israeli soldiers.

Before the crew were taken to the airport, no arrests
or handcuffs, they were shown a 40 minute video
of the events of October 7th. If that did not change t
heir minds of the importance of supporting
the "Palestinian Cause" (as opposed to the Gazan people)
nothing will.

What Do You Know About the Haredi Draft?

 For full report see https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/israel-two-big-lies

Looking at the most explosive political issue threatening to derail the Israeli government mid-war: namely, the conscription of roughly 63,000 young Haredi men to the Israel Defense Forces. One would hardly know, listening to the hyperventilation in the Israeli media, that there are already 6,000 Haredi men serving in the army, that hundreds of them are combat soldiers, and that they volunteer in such solid and consistent numbers that the IDF saw fit, in 1999, to establish an independent battalion just for Haredi soldiers, called Netzah Yehuda.

How come Haredis don’t serve in the army? Why those Haredis who showed up rejected.

Haim Ramon, a longtime Labor Party politician who served as a minister in Yitzhak Rabin’s cabinet happened to browse a document released by the Knesset’s research and information center that provided statistics about various population groups and their representation in the IDF. One stat in particular left Ramon feeling confused: Since Oct. 7, the Knesset revealed, 4,000 young Haredi men showed up of their own volition and asked to volunteer to fight, an initiative that would’ve doubled the number of Haredi soldiers overnight and proven a potential way out of the political impasse.

Almost immediately, the IDF deemed 3,120 of these men unfitting to serve, mostly for being too physically weak to fight. Which, if you know anything about the IDF, is a shocking revelation. A non-Haredi Israeli would have to suffer from a truly debilitating health condition to be found unfit for service; otherwise, 18-year-olds struggling with all manner of maladies—asthma, say, or a bad back or a minor heart condition, even with Downs syndrome—are happily recruited and assigned to support positions that do not require strenuous physical exertion. You can find these excellent and motivated men and women serving as intelligence officers or riflery instructors, drivers or parachute packers, performing services the army absolutely needs. And you’d think that with the national interest allegedly being the swift swelling of the IDF’s ranks, the army would’ve made an effort to accommodate these enthusiastic young Haredis in its ranks.

Instead, not only were they rejected, but also, of the 880 volunteers who were found fit, only 540, or 61 percent, were recruited. In total, then, of the throngs of proud and patriotic black-hatted Israelis who, when it mattered most, wished to join their brothers and sisters in fighting, the army accepted a mere 13.5 percent.

This heartbreaking account provides us with two urgent insights.

First, the entire debate about Haredis in the army is predicated on a bright, shiny untruth. The army doesn’t need Haredi recruits to meet its goals. If it did, it would’ve welcomed every one, or at least the ones physically fit to fight. The army further understands that fully integrating Haredim into its ranks would require a wide array of logistical challenges—providing strictly kosher food, for example, or addressing concerns rising from coed military service—it currently cannot and does not want to address.

Second, while liberal Israeli politicians are quick to refer to Haredis in derogatory terms like shirkers and parasites, the Haredi community has just shown that it is more committed than ever to seeing itself as part of Israel’s national narrative. If you’re looking for a bit of perspective there, a 2023 report from the State Comptroller’s office revealed that, in 2021, a whopping 32 percent of young military-age Tel Avivis chose not to join the IDF, a fact that generated precisely zero national outcry.

Put bluntly, anyone who is asking why Haredis don’t serve in the army should first ask why the army widely rejected those Haredis who showed up.

There is NO Shortage of Food in Gaza

 Thousands of tons of food is being delivered to Gaza.

Where is it all going?

Why is Hamas so confident that it’s winning?

 For full article go to https://www.jns.org/why-is-hamas-so-confident-that-its-winning/ 

Khaled Mashaal, the head of Hamas’s “political wing,” in his luxurious living quarters in Doha, Qatar, thinks the war has gone just fine. He thinks that Hamas is “winning the war” and is confident that the genocidal Islamist organization will, despite the battering it has received from the Israel Defense Forces, play a “decisive” role in Gaza in the future.

It takes an extraordinary amount of chutzpah to sit in a comfortable place of exile where you are protected by Qatar—an ally of Iran and Hamas—while the Gulf State also pretends to be friendly with the United States. It’s odd for a “political” leader to be so blithe about a conflict that has, despite the inflated statistics of civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip produced by Hamas, certainly inflicted tremendous harm on his own people. By hiding from the IDF in a warren of tunnels the size of the New York subway system underneath civilian homes, they set in motion a confrontation that guaranteed that much of the Strip would be destroyed. And Hamas itself has been severely hurt. Reportedly, 20,000 operatives have been killed, and all of its organized military formations are no longer combat-effective. The same is true of its ability to send long-range missiles into Israel.

Survival equals a Hamas victory

By any normal definition of victory or defeat, in the aftermath of its orgy of mass murder, rape, torture, kidnappings and wanton destruction in Israel on Oct. 7, Hamas hasn’t been beaten.

While most of us have understandably focused on the fighting in Gaza as well as the way Hezbollah terrorists have been able to essentially de-populate a portion of northern Israel with its indiscriminate fire on civilians, one of the key fronts in this war is not in the Middle East. It’s in the United States.

Hamas have been doing nothing but playing for time. And they expected that the time they needed to outlast the Israeli offensive would be provided to them by Israel’s closest ally.

Combined with the post-Oct. 7 surge in antisemitism made obvious by the pro-Hamas encampments at elite universities, it gave Hamas every reason not to negotiate seriously for a hostage release deal. Hamas viewed all of this as encouragement for its plan to simply hunker down in its remaining tunnel strongholds, and hold out until U.S. and international pressure—heightened by the anti-Israel bias of the mainstream media—forced Israel to stand down and allow the Islamists to emerge as the victor in the war.

Demoralizing the Israelis

While Israelis have every right to protest against their government even in wartime, Hamas also views the unrest inside the Jewish state as an asset. The families of the remaining hostages and Netanyahu’s political opposition now seek to pressure him to give up the war and sign a ceasefire agreement, even if it means essentially handing Gaza back to Hamas and ensuring a repeat of the horrors of Oct. 7. I understand why some feel that way for a number of different reasons, but the fact remains that Hamas is counting on that sentiment.

But above all, Hamas views American pressure on Israel as its ace in the hole.

The reality of Palestinian politics

If left to carry out its tasks without foreign interference, the IDF will eventually eliminate Hamas, though that task will not be accomplished easily or quickly. It can certainly prevent it from returning to power in Gaza, thus ensuring that its reign of terror over Israel as well as Palestinians is over. The terrorist group are counting on feckless American politicians, ideologically motivated leftist demonstrators and political activists, a media that is always prepared to demonize Israeli efforts at self-defense, as well as war-weariness and anguish about the hostages inside Israel to guarantee their survival. We may hope that they are wrong about that, but it’s easy to understand why the terrorist leader is confident that he can outlast the Israelis … with American help.