An otherwise decent story for the Daily Mail’s Mail Online site caught our eye. The story concerning Hezbollah’s reaction to US President Trump’s Jerusalem declaration included a separate section at the end. (Partial screenshot below.)
Were Israeli troops really demolishing graves in a Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem?
Other than photos of Israeli border police present next to some graves, the story offered no further background, context or facts.
We went looking for an explanation. Given the inflammatory nature of the story and its capacity to generate anti-Israel feeling, you’d expect Palestinian media to cover this incident.
Wouldn’t other international press cover the story?
There was nothing.
Nor was there any record of this incident in the Israeli press.
Why?
Because it was fake news.
A story that Israel had demolished graves in the Bab al-Rahmeh cemetery first appeared in November 2016 courtesy of “news” sites such as propaganda outfits Russian RT, Iranian Press TV, and some Palestinian media outlets. The UK Media Watch site called out The Independent at the time for publishing the story based solely on unsubstantiated Palestinian charges parroted on pseudo-news sources.
Therefore even if Mail Online’s story had appeared over a year earlier, it would have been flagged as an appallingly sub-standard excuse for journalism.
It is shocking that fake news found its way into the world’s most read news site. We contacted editors at Mail Online and asked that the entire section be removed from the main article.
The Mail Online duly obliged and we have questioned how this serious breach of professional journalism occurred at all.
