Alternative media website VICE News certainly isn’t known for its hard-hitting news coverage, preferring to focus on issues like the sex lives of Pablo Escobar’s hippos and why “eating oranges in the shower” is a type of self-care.
However, the recent Israel-Hamas war has seen VICE News leap into action — pumping out all manner of skewed and dangerous “takes” on the current conflict:
Ignoring Antisemitism & The ‘Genocide’ Libel
In several recently published articles, VICE News suggested Israel is perpetrating a “genocide” against Palestinians, including in a piece titled, ‘Photos Of People Demanding An End to Genocide At Sydney’s Free Palestine Rally On The Weekend.’
No quotation marks to show the allegation of genocide is attributed to any individual or group — just VICE News unequivocally stating that the Jewish state is guilty of “acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
In a similar fashion, the outlet uncritically reprinted the claims of UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, who accused Israel of seeking to justify “ethnic cleansing” as it continues striking terrorist targets in the Gaza Strip.
But how credible would readers find Albanese if they knew she had previously apologized after antisemitic posts on her personal social media profile were uncovered or that she once likened the Jewish state to Nazism?
However, VICE News appears to have its very own blind spot when it comes to antisemitism, having reported the following in its coverage of a pro-Palestinian demonstration in New York City: “The rally in Times Square was peaceful, with many protesters wearing black-and-white keffiyehs chanting slogans like ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.’”
Many will already know, of course, that the “from the river” slogan is a popular rallying cry for terrorist groups and implicitly calls for the destruction of the State of Israel and its inhabitants.
The same article also whitewashed the antisemitism from Hamas, reporting that the NYC rally came after a former Hamas leader “called on their supporters to mobilize across the world in defense of Palestinians, stirring fears of violence.”
The truth is that Hamas had urged people to take part in a global “Day of Rage” in which they “attack Israelis and Jews.”
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Whitewashing Palestinian Terrorism
Just two days after the horrifying Hamas massacre in southern Israel, VICE News refused to label those who were behind the bloodshed “terrorists” — despite the fact Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organization throughout the entirety of the Western world — preferring instead to call them “gunmen” who belong to a “militant Palestinian group.”
Indeed, it is interesting that VICE News only got around to reporting on the massacre on October 9 and led its coverage with Israel’s response:
The Israeli government declared a formal state of war against Hamas, the militant Palestinian group that has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007, while cutting electricity, water and food shipments to the tiny coastal strip in the wake of Saturday’s attack on adjacent Israeli communities that killed at least 700 Israelis with scores missing and believed held inside Gaza.
At no point does the article give any hint as to the scale of the atrocities perpetrated in southern Israel, including mass rapes and torture, of babies and young children being slaughtered in their beds and civilians burnt alive.
In several later pieces in which VICE News does reference details of October 7, it presents the massacre as something that is merely claimed by Israel — as opposed to events that were documented by the Hamas terrorists themselves.
On October 19, VICE News published a piece about “Palestinian resistance” that regurgitated the very lies that are used by the likes of Hamas to justify murdering Israelis and Jews. For example, the outlet claimed the May 2021 Hamas-Israel war was sparked by “the eviction of four families from their homes in occupied East Jerusalem,” as well as “Israeli forces storming of Al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in Islam.”
What it doesn’t mention is that four families were not evicted from “their homes” — they were evicted from homes that they did not own nor had paid rent for over the course of generations. Nor is it noted that Israeli police were forced to enter the Al-Aqsa mosque after Palestinian rioters threw explosive devices and rocks, preventing many innocent Muslims from praying at the holy site.
The timing of the piece is significant: just 12 days after the biggest massacre of Jews on a single day since the Holocaust and VICE News thinks nothing of publishing a feature that gushes about the “defiant resistance.”
Ostensibly about a Dutch-language documentary film called “The Resistance of Beita,” it gushes over the non-violent tactics employed by the residents of the Palestinian village in protest at a settlement outpost that had been built.
Among the non-violent methods Palestinians used that VICE News ignores, though, was the burning of a giant Star of David that had been combined with a swastika.
While VICE News might like to market itself as an “alternative” media source, it is not entitled to alternative “facts” — especially not when it twists the truth to spread anti-Israel propaganda.
Israel provided evidence to the media and US military documenting Islamic Jihad’s attack on the Gaza hospital. Yet, the media chose to run with Hamas’ narrative that it was an Israeli airstrike.
Those accusations will haunt Israel forever. Shame on the media. pic.twitter.com/XFcAyFi2s7
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) October 17, 2023
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