While the dust of the recent Israel-Hamas conflict has settled, the media war against the Jewish state continues. Unsurprisingly, the narrative pushed by major news organizations has been that Israel is at fault for taking action in defense of its citizens. At the same time, terror groups in the Gaza Strip are exonerated of any guilt. Some outlets have even gone as far as to blame Israel for killing a goldfish.
Now, the newest libel: Israel being accused of intentionally bombing bookstores.
On June 1, the Los Angeles Times published “Bookshop, Gaza cultural icon, destroyed in Israel-Hamas war.” The report from Gaza, written by special correspondent Hana Salah, blasts the Jewish state for launching an airstrike on the Gaza City building that housed the Samir Mansour Bookstore. The LA Times featured the story on its front page that same day. The one-sided report, however, fails to mention what kind of books were sold by Mansour.
An investigation by HonestReporting has found that the store carried numerous controversial novels.
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First, some background. According to the Israeli army, Hamas used the six-story building for intelligence gathering. It also asserts that the terrorist group manufactured weapons above Mansour’s store. While the IDF did not substantiate these claims, it’s an indisputable fact that Hamas and other terror groups embed themselves among the civilian population. On the day that the bookshop was leveled, Gaza-based terrorist groups fired 335 rockets at Israeli population centers. Graphics shared by the IDF show that many of these projectiles were fired from populated areas inside Gaza City.
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The LA Times story, however, insinuates that Israel deliberately targeted Samir Mansour’s business. “The occupation wants to send the message that ‘even your books, even the Palestinian narrative, we will destroy,'” the newspaper quotes a Palestinian saying. While deciding to include the accusation, the LA Times failed to exercise basic journalistic due diligence by researching the veracity of such anti-Israel claims.
To the newspaper’s credit, it did ask Samir Mansour why Israel would target his store. In Samir Mansour’s own words: “I have nothing to do with politics. I’m careful that the books I get have nothing to do with politics. So why should it be destroyed? This is what I don’t know.”
However, Hana Salah failed to inform readers that Mansour’s statement was a blatant falsehood.
The well-informed reader might notice that the claim that Mansour’s store didn’t sell any political books actually gets debunked in the same article, albeit unintentionally:
Mansour stepped around the edge of the wreckage, fishing out the tattered remains of books — […] a few paperback anthologies by Palestinian poet Ghassan Kanafani.” [emphasis added]
The LA Times identifies Ghassan Kanafani as a “Palestinian poet.” While Kanafani might’ve been an excellent writer, the newspaper concealed the dark side of his resume. Kanafani for years served as a leading member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror group, eventually becoming its spokesperson. Photo evidence links Kanafani to the May 1972 Lod Airport massacre, in which terrorists recruited by the PFLP murdered 26 people. The terrorist organization’s mouthpiece was assassinated by Israel’s Mossad two months later.
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Furthermore, a quick scan of the bookshop’s inventory reveals that Kanafani’s Returning to Haifa wasn’t the only controversial text in Samir Mansour’s catalog. In addition to illustrated editions of Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and books by Dan Brown, Samir Mansour sold books written by Palestinian terrorists, as well as literature that glorifies violence against the Jewish state.
Amongst others, the bookstore sold I Have Found My Answers by Bassel al-Araj, known as “the educated martyr” by Palestinians. Both the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel have accused Al-Araj of being part of a terrorist cell that plotted attacks on Israelis. The PA arrested Al-Araj in 2016 for his terror activities. Some six months after his release, he died in a shootout with Israeli security forces.
Samir Mansour’s shop also promoted novels like The Promise of the Hereafter, written by the Hamas-affiliated author A’aed Halabi. The violence-inciting book – dedicated to “martyrs” like Muhannad Halabi, whose deadly terror attack set off the Knife Intifada of 2015-2016 – describes the “upcoming liberation of Palestine.” During the recent conflict between Hamas and Israel, A’aed Halabi called on his fans to join the “holy war” by becoming part of the “Mujahideen” [Jihad fighters]. He also regularly writes about the “struggle with the Jews.”
The Gaza bookstore carried more titles from Palestinian authors venerating terrorism, like Nardeen Abu Nabaa’s Damascus Gate. This is hardly surprising: The General Union of Palestinian Writers, which presented Samir Mansour with an award in March, views literature as a tool in the war against the Jewish state. Case in point: Its logo features a rifle and a quill, placed atop a map that presents all of Israel as “Palestine.”
A simple search on Samir Mansour’s Facebook page revealed all of this. So why did the LA Times give the Gazan bookseller a podium to spread lies? It seems that the newspaper is again all too keen to blame Israel for the Palestinians’ predicament, as the piece also makes demonstrably false claims about the joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip:
He eventually built a roster of more than 100 authors. But he also spent much of his time on the road, collecting books in Arabic and English that — with Gaza subject to a crushing blockade by Israel and Egypt since 2007 — you couldn’t find anywhere else.” [emphasis added]
In reality, books are not found anywhere on Israel’s list of banned “dual-use” items (materials that can be made into weapons) and are therefore allowed into the Hamas-controlled enclave. This is not the first time HonestReporting has caught the LA Times misinforming their readership about the Jewish state. In February, the newspaper blamed Jerusalem for a decision by Hamas to severely curtail women’s rights in the Gaza Strip.
HonestReporting calls on the LA Times to revise its story by including all facts surrounding the airstrike on the Samir Mansour Bookstore. We encourage our subscribers to contact the newspaper to request that the article be amended.
