Rising is a popular online news program produced by The Hill, which features hosts and commentators from across the political spectrum discussing current events at home and around the world.
Since Hamas’ brutal invasion of Israel on October 7 and the subsequent Israeli war against the Gaza-based terrorist organization, the Middle East has been a consistent topic of discussion on Rising, with some defending the Jewish State and others opposing its military activities.
One of the most vocal anti-Israel commentators on Rising over the past few months has been Jessica Burbank, one of the program’s co-hosts.
In various segments, Burbank has spread a litany of falsehoods and misrepresentations of Israel, the IDF, and Hamas that are based on unfounded statistics, misleading statements, and absurd analyses.
Jessica Burbank’s False Statistics, Moral Relativism & Misleading Analysis
In a recent Rising piece on a New York Times article that chronicled the use of sexual violence by Hamas during the October 7 attack, Jessica Burbank quipped that the report “feels like intentional propaganda” as The Times amplifies these claims against Hamas but doesn’t do the same for “very well-documented accounts of sexual abuse and violence by Israelis on Palestinians.”
According to Burbank, “1 in 10 women in Gaza have experienced some kind of abuse from Israeli soldiers. And it’s even higher in younger age women, where it’s as high as 23 percent [who] have experienced sexual abuse from Israeli soldiers in the occupied territory.”
While Burbank presents these statistics as established fact, a Google search for the source of these numbers was unable to turn up any reference to these specific claims at all.
What did turn up were several articles on the rarity of sexual violence between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian women.
This is not the only time that Jessica Burbank has represented unfounded statistics as fact.
Later in that same segment, she claimed that “43 babies died in the [Al Shifa Hospital] NICU when Israeli forces decided to raid and attack that hospital.”
This seems to be based on mid-November reports that 39 premature babies were at risk as the IDF prepared to enter Shifa hospital in order to rout the Hamas fighters who were using it as a base. However, only days later, it was announced that 31 of these babies had successfully been moved from Gaza City to a safe hospital in the southern city of Rafah, with 12 being further moved to Egypt for treatment.
Not only did the vast majority of these babies not die, as Burbank claims, but the precise number of 43 seems to be entirely made up.
In another segment, Jessica Burbank repeatedly made the outlandish claim that Israel killed “31,000 civilians” during the Great March of Return in 2018. At one point, she even referred to those partaking in the March as “peaceful protesters who were protesting their land being stolen by Israel.”
In fact, according to the UN’s high estimate, between March 2018 and April 2019, 279 Palestinians had been killed. And, despite Burbank’s presentation of these Palestinians as “peaceful protesters,” it is believed that between 50% to 80% of those killed were members of Hamas or another Gaza-based terror organization.
However, it’s not surprising that Burbank might consider a Hamas member to be a “peaceful protester.”
After all, in her analysis, Burbank is dismissive of Hamas’ genocidal intent, preferring to view Israel and the IDF as the much greater enemy of peace in the region.
In one segment, Burbank put it as bluntly as saying that “The current Israeli government is a terrorist organization. If you want to call Hamas a terrorist organization, the Israeli government is that times 10.” Further in the piece, she doubled down by claiming that “The IDF is far worse as a terrorist organization [than Hamas].”
In another segment, Burbank echoed former US President Jimmy Carter’s false assertion from 2015 that Hamas leaders were more in favor of peace than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
It should be clear to any viewer that any opinion by Jessica Burbank on the issue of Hamas should be taken with heaps of salt, as she is dismissive of the brutality of Hamas’ terrorism and rationalizes the October 7 atrocities.
In reference to October 7, Burbank remarked, “Yes, they have killed 1,400 innocent people. Violence is always bad. But we have to understand it in the context of the Israeli government committing acts of terrorism.”
In another piece, she expanded on this, claiming that “What we have now is the culmination of many years of an apartheid state, of an occupation, and of peace not being present.”
Alongside her rationalization of Hamas’ terrorist activities, she has also shamelessly diminished the weight of this terrorism, claiming that, in contrast to Hamas, Israel is holding the “entire population of Gaza hostage.” To put it in Burbank’s cruelly simplistic words, “You want to talk about the 50 hostages that Hamas took versus the 1.1 million people living in Gaza right now…”
Burbank’s general understanding of Hamas and Israel seems to be so flawed that she once claimed that “Hamas doesn’t even operate” in the West Bank, something that any amateur analyst of the region could tell you is factually incorrect.
🚨 #Hamas officially announces 7 of its terrorist operatives have been eliminated in Jenin in the West Bank
But the trolls keep saying there is no #Hamas in the West Bank 🤡#HamasisISIS pic.twitter.com/NzZBtBacVe
— Zechariah Shar'abi | זכריה | زكريا (@ZechariahSharab) January 7, 2024
Hamas is not the only organization whose violence Jessica Burbank prefers to whitewash.
Regarding harassment of international shipping in the Red Sea by the Yemen-based Houthi movement, Burbank remarked, “When I think about what the rebels are doing, I mean, Israel has the support of the US military. You know, Palestine does not. And so, Yemen seems to be one of the only countries that is actually supporting Palestine on this side of the war.”
She then went on to compare the Houthis to anti-Israel protesters who attempted to block Israel-bound ships in US docks, finishing with “I can see anyone interested in peace wanting to prevent weapons from getting in the hands of the people who are using them the most.”
The Iranian-backed Houthis declared war on Israel after October 7, and while they have been firing missiles and sending UAVs toward Israel, that's not what's garnering the most attention. They're now messing with global supply chains, and no one is happy. pic.twitter.com/qJZCcug6Yv
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) December 27, 2023
Jessica Burbank’s Social Media Presence
Aside from her soapbox on Rising, Jessica Burbank also spreads her misinformation and derogatory view of the Jewish state on social media.
Two days after the October 7 attack, Burbank tweeted “US propaganda machine doing a hell of a job convincing people it’s justified to condemn Russian expansion and support Ukrainian resistance while simultaneously supporting Israeli expansion and condemning Palestinian resistance,” falsely comparing Israel to Russia.
A few weeks later, she tweeted that the sole purpose of putting up posters of Israeli hostages around the world is for “drama” and to record people tearing them down.
For Jessica Burbank, it is unreasonable to assume that the posters are for awareness purposes, and there must be some nefarious reason behind it.
Oh.. posters for the hostages taken by Hamas?
They think a London pedestrian will walk by and say “oh! I know which tunnel the Hamas fighter took that guy to, spotted him yesterday!”
Use ur fuckin noggin bro. They put the them up for drama. To make videos like this. https://t.co/N6XgnS9qoX
— Jessica (Ka) Burbank (@JessicaLBurbank) October 25, 2023
Soon after that tweet, Burbank uncritically shared a now-discredited piece by the Middle East Eye that claimed that Israel was going to “flood Hamas tunnels with nerve gas under US navy supervision.”
A week later, she tweeted that Israel was committing a “genocide” in Gaza and that she was “sick of hearing ‘Israel has a right to defend itself’ while not affording that same moral permission to Palestinians,” grossly equating a state army with an internationally-recognized terrorist organization.
I’m sick of hearing “Israel has a right to defend itself” while not affording that same moral permission to Palestinians. Thousands of people dying and leaders call for a pause. Not an end. A pause in a genocide. This statement is not brave nor just. It’s sad. And it’s complicit. https://t.co/wp0OUBTGGO
— Jessica (Ka) Burbank (@JessicaLBurbank) November 4, 2023
In late December, Burbank also retweeted a post which spread the unsubstantiated claim that Israel was engaging in organ harvesting of Palestinians in Gaza.
On TikTok and in her substack, Jessica Burbank has also perpetuated a conspiracy theory tying the 1956 Suez War (which Israel fought in order to erase the threat of Egyptian-backed Palestinian terrorists crossing over and killing Israeli civilians – a fact that Burbank ignores) and the current Gaza conflict to a 1960s US plan to build a canal through Israel, connecting the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.
As Fathom Journal has pointed out, the plan was rejected in the 1960s and this notion of Israel acting on behalf of a 60-odd-year US imperialist scheme has sprung up recently as just another anti-Israel conspiracy. This has not stopped Burbank from spreading it as fact online.
Related Reading: What The Hill? Guest Pundit Given Free Pass To Rant ‘Pro-Israel Media Bias’ in Outrageous Interview
There is nothing wrong with a news program sharing multiple points of view on a topic as contentious as the current war between Israel and Hamas.
However, by providing a platform to Burbank, The Hill is legitimizing the spread of her disinformation, which is propped up by blatantly false statistics and misleading analysis.
As her popularity on Rising grows and she becomes more influential, Burbank’s alternative view of reality becomes all the more dangerous.
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