YouTube channel The Infographics Show has 13.3 million subscribers with a further 6 million on Facebook and 1.7 million on TikTok, where it publishes “animated motion infographic videos, made in a fun and entertaining way.” Clearly, this channel has an enormous reach.
According to The Infographics Show, “Facts are fun, but most are presented in boring and badly edited videos.” Unfortunately, the channel showed little regard for the facts — fun or otherwise — in an August 15 video about the remarkable 1976 Israeli operation to rescue Israeli and Jewish hostages from Entebbe, Uganda, which has been edited to take a deliberate jab at Israel.
Throughout the professionally produced animation, Israeli characters appear not against a backdrop of their national flag but that of the Palestinians.
Here (4:56), a released hostage is questioned by Israeli authorities. But what’s that flag doing in the background?
On the left is a representative of the terrorists. In the middle is Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. On the right is a representative of the Israeli government — again, against the background of a Palestinian flag (5:55).
Further reading: Operation Entebbe: The Rescue Mission that Captivated the World
Even more bizarrely, there is no consistency when it comes to erasing the Israeli flag in the video. Here, for example (6:27), the Israeli government is represented with the correct flag.
But only seconds later (7:13), the narrator discusses the possibility of a crisis between Uganda and Israel. Note the Palestinian flag.
Other examples of Palestinian flags used to represent Israelis appear at 8:30, 9:26, 9:46, 10:05, 11:09, 12:50, and 27:15.
Even Israel’s elite Sayeret Matkal commandos triumphantly appear (15:38) surrounded by Palestinian flags.
The switching of the Israeli flag for a Palestinian one is not simply wrong but is an insult considering its misuse in the depiction of a heroic Israeli military operation. Ironically, the Palestinian flag would more suitably be representative of the very terrorists who hijacked Air France Flight 139 and cost the lives of four hostages and Israeli commando Yonatan Netanyahu (brother of the current Israeli prime minister).
UPDATE – August 23
To their credit, a representative of The Infographics Show responded swiftly to HonestReporting’s complaint, thanking us for bringing the error to their attention:
It is disappointing to me that such a big mistake failed our QC process and I have ordered a review of what went wrong during the production. The video has been made private until we are able to fix the issues and will be asking YouTube to replace it with a fixed version.
Please know there was no deliberate or politically motivated bias here. I am just as horrified to learn about the error we made as you must have been.
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