When UPI and the Hamas Press Office Are Indistinguishable

It’s not often that a mainstream media outlet publishes a piece so full of disinformation that it ridicules itself as a credible news source.

But that’s exactly what UPI did in a piece whose blatant anti-Israeli, pro-terror stance puts the American news agency on a par with the worst propaganda platforms distributing fake news against the Jewish state.

What should have been a short reportage on comments made by Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Hamas’ leader Yahya Sinwar, has been turned by UPI’s Adam Schrader into a glorifying bio of the Gaza terrorist.

It starts with the terminology.

According to UPI, Sinwar — a mass murderer and the mastermind behind the October 7 massacre in southern Israel — is a “Palestinian militia” leader who had been arrested in Israel “for supporting a free Palestine.”

We’ve seen a lot of poor journalism but this from @UPI‘s Adam Schrader is truly an embarrassment.

Let’s start with how Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was previously arrested for merely “supporting a free Palestine” rather than actual terror activities.

And there’s more. https://t.co/gKPTFOsr7i pic.twitter.com/xXpDxAzav8

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) February 19, 2024

While he may support a Palestine free of Jews, Sinwar is most definitely not a militia leader. Hamas is a proscribed terror organization that has ruled all aspects of life in Gaza for almost two decades.

It may be a militia only in Schrader’s romantic imagination, perhaps, picturing Sinwar as some rebel leader in Latin America.

But then comes the disinformation: Israel, according to UPI, was born out of Palestinian bloodshed in a land that has been colonized by “Jewish settlers.”

The militia leader was born in a refugee camp in Khan Younis, then under Egyptian rule, to parents who were forced out of their homes by Jewish settlers during the 1948 war when Israel declared its independence.

The expulsion of around 750,000 Palestinians from their homes came in a campaign known as the Nakba, in which at least a dozen women were raped by Israeli forces and 15,000 other people were killed during a series of massacres.

The “Nakba” was not a deliberate Israeli “campaign” of expulsion as UPI contends. The Palestinian refugee problem was the result of five Arab armies attacking Israel in 1948, while advising Palestinians to leave their homes temporarily until the land was, indeed, free of Jews. The displacement of Palestinians was the direct result of the war.

UPI omits that detail, while accusing Israel of rape in 1948, presumably as a way of excusing or diminishing the very real and systematic Hamas sexual violence against Israeli women on October 7.

Likewise, UPI claims that Hamas has been fighting multiple wars against Israeli “occupation” for the sake of “Palestinian sovereignty.”

Over the years, Hamas has fought multiple wars against Israeli forces occupying Gaza where it remains popular for its stances of Palestinian sovereignty. Hamas has been condemned over the years as a terrorist organization by Israel and the United States.

Did Adam Schrader forget that Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005 and fought all its wars with Hamas afterwards? Did he not read Hamas’ charter calling for a holy war against the Jews? Has he never listened to the group’s leaders urging an ethnic cleansing of Israel?

Hamas’ priority is not Palestinian sovereignty, but the destruction of the Jewish state.

Finally, Schrader outdoes himself with an appalling attempt to justify Hamas’ October 7 atrocities:

Israel has accused Sinwar of organizing the attack on October 7, which many have characterized as a terror attack. Hamas has blamed the attack on the killing of hundreds of Palestinians and arrest of many more by Israel in the months before the war broke out. Israel had also raided the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, one of Islam’s holiest sites.

Does UPI think that October 7 can be characterized as anything other than a genocidal terror attack? And why does it repeat Hamas’ excuses?

Could it be that Schrader is parroting Hamas’ very own English PR document released to the media to justify their massacre? Either way, UPI is effectively using Hamas’ own talking points.

Replete with errors, blatant anti-Israel bias, and some appalling Hamas-inspired justification for the events of October 7, it’s hard to believe a supposedly respectable news agency would publish such a piece.

We have filed a complaint to UPI with the demand that Adam Schrader’s story be reviewed and appropriate measures taken. Unfortunately, such is the state of the piece, its removal may be the only course of action that would rectify the problem.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

The post When UPI and the Hamas Press Office Are Indistinguishable first appeared on Algemeiner.com.