There you go again CNN:Your "Fact Check" Falls Short‏

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Who Broke the Ceasefire? CNN's "Fact Check" Falls Short

Much of CNN's coverage of the Gaza conflict has been extremely biased and inaccurate. Emblematic of the problems is CNN's reliance on Palestinian "independent legislator" Mustafa Barghouti, for whom no lie it too big to utter. One stark example is an interview with Barghouti that CNN has been playing in recent days, in which he claims that Israel broke the ceasefire with Hamas by launching an attack in November, and that the current fighting is therefore the fault of Israel rather than the Palestinians, who are once again blameless victims. Barghouti also charged that Israel’s supposed blockade of Gaza was a further violation of the ceasefire agreement with Hamas.

Barghouti’s charges are nonsense and easy to disprove – but apparently not easy enough for CNN to disprove.On Dec. 31, perhaps in response to complaints about the Barghouti interview, anchor Rick Sanchez made a great show of supposedly “fact checking” the charges “fairly [and] honestly.” Here’s the clip (the excerpted transcript is at the end of the alert):

CNN’s intrepid fact-checkers find a few online articles confirming that there was an Israeli attack in November, and are satisfied and look no further? Does CNN really believe such articles prove that Israel broke the ceasefire? If so, how does CNN deal with articles like this one from the Associated Press published on June 25, just after the truce started, and headlined Palestinian rockets threaten truce? The AP article in its lead paragraphs reported that:

Palestinian militants fired three homemade rockets into southern Israel yesterday, threatening to unravel a cease-fire days after it began, and Israel responded by closing vital border crossings into Gaza.

Despite what it called a "gross violation" of the truce, Israel refrained from military action and said it would send an envoy soon to Egypt to work on the next stage of a broader cease-fire agreement: a prisoner swap that would bring home an Israeli soldier held by Hamas for more than two years.

The answer is CNN deals with such articles and facts by ignoring them. Below we will present in much greater detail all the Palestinian violations of the ceasefire agreement up till November 4, all of which were also ignored by anchors Rick Sanchez and Jim Clancy and by CNN's "fact checkers."
ACTION ITEMS to / Top / In Brief / Action Item

Contact CNN and let the network know how you feel about their faulty research and biased reporting. A comment form for the program CNN Newsroom that is hosted by Rick Sanchez can be reached by clicking here.

1) Please comment politely that CNN's fact checking was false and misleading, and omitted critical information that should have been presented to CNN viewers.

2) Rather than ratifying Barghouti's false claims, CNN's journalistic obligation was to expose them for the falsehoods that they were.

3) Since Barghouti is obviously unreliable, why is CNN airing his claims and giving them credibility?

4) Please send blind copies (bcc) to letters@camera.org
IN DETAIL to / Top / In Brief / Action Item

Palestinian violations of the ceasefire agreement included dozens of rockets and mortars fired into Israel, plus sniper fire against Israeli farmers, anti-tank rockets and rifle shots fired at soldiers in Israel, and not one but two attempts to abduct Israeli soldiers and bring them into Gaza. Here are some of the details:

(Most of this data is from The Six Months of the Lull Arrangement, a detailed report by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, which CNN also apparently ignored.)

From the start of the ceasefire at 6 AM on June 19 till the incident on November 4th cited by CNN, the following attacks were launched against Israel from Gaza in direct violation of the agreement:

* 18 mortars were fired at Israel in this period, beginning on the night of June 23.
* 20 rockets were fired, beginning on June 24, when 3 rockets hit the Israeli town of Sderot.
* On July 6 farmers working in the fields of Nahal Oz were attacked by light arms fire from Gaza.
* On the night of August 15 Palestinians fired across the border at Israeli soldiers near the Karni crossing.
* On October 31 an IDF patrol spotted Palestinians planting an explosive device near the security fence in the area of the Sufa crossing. As the patrol approached the fence the Palestinians fired two anti-tank missiles.

There were two Palestinian attempts to infiltrate from Gaza into Israel apparently to abduct Israelis. Both were major violations of the ceasefire.

• The first came to light on Sept. 28, when Israeli personnel arrested Jamal Atallah Sabah Abu Duabe. The 21-year-old Rafah resident had used a tunnel to enter Egypt and from there planned to slip across the border into Israel. Investigation revealed that Abu Duabe was a member of Hamas’s Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and that he planned to lure Israeli soldiers near the border by pretending to be a drug smuggler, capture them, and then sedate them with sleeping pills in order to abduct them directly into Gaza through a preexisting tunnel. For more details click here and here.

• The second abduction plan was aborted on the night of Nov 4, thanks to a warning from Israeli Intelligence. Hamas had dug another tunnel into Israel and was apparently about to execute an abduction plan when IDF soldiers penetrated about 250 meters into Gaza to the entrance of the tunnel, hidden under a house. Inside the house were a number of armed Hamas members, who opened fire. The Israelis fired back and the house exploded – in total 6 or 7 Hamas operatives were killed and several were wounded. Among those killed were Mazen Sa’adeh, a Hamas brigade commander, and Mazen Nazimi Abbas, a commander in the Hamas special forces unit. For more details click here.

It was when Israel aborted this imminent Hamas attack that the group and other Palestinian groups in Gaza escalated their violations of the ceasefire by beginning to once again barrage Israel with rockets and mortars.

In light of these systematic and serious violations of the ceasefire by Hamas and other Palestinian groups in Gaza, it is absurd to claim that Israel broke the ceasefire in November or at any other time.

That CNN took Barghouti’s charges seriously and repeatedly aired them calls into serious question CNN’s competence as a news organization. It is also notable that while Sanchez said that Israelis denied Barghouti’s charges, he apparently did not see the need to have an actual Israeli appear to deny the charges in detail.

The Border Crossings – Open or Closed?

Barghouti also claimed that Israel violated the ceasefire agreement by allegedly refusing to open border crossings to allow food, fuel and other goods into Gaza. This charge is also false – Israel did open the crossings and allowed truckload after truckload of supplies to enter Gaza. Closures until November were short, and in direct response to Palestinian violations, some of which were detailed above.

To quote from the ITIC report on the "Lull Agreement" linked above:

On June 22, after four days of calm, Israel reopened the Karni and Sufa crossings to enable regular deliveries of consumer goods and fuel to the Gaza Strip. They were closed shortly thereafter, following the first violation of the arrangement, when rockets were fired at Sderot on June 24. However, when calm was restored, the crossings remained open for long periods of time. On August 17 the Kerem Shalom crossing was also opened for the delivery of goods, to a certain degree replacing the Sufa crossing, after repairs had been completed (the Kerem Shalom crossing was closed on April 19 when the IDF prevented a combined mass casualty attack in the region, as a result of which the crossing was almost completely demolished).

Before November 4, large quantities of food, fuel, construction material and other necessities for renewing the Gaza Strip’s economic activity were delivered through the Karni and Sufa crossings. A daily average of 80-90 trucks passed through the crossings, similar to the situation before they were closed following the April 19 attack on the Kerem Shalom crossing. Changes were made in the types of good which could be delivered, permitting the entry of iron, cement and other vital raw materials into the Gaza Strip.

... Israel, before November 4, refrained from initiating action in the Gaza Strip but responded to rocket and mortar shell attacks by closing the crossings for short periods of time (hours to days). After November 4 the crossings were closed for long periods in response to the continued attacks against Israel. (Rearranged from p 11- 12)

Day to day details of the supplies delivered to Gaza and the numbers of trucks involved have been published by the Israeli Foreign Ministry and are available here. The figures confirm that the passages were indeed open and busy.
CNN conveyed uncritically – multiple times – Mustafa Barghouti’s charge that Israel violated the cease fire by not opening the crossings. Unfortunately this charge, like his charge that it was Israel that violated the ceasefire, is entirely bogus.


Appendix: Excerpted Transcript

December 31, 2008 Wednesday

HEADLINE: Israelis and Palestinians Suffer Under Bombardments

RICK SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: This is what is making news right now. As attacks continue, who really started it?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Israel broke the ceasefire.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: But Israelis say not true. We will fact check it fairly, honestly.

And hello again, everybody. I'm Rick Sanchez, and here we are. Happy almost new year from the world headquarters of CNN. A lot of stories to get to, but obviously, the big story that we're going to be talking about today is still what's going on right now because things seem to be amping up there in Gaza with the Palestinians and the Israelis.

Let me take you through the scene as I set things up for you. While I do this, I want to show you a series of videos that pretty much tell the story of what's going on today. Let me begin with this. That 48-hour ceasefire that we told you about yesterday, that was being considered by the cabinet -- no go. Essentially, they have rejected it.

Now, I want to show you a series of videos. This is an IDF attack. This is in Gaza. Go ahead and go to that, if you got it, Dan (ph) -- 390 people dead so far. The last number we got -- and we're checking this just before going on the air -- 1,600 people so far have been wounded. This attack you're looking at right now is in Gaza. It was at a refugee camp that's in the south. When I say refugee camp, it is really more of a city than a refugee camp.

Let's go to the tanks now. This is our count (ph) of tanks that we're been showing you. They're positioned and primed. They're right there on the border. We understand, at least according to one interview that's been done with an Israeli commander who would not give his name, that they are still preparing to move forward with a ground assault. Maybe the word I should use is "possible" ground assault, as we look at these pictures.

I've also learned that the weather will be more favorable tomorrow than it was today. Is that a possibility, that it will lead them to do something? We don't know. We obviously will be checking into that throughout this newscast.

Take a look at this, though. This is what Israel says is the reason that they're doing what they're doing, these series of tunnels. There's about 200 of them. And there you see what is tunnels. You notice how the explosions are in a line. These are tunnels that are being taken out. This is military video from the IDF, the Israeli Defense Force. And you can see there a tunnel that's been taken out -- 200 of them. There are some in Egypt, and then are some, of course, that connect Gaza with the rest of Israel. So that's an important thing to consider, as well, as we move forward in this story.

Let's go Jim Clancy. He's joining us now from CNN International. Is the tunnel enough of a reason for Israel to use to justify what's going on right now in Gaza?

JIM CLANCY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, certainly, the tunnels are the source of a lot of the weaponry. You know, what we've seen over the course of the last 48 hours is, suddenly, we've got Katyusha rockets being fired. Where did those come from? Those aren't homemade rockets in your garage.

SANCHEZ: So what you're saying is those -- that type of weaponry may be coming in from the tunnels through Egypt, which is what the Israelis have been saying.

CLANCY: Yes. Well, there seems to be no doubt about it. Fuel has been coming in there. There was a massive explosion that they showed the video of, Rick. So it's known this is part of the whole system that Hamas is using to bring in what it needs to either manufacturer those missiles, or as we've seen, just bring them in there outright.

SANCHEZ: Although Palestinians will say those tunnels are used to bring in humanitarian goods to help the people in Gaza.

CLANCY: It's a whole business. It's a whole business, Rick. I mean, that is...

SANCHEZ: Is it both?

CLANCY: Yes. It's how -- every tunnel is probably used in more than one way. One tunnel we know was used exclusively for fuel, to bring fuel into the Gaza strip. They have no other way of getting it. Legitimate businesses say, We can't even work -- we can't even work anymore because there's so much on the black economy that's coming underground.

SANCHEZ: but this is important, and this something I want to break down for the viewers. Yesterday, you and I were sitting here, and we had a conversation with Mustafa Barghuti, who's an independent legislator, Palestinian legislator.

CLANCY: Right.

SANCHEZ: And he said that most news organizations have ignored the possibility that the people who actually broke the ceasefire was not the Palestinians, not Hamas in Gaza. What he said -- in fact, let -- I think we've got it. Dan, play this, and then we'll give you some more information on it. Let's go ahead and go to that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI, PALESTINIAN LEGISLATOR: The world press community or media community is overwhelmed with the Israeli narrative, which is incorrect. The Israeli spokesperson have been spreading lies all over. The reality and the truth is that the side that broke this truce and this ceasefire was Israel. Two months before it ended, Israel started attacking Rafah, started attacking Hanunis (ph), and never lifted the blockade on Gaza. Gaza remains without fuel, without electricity, with bread, without medications, without any medical equipment for people who are dying in Gaza -- 262 people died, 6 people because of no access to medical care. So Israel broke the ceasefire.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: And you know what we did? I've checked with some of the folks here at our international desk, and I went to them and asked, What was he talking about, and do we have any information on that? Which they confirmed, two months ago -- this is back in November -- there was an attack. It was an Israeli raid that took out six people.

Now, let me refer you -- it's not just us. We've checked in other periodicals. Johnny (ph), go over my shoulder, if you can. Here we go. "The six-month ceasefire started coming apart at the beginning of November after Israeli commandos killed a team of Hamas fighters during a raid on a tunnel they suspected was being dug for kidnapping of Israeli soldiers. That raid set off more Palestinian rocketing." That's "U.S. News and World Report."

I got another one for you, I believe, here. OK, this is "The Guardian" -- questionable, but nonetheless. "A four- month ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza was in jeopardy today" -- this was actually reported when it happened -- "after Israeli troops killed six gunmen in a raid in the territory." That's important to report.

And here we go, as well, from the Economist.com, and the point of contention here is this one. Johnny, one more. "The last straw came in November, when Israelis killed six gunmen it said were digging tunnels to launch a raid onto Israel, spurring Hamas to respond with a barrage of rockets."

So the question as to who started this -- and we've been hearing that the Israelis say they had to do this because, suddenly, the ceasefire had been broken in Gaza by the Hamas and the Palestinians. Is this now a little more in question?

CLANCY: You know, that is absolutely true. But just as true is the fact that if Israel hadn't started shooting first in this case -- and Israel said, We had security reasons, imminent security reasons. There was no real deal here between Hamas and Israel. Israel still reserved the right to go in to do any attack where there was a primary security interest there. And they said, Our soldiers were going to be kidnapped. We had to do it.

SANCHEZ: But you know, I guess what it is -- Americans, we like our order. We want things delineated for us. We like to see a quid pro quo. They're saying this happened. Are they right? And they're saying this happened. Are they right? It's almost like we're left -- when you talk about the Middle East, you're left with such subtleties that sometimes everything is a vagary.