Yossi Landau is the head of operations for the southern region at Zaka, an Israeli search-and-rescue organization. Assigned to collect human remains after the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel, Landau and his fellow Zaka members riveted media outlets worldwide with the horrific atrocities they saw.

Speaking through tears at the Jerusalem Press Club shortly after the attack, Landau described finding a pregnant woman in Kibbutz Be’eri in a “big puddle of blood, face down.”

“Her stomach was butchered open,” Landau said. “The baby that was connected to the cord was stabbed.”

In Be’eri, he said, he also found a family who was tied up, tortured, and executed with a bullet to the back of the head: father, mother, and two small children around 6 or 7 years old. An eye was missing, fingers chopped off. Landau later told CNN, “The terrorists were having a ball,” with Palestinian militants devouring a holiday meal set out by the family. Landau broke down recounting the tale, as a CNN reporter comforted him.

Long after Landau’s emotional recollections were replayed, repeated, cited, and quoted in the global media, a problem emerged: No one could find any evidence that the two massacres ever took place — in Be’eri or elsewhere.

read more: https://theintercept.com/2024/02/27/zaka-october-7-israel-hamas-new-york-times/

  • WanderingVentra@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    Wow what a good story. And had no idea a bunch of these stories had been debunked. It’s too bad US news media doesn’t actually do journalism with relation to Israel.

    • agitatedpotato@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Its the fox news strategy. Lie first and loudly, use the public sentiment you created, never admit wrongdoing, and if you have to, do it very very quietly and well after you scomplished your goals.

  • Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Zaka volunteers have become ubiquitous in media reports about the attacks of October 7. They have been quoted by Reuters, CNN, New York Times, BBC, The Guardian, NBC News, Politico, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and many other outlets — with few, if any, mentions of past scandals or present controversies.

    Ex-IDF soldier without journalism expsrience wrote major false-accusation articles for NYT

    Another Ex-IDF soldier that just got hired by Wall Street Journal worked on the article that accused UNRWA of working with Hamas:

    ‘Journalist’ Carrie Keller-Lynn

    Petition to ban every single article from these propaganda outlets when they post accusations against Palestinians. They clearly do not have any journalistic integrity.