Mick Hartley

A long read from John Ware at Fathom on the denial of the Hamas pogrom from sections of the hard left  – 7 October and the Alt-Media: a critical examination:

For Jews everywhere – not just Israelis – the denial that Hamas committed atrocities on 7 October has a familiar historical ring. Yet it is a fact that Hamas and their supporters have insisted their ‘fighters’ did not massacre music festival goers, or rape women, or ill-treat hostages. Direct to camera, one Hamas Politburo member after another has flatly denied that the Qassam Brigades did any such things. Also direct to camera was the evidence that they did murder unarmed civilians, sometimes sadistically, their violence immortalised by Hamas’s own body cams. which they proudly broadcast for propaganda purposes.

Outright ‘Atrocity Denialism’ in the face of irrefutable facts is the latest civilisational clash between those of us struggling to maintain the norms of society – and a growing constituency who seem beyond reason. And this clash couldn’t be more fundamental because it is about basic facts and evidence, irrespective of what one may think about Israel or the way it is conducting the war in Gaza. The mainstream media has broadly given credence to Israeli claims that Hamas committed widespread sexual abuse on 7 October. But polling shows that most British Muslims don’t believe this. Just one in four accept that Hamas engaged in murder or rape. Over the last two decades, the mainstream media has been losing the trust of British Muslims. A majority now consider the BBC to be pro-Israel. Some of that vacuum is being filled by online alternative media outlets who typically challenge narratives they say the mainstream media don’t.

In 2019, the Community Security Trust showed how UK based alt-media accounts and networks of Labour-supporting Twitter accounts promoted, endorsed and spread the idea that allegations of antisemitism against Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party were fake news. Now a number of UK and US based alt-media outlets have been aggressively trying to show that allegations of widespread rape by Hamas and other armed groups are also fake. Today in Fathom, our entire issue is given over to John Ware’s investigation of the journalistic scruples – or the lack of them – that these outlets have deployed in making their case.