Mick Hartley

Natasha Hausdorff was interviewed by Piers Morgan earlier this week, and it didn't go well. Morgan interrupted her some sixty times, and called her views despicable. This was in marked contrast to interviews he had with the likes of the General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, Mustafa Barghouti, who referred to the hostages being held in Gaza as prisoners, and claimed they were all soldiers. This was met with little or no pushback.

Could he perhaps in any way be biased?

Hausdorff in the Spectator – Why can’t Piers Morgan handle the truth about Israel?

Being interrupted and harangued, or even having my volume turned down or line cut, is not a new experience for me in “interviews”. It has always been a clear indication that the individuals involved in this unprofessional conduct were out of their depth and at a loss as to how to engage with the evidence I had presented. Nor, indeed, am I the only one experiencing such treatment. Any individual who does not subscribe to the virulently anti-Israel agenda, and who is asked to comment on broadcast media, will have experienced similar playground antics. It is demonstrative of a catastrophic failure by the media to do its job and an abject absence of journalistic integrity.

The pathetic display this week by Piers Morgan demonstrates that he is a significant part of the problem of disinformation about this conflict. Morgan should be well aware that there have been repeated stories emerging from Gaza which have subsequently been debunked only after they spread around the world. The predictable result has been the poisoning of many minds against Israel, on the basis of fabrications and blood libels. My simple entreaty was that the matter should not be prejudged, especially where fake AI generated images had been deployed to support it. Cue frenzied outrage and bile from Morgan.

Defence of fake images in pursuit of a “good story” is, of course, old ground for Morgan. He was dismissed from his role as editor of the Daily Mirror in 2004, following the publication of photographs that purportedly showed British soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib. The images were later determined to be staged and not taken in Iraq. Morgan stood by their publication and refused to issue an apology on the basis there was no firm evidence that they were fake, though the newspaper did, acknowledging that it had been the victim of a “calculated and malicious hoax” and expressing deep regret for the reputational damage caused to the British Army. Morgan’s defence of his decision to publish those fake pictures stemmed from his opposition to the Iraq war in a disgraceful example of “the ends justify the means”.

Did he learn anything from that shameful incident? The way I was treated on Uncensored suggests not. At least when Morgan was in the employ of a national newspaper, he could be held accountable. But this no longer appears to be the case. He is now free to shout down his guests without consequence.

The problem doesn’t stop with Morgan. The unfair way in which Israel is presented in the Western media, and the refusal to treat Hamas’s claims with scepticism, misleads the public. It increases the threat of violence to Jews around the world, but also, crucially, props up and encourages Hamas, thereby prolonging the war and the suffering of Israelis and Palestinians alike.