“Anyone killed or martyred is to be called a civilian from Gaza or Palestine, before we talk about his status in jihad or his military rank. Don’t forget to always add ‘innocent civilian’ or ‘innocent citizen’ in your description of those killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza.” And the mainstream media eagerly plays along with their cynical game.
“Hamas Interior Ministry To Social Media Activists: Always Call The Dead ‘Innocent Civilians’; Don’t Post Photos Of Rockets Being Fired From Civilian Population Centers,” MEMRI, July 17, 2014:
In light of the recent round of fighting in Gaza, the Hamas interior ministry has issued guidelines to Gaza Strip social media users for reporting events and discussing them with outsiders.
The ministry’s guidelines, which it is calling the “Be Aware – Social Media Activist Awareness Campaign,” were issued via an instructional video posted on its official website and via posters published on its Twitter and Facebook pages. Both the video and the posters were also posted on the ministry’s social media accounts and forums.[1]
The guidelines are aimed at ensuring preservation of the line of Hamas and other Palestinian organizations; preventing the leaking of information that would be of military value to Israel; bolstering Hamas’s propaganda efforts outside the Gaza Strip, in both the Arab world and the West; and preventing damage to Hamas’s image. Hamas particularly seeks to cement the perceptions that its actions are a response to Israeli aggression and that all Gaza casualties are “innocent civilians,” and to ensure that there is no evidence of rockets being fired from Gaza population centers.
The Hamas interior ministry website included the following text along with its instructional video: “The Information Department of the Ministry of the Interior and National Security has instructed activists on social media websites, particularly Facebook, to correct some of the commonly used terms as they cover the aggression taking place in the Gaza Strip. The following Information Department video calls on all activists to use the proper terminology, in order to play their part in strengthening the home front and in properly conveying information worldwide.”[2]
Following are excerpts from the guidelines:
“Anyone killed or martyred is to be called a civilian from Gaza or Palestine, before we talk about his status in jihad or his military rank. Don’t forget to always add ‘innocent civilian’ or ‘innocent citizen’ in your description of those killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza.
“Begin [your reports of] news of resistance actions with the phrase ‘In response to the cruel Israeli attack,’ and conclude with the phrase ‘This many people have been martyred since Israel launched its aggression against Gaza.’ Be sure to always perpetuate the principle of ‘the role of the occupation is attack, and we in Palestine are fulfilling [the role of] the reaction.’
“Beware of spreading rumors from Israeli spokesmen, particularly those that harm the home front. Be wary regarding accepting the occupation’s version [of events]. You must always cast doubts on this [version], disprove it, and treat it as false.
“Avoid publishing pictures of rockets fired into Israel from [Gaza] city centers. This [would] provide a pretext for attacking residential areas in the Gaza Strip. Do not publish or share photos or video clips showing rocket launching sites or the movement of resistance [forces] in Gaza.
“To the administrators of news pages on Facebook: Do not publish close-ups of masked men with heavy weapons, so that your page will not be shut down [by Facebook] on the claim that you are inciting violence. In your coverage, be sure that you say: ‘The locally manufactured shells fired by the resistance are a natural response to the Israeli occupation that deliberately fires rockets against civilians in the West Bank and Gaza’…”
Additionally, the interior ministry prepared a series of suggestions specifically for Palestinian activists who speak to Westerners via social media. The ministry emphasizes that conversations with them should be conducted differently from conversations with other Arabs. It stated:
“When speaking to the West, you must use political, rational, and persuasive discourse, and avoid emotional discourse aimed at begging for sympathy. There are elements with a conscience in the world; you must maintain contact with them and activate them for the benefit of Palestine. Their role is to shame the occupation and expose its violations.
“Avoid entering into a political argument with a Westerner aimed at convincing him that the Holocaust is a lie and deceit; instead, equate it with Israel’s crimes against Palestinian civilians.
“The narrative of life vs. the narrative of blood: [When speaking] to an Arab friend, start with the number of martyrs. [But when speaking] to a Western friend, start with the number of wounded and dead. Be sure to humanize the Palestinian suffering. Try to paint a picture of the suffering of the civilians in Gaza and the West Bank during the occupation’s operations and its bombings of cities and villages.
“Do not publish photos of military commanders. Do not mention their names in public, and do not praise their achievements in conversations with foreign friends!”Endnotes:
[1] Facebook.com/moigovps, July 9, 2014.
[2] Moi.gov.ps, July 11, 2014. The video was also uploaded to the ministry’s YouTube channel, Youtube.com/channel/UCR_ij9aO3tu4kdAV4mdEYPg.
tpellow says
Much of West’s MSM has been leading the political way on this for years, and still is.
duh_swami says
Apparently the ground invasion has started. Like Pop-eye said, ‘enough is enough, and enough is too much’…
Rob says
A total ‘GOTCHA’ moment from MEMRI.
Well done!!
Jovial Joe says
Joseph Goebbels got nothing on these guys.
Mirren10 says
“Anyone killed or martyred is to be called a civilian from Gaza or Palestine, before we talk about his status in jihad or his military rank. Don’t forget to always add ‘innocent civilian’ or ‘innocent citizen’ in your description of those killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza.”
Nothing surprising about this.
** And the mainstream media eagerly plays along with their cynical game**
Yes. That’s what is utterly despicable about this. But it’s a looong time since I expected the msm to tell the truth about **anything**.
SteveInSC says
I once heard a PA official, in a discussion with a Western journalist, say that all Palestinians were civilians because the PA had no military. So, even though some PA people were in fact shooting at Israelis, they were not soldiers. This is the twisted logic they employ. In turn they rationalized their right to kill Israeli civilians by saying that the Israelis were killing PA civilians as defined above.
I think it’s interesting to note that when the IDF went into Lebanon in 2006 to stop Hezbollah from launching rockets into northern Israel, that bunch used the same rules. With over 30,000 Israeli troops massed on the border, providing a tempting target, the Hezbollah fighters launched rockets over the massed troops into the Israeli towns beyond. These targets had no military value at all. In an actual military engagement, you’d launch your attacks on the troops massing to attack you. These idiots reveal themselves to be not freedom fighters as they claim, but only terrorists with no honor. Israel should be allowed to – even encouraged to – wipe them out.
Mortimer says
Disinformation.
gts58 says
Hamas and other Islamic/Muslim death cults are a “cancer within the world community” – they offer nothing but death to the Infidel and or enslavement of non-Muslims! In the human body, you cut out the cancer to stop it from spreading further within the body. This is what the world community must do – cut and kill this cancer before it can spread any further!
Uncle Vladdi says
Seems to be working out fine for Hamas here in Canada, too – just this evening (18 July, 2014) on the CBC’s “As It Happens” radio show, some tax-paid tool was blathering on about how a “palestinian civilian pulled his firearm and attacked an Israeli tank crew.”
Excuse me, Mr. Unbiased Canadian-Government Employed, Tax-Paid CBC Reporter guy, but people with sidearms who attack military targets in war zones are called “COMBATANTS,” not “civilians!”
;-(
The enemedia has been pulling this carefully-crafted imprecision bullshit (aka lying FRAUD) on us for years now, at least since Gaddhafi had to defend his own sovereign national government from “civilians” (heavily-armed juhadi rebels) and likewise more recently Syria’s Assad doing the same thing:
OF COURSE the treasonous people who rebel against (or simply invade, if they weren’t citizens of that country) any given government are not, by definition, part of those governments, so in that way they are technically “civilians” especially if they aren’t part of a recognized , uniform-wearing other country’s paid army, but that doesn’t stop them from being TERRORISTS (criminal gangster extortionists) either!
Why the double standards?
Do they whine when the Mafia is taken down in Sicily, about “the poor civilians!”?
Uncle Vladdi says
ALL criminal lies and fraud seeks to reverse who-started-it cause-and-effect, in order to blame the victims to pretend to justify the criminal’s as defensive.
Edward Kirkhope says
The Palestinians and Israelis indoctrinate their children to hate. The adults are infantile and bicker about Hamas ID this Israel did that – I am tired of their childishness.
There will never be peace throughout the Middle East because religion and disputes over ‘holy sites’ allows absolutely no give on either side. We should leave them to it and if they want to martyr themselves then let them do so. For two thousand years they have fought and bizarrely Tony Blair is appointed to lead the ‘Peace Quartet’ – what an inappropriate person to bring people together to achieve peace.
Mirren10 says
”The Palestinians and Israelis indoctrinate their children to hate.”
What utter, pernicious, wicked rubbish. You’re an idiot. It is the ‘palestinians’ who indoctrinate their children to hate Jews, not the other way about.
http://www.wildolive.co.uk/indoctrination.htm
I **challenge** you to find anything similar, anywhere, showing Israelis doing the same.
Put up or shut up, your witless moral equivalence attempts make me sick to my stomach.
As for your stupid, uninformed crap about;
”There will never be peace throughout the Middle East because religion and disputes over ‘holy sites’ allows absolutely no give on either side.”
Are you **really** this idiotic ? Israel has been targeted by mohammedans since 1948, simply because they are **Jews**. No other reason, whatever lying propagandists say, and spoon into the mouths of moral cretins like you.
Hamas murdered 3 young Israelis, for no reason, except they were **Jews**. Forgot that, did you ? Hamas has consistently, since Israel withdrew from Gaza, in the interests of **peace**, and because Israel was pressured into it by moral imbeciles similar to yourself, attacked Israel through rocket fire, suicide bombing attacks, and the murder of people like the Fogel family.
Is this done because of ‘religion and holy sites’ ? No, because the Israelis are **Jews**, and as such, have been the target of vicious mohammedan hatred since mohammed fabricated islam in order to sacralise his vicious evil.
Actually, yes, you’re right up to a point; it is the ‘religion’ of islam that mandates hatred of the Jews, and hopes and works for their genocide.
But it’s not only the Jews; it is hatred for Christians, and **everyone** who refuses to submit to the foul cult of islam.
”First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people”. You think **you** will somehow be exempt ?
Read the koran. Read Islam 101, and Blogging the Koran, at the top of this website, before you come blundering in here, with your **witless** comment.
BKMart says
There is not a more craven cowardly inhuman entity on the Earth than a Muslim terrorist…