Between Sunday and Monday, the major broadcast networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC used their flagship morning and evening newscasts to start a new week of anti-Israel smears and siding with Hamas terrorists as Tuesday marks one month since the latter’s animalistic barbarism murdered at least 1,400 innocents and resulted in over 200 hostages.
This time, the networks argued the world’s “recoiling in horror” at Israel’s ‘search and destroy mission” that’s “shattering...lives” in Gaza and Israel remaining still “not” being in a “mood to compromise” with Hamas.
CBS foreign correspondent Debora Patta deserved a stipend from Hamas after her lead-off report on Monday’s CBS Mornings. From the beginning, she painted Israel as the aggressor, “rebuff[ing] calls for a ceasefire in Gaza” “despite...mounting pressure.”
Hamas couldn’t have drawn it up any better as she declared the world’s “recoiling in horror” at Israel’s behavior (as opposed to continued horror over Hamas’s October 7 terror attack): “Night after night, the bombs rain down with the Israel Defense Forces saying they have now surrounded Gaza City. But around the world, people are recoiling in horror at the staggering civilian death toll with calls for a ceasefire growing louder.”
“There is growing anger against the United States here in Ramallah, in the West Bank, with crowds chanting ‘Blinken, you’ve got blood on your hands.’ The United Nations says 1.5 million Palestinians have been internally displaced,” she added.
A few sob quotes later, she hyped another anti-Israel international organization: “[T]he World Health Organization says over a third of Gaza’s 35 hospitals are not functioning, and those still in service report dire fuel shortages.”
NBC’s Today also had plenty of smearing to do. Chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel bemoaned Israel being on “a search and destroy mission,” and painted the decision as Israel knowingly bombing civilians since “Gazans don’t trust Israeli promises of a safe passage,” “southern Gaza isn’t safe either,” and Israel will never allow them back into Gaza after the war.
Touting the “anger in the region...growing against the United States,” Engel slammed Israel as being “in mood to compromise” with Hamas and instead heading down the path of committing “many angry mistakes” like the U.S. did post-9/11.
“Moderate voices in Gaza are also increasingly rare and people there don’t have the option of criticizing Hamas, especially these days,” Engel later concluded in admission of the fact that Gazans criticizing Hamas at the risk of their lives.
The night before on the CBS Weekend News, foreign correspondent Ramy Inocencio huffed that Israel’s been busy “shattering buildings and lives in its mission to destroy Hamas.”
Not surprisingly, he took Hamas’s side in sorrowfully promoting the alleged bloodshed after an Israeli airstrike on an ambulance targeted the innocents (even though Israel has pointed out Hamas has used them as covers).
Sunday anchor Jericka Duncan turned up the Hamas propaganda with a piece in broken English from Gaza-based CBS producer Marwan Al-Ghoul (click “expand”):
DUNCAN: We turn now to Gaza and CBS News producer, Marwan Al-Ghoul. Just as in the last report, we caution that some of the images are disturbing. The numbers of casualties cited are from the Hamas-backed Gaza Health Ministry.
AL-GHOUL: Today, at the nth day of the month of the war, the life [sic] becomes more and more miserable as Israel keep [sic] bombing Gaza around the hour, which caused more than 11,000 deaths and more than 24,000 injuries. Half of them or more are children and women and don’t forget that more than 1,500 killed are missed [sic] under destruction still now. Hospitals almost collapse. The healthcare system in Gaza can’t apply its service to the patients, to the deaths and injuries. That’s matter of life. It’s collapsed. People don’t know where to go. I can tell that more than one million of the Palestinians in Gaza, I mean, half of the population are displaced with no electricity, lack of food, lack of water, and a lot of destructions everywhere. Today morning [sic], I was driving in Rafah City and I saw thousands line and stand on lines [sic] waiting for bread. A woman told me that she had been standing for six hours to get some bread, might not be enough for her family.
CBS has also decided on Sunday and Monday to lash out at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and seem to sow discord in support for Israel to returning to his government’s judicial reforms and giving oxygen to calls for him to resign mid-war for the country’s intelligence failures.
On Weekend News, Inocencio hyped the “new protests this weekend...as anger grows in Israel at political and security leaders” and demands Netanyahu be jailed. Inocencio talked to a The Times of Israel’s Tal Schneider who, despite being painted as an objective journalist, argued Netanyahu should quit.
Inocencio was back for Monday’s CBS Mornings and co-host Tony Dokoupil led in with this intro: “Inside Israel, the Hamas terror attacks and the government response have sharpened the country’s already intense political divisions, and many people heap blame on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for what’s happening.”
This time, Inocencio interviewed a supposed leader of the protest and sowing discord in Israeli unity since “[a]nger has snowballed against [Netanyahu] for striking down the supreme court’s independence this year, for corruption charges from 2016 and for billing himself as Mr. Security in political campaigns, saying he would take care of Israel’s children.”
ABC had a role to play too. Chief foreign correspondent Ian Pannell dutifully made sure to work in the dubious Hamas-published death tolls. On Monday’s Good Morning America (GMA), he fretted that, despite going into Gaza with the IDF, he fretted there was “carnage and death being inflicted” with weekend strikes “killing at least 55 and injuring 100, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.”
“In just four weeks, almost 10,000 men, women and children have been killed,” he added.
Pannell sang similar tunes on Sunday’s GMA and World News Tonight. On the former, he played sympathetic sound with a doctor at the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, which the IDF has said contains Hamas’s base of operations (click “expand”):
PANNELL [on World News Tonight]: But this is what we couldn’t see. The carnage and death being inflicted elsewhere in Gaza as the death toll soars towards 10,000, according to the Hamas-run health authority. Israel striking two more refugee camps. It’s located in the evacuation zone where Israel’s military is telling families to seek refuge as the IDF focuses its offensive on the north, but there’s almost nowhere in Gaza that is safe anymore.
(....)
PANNELL [on Good Morning America]: This is what we weren’t allowed to see. Israel’s relentless attack on Gaza. The night the sky turned orange from shelling. Buildings in flames at the Jabalia refugee camp hit by another air strike. All hands on deck to rescue the survivors. It’s been nearly a month into this war. More than 9,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, and Israeli officials reporting over 1,400 deaths. Inside Gaza, the health system beyond capacity.
AL-SHIFA HOSPITAL CHIEF OF SURGERY DR. MARWAN ABUSADA [on Good Morning America]: This is full of patients. No any vacant place to admit people to the inpatient department as you can see. Still it is always the same scene.
PANNELL [on Good Morning America]: Medical staff are overwhelmed and facilities overrun. Doctors at this Al-Shifa hospital work by flashlight without electricity or fuel to keep the fights on. The U.N. saying nearly half of hospitals in Gaza are no longer functioning. And the militant group, Hamas, releasing this video they say shows fighting with Israeli forces in the northwest of Gaza although ABC News can’t confirm when exactly this was filmed, but the administration’s calling for humanitarian pause in the fight to get aid into Gaza, to prevent more mass casualties and to try to help get the roughly 240 hostages out.
To see the relevant transcripts from November 5, click here (for ABC’s Good Morning America), here (for ABC’s World News Tonight), and here (for CBS). To see the relevant transcripts from November 6, click here (for ABC), here (for CBS), here (for CBS) and here (for NBC).
