"Psychological treatises will one day be written on the moral degeneracy which has taken hold of so many Western minds, which credulously take the word of Hamas, a terrorist organization, as true whilst regarding anything said by Israel, a democratic nation state, as by definition false," wrote Stephen Pollard, editor-at-large of the Jewish Chronicle, in a December op-ed about the atrocious British media coverage of the war.
Among the worst offenders has been Sky News. To cite just a few examples:
Sky News presenter Anna Botting abandoned any pretense of objectivity or even of journalistic curiosity in her hostile interview with Israeli spokesperson Mark Regev in the aftermath of the Al-Ahli hospital explosion in Gaza in October. Botting was viscerally angered by Regev's denial of Israeli responsibility for the blast, a denial that was of course later vindicated when evidence emerged that it was a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket that struck the hospital area.
In mid-November, their reporter Mark Stone retweeted someone falsely claiming that 'all ICU patients' died at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza in the aftermath of an IDF raid. The story was so blatantly false that even the PIJ affiliated Quds backtracked and deleted their tweet which initially made that same claim.
In late November, their International Affairs Editor Dominic Waghorn posted a Tweet suggesting that, contrary to all accounts, Hamas was treating the Israeli hostages well. We've of course since learned that at least some of the hostages have been sexually assaulted and tortured – on top of those who have been murdered by the terrorist group.
Now, let's turn to more recent events.
Within 48 hours of Iran's unprecedented drone and missile attacks on Israel on the night of April 13, which included at least 170 attack drones, 30 cruise missiles and 120 ballistic missiles, Sky News's international editor, their Middle East correspondent, and one their most high profile presenters effectively came to the defense of the Islamist regime.
Here's Dominic Waghorn, Sky's International Affairs Editor, on April 15:
Worth asking what any of these leaders would have done had a hostile state flattened one of their consulates killing more than a dozen of their nationals. Probably not a drone/missile barrage but some kind of military retaliation surely? pic.twitter.com/YOaX8B9SWA
— Dominic Waghorn (@DominicWaghorn) April 15, 2024
Here's Alistair Bunkall, Sky's Middle East correspondent, also on April 15.
After an Israeli air strike collapsed an Iranian consulate building in Damascus and killed seven Iranian military officers, violating the Vienna Convention.
Sure, Iran's response might have been disproportionate, but this strike was why Iran attacked Israel. https://t.co/pPRXTtdcTX
— Alistair Bunkall (@AliBunkallSKY) April 15, 2024
Here's an interview by Sky presenter Kay Burley with Foreign Secretary David Cameron on the same day
'I would argue that there is a massive degree of difference between what Israel did in Damascus and Iran's attack on Saturday.'
Foreign Secretary @David_Cameron and @KayBurley discuss Iran's response to Israel hitting their sovereign territory in Syria.https://t.co/NebMGlSyAD pic.twitter.com/BO4yOo8Z7o
— Sky News (@SkyNews) April 15, 2024
There are three common denominators to the Sky journalists' words: 1) That Israel struck an Iranian consulate. 2) That this violates the Vienna Convention. 3) That Iran's attack was arguably a legitimate response to the initial Israeli 'provocation' of their strike on the building in Damascus.
1. Was it a consulate?
Though all Sky journalists accept Iranian claims that the building that the IDF hit in Damascus on April 1 was a consulate or some kind of diplomatic facility at face value, that's not the position of the US State Department. A spokesperson stated, on April 8, when asked about Tehran's characterization of the target hit by Israel, that "It is our position that we are still attempting to answer that question, whether it was a consular facility or not."
As far as we can tell, that's still the US position.
Further, lets remember that at least six of those killed were from the IRGC, Hezbollah, and Syrian militias, or were known terrorists. While Syria reportedly has refused to disclose the identity of seven others who died in the strike, there's no evidence that they were diplomats or ordinary civilians – casting more doubt on the 'diplomatic' nature of the building.
In fact, one of those killed in the strike on IRGC officials, Mohammad Reza Zahedi, was the commander of the IRGC-QF in Lebanon, plays a key role in in providing Iranian-made missiles to Hezbollah, was a member of Hezbollah's Shura Council and, according to Iranian sources, was personally involved in the planning and execution of the October 7 massacre.
Further, Iran's assertion, wrote Israeli journalist Amos Harel regarding "the building's diplomatic status" is "aimed at laying the groundwork in the international arena for the Iranian case that the facility was under Iranian sovereignty, and tantamount to an attack on Iranian soil".
2. Did Israel's attack on April 1 violate the Vienna Convention
An analysis in the Economist ("Why are embassies supposed to be inviolable?", April 9), included the following:
There are exceptions to inviolability under international law, too. The Vienna Convention [on Diplomatic Relations] only refers to the responsibilities of the host state but says nothing about a third-party attack. Also, under the laws of armed conflict, embassies lose their protections if they are used for military purposes. That may mean that the recent strike on Iran's consulate in Damascus was legal; a spokesperson for the Israel Defence Forces called the annex that was destroyed a "military building [...] disguised as a civilian building". Iran may try to claim, falsely, that the same is true of Israeli embassies, and that attacks on them would be similarly justified.
A reading of the Vienna Convention can be found here and confirms the Economist's reading of it.
3. Was Iran's attack on Israel justified, as it represented retaliation for the IDF's attack on Iranian 'consulate' in Damascus?
The suggestion that armed conflict between Jerusalem and Tehran only began on April 1st is absurd. Iran, through its proxies – such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis, groups which are part of Tehran's so-called 'Axis of Resistance' – has been directly striking Israel nearly every day for the past six months.
Hamas carried out the deadliest attack on Israeli civilians in the country's history, representing the worst antisemitic massacre since the Holocaust, while Hezbollah forces, and assorted other Iranian-backed militias, have bombarded Israeli cities with thousands of projectiles over the past six months – forcing the displacement of at least 70,000 Israelis in the north, killing nine civilians and 11 soldiers while badly injuring dozens of others.
If the Mullahs wanted to, they could have of course prevented Hezbollah and its other proxies in the region from entering the war.
Western observers and reporters observed Matti Friedman, engage in "increasingly ludicrous contortions…guided chiefly by their own politics and imaginations" in order to tiptoe around Islamist extremism in the Middle East while maintaining that "a pocket of Jewish sovereignty on 0.2 percent of the land of the Arab world" represents the greatest threat to peace in the region.
It would be hard to find an outlet that resorts to such moral and empirical contortions in an effort to reach their desired anti-Israel conclusions more often than Sky News.
Adam lives in Israel and is co-editor of CAMERA UK. He previously worked as a researcher at NGO Monitor and, prior to that, at the Civil Rights Division of the Anti-Defamation League. He's had op-eds published in numerous Jewish and non-Jewish publications, published longer papers at the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs on "Antisemitism in Progressive Blogs" and "Antisemitic Cartoons in Progressive Blogs", and was previously a member of the Online Antisemitism Working Group for the Global Forum to Combat Antisemitism. He frequently gives presentations about media bias and antisemitism, including one last September at the inaugural conference of the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism.
