Sky News and the Lies of Husam Zomlot

On Oct. 9, 2023, two days after the Hamas massacre, Husam Zomlot, the Head of the Palestinian Mission to the UK, adamantly refused, when asked by Channel 4 News’s Cathy Newman, to condemn the worst antisemitic atrocity since the Holocaust. Instead, he blamed the “occupying power” for the slaughter, by which he meant Israel.

He even refused, when asked by Newman, to call for the release of the Israeli civilians taken hostage.

In an interview on Sky News last month with Salma Mohsin, Mohsin was either unable, or unwilling, to challenge Zomlot’s many lies. More on her abysmal performance can be found here: “Sky News presenter fails to challenge Husam Zomlot’s lies,” by Adam Levick, CAMERA, September 8, 2024:

On Oct. 9th, two days after the Hamas massacre, Husam Zomlot, the Head of the Palestinian Mission to the UK, adamently refused, when asked by Channel 4 News’s Cathy Newman, to condemn the worst antisemitic atrocity since the Holocaust.  Instead, he blamed the ‘occupying power’ for the slaughter, by which he meant Israel.

He even refused, when asked by Newman, to call for the release of the Israeli civilians taken hostage.

In a normal media landscape, Zomlot’s effective defence of the terror group’s murder, rape, torture, mutilation and hostage taking would have rendered him an extremist, and certainly not someone whose views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be taken seriously.  But, as we’ve demonstrated over the past 11 months, Sky News’s coverage of the region since that dark Shabbat day has been anything but normal.

A few days ago, Sky News by presenter Saima Mohsin not only interviwed Zomlot to get his reaction to the West Bank killing of an American-Turkish International Solidarity Movement [ISM] activist, but failed even once to challenge any of his propagandistic talking points and outright lies.  Though the IDF is currently investigating the tragic death of the woman, Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, who was killed while soldiers were responding to a Palestinian rock-throwing incident in Beita, near Nablus, Zomlot of course presumed Israeli guilt and used the airtime on Sky to vilify the state.

Here are the liess, distortions and propaganda that went completely unchallenged by the Sky presenter:

• Zomlot described Eygi as “peace activist”, despite the fact that her organisation is linked to terrorism, its mission statement supports “armed struggle” and, as such, it effectively defended the Oct. 7th attacks.
• Zomlot claimed that the IDF intentionally murdered Eygi.

The IDF now believes that Eygi died when a bullet one of its soldiers fired at someone else, the apparent ringleader of the rock-throwers, ricocheted, hitting Eygi. The IDF would have had no reason to target Eygi. Accidents, including ricocheting bullets, do happen.

• Zomlot claimed that Rachel Corrie, another ISM activist, was killed in 2003 “while she was trying to protect Palestinian children”.  In fact, she was accidentally killed on the Philadelphi Corridor in the Rafah area of Gaza by a military bulldozer which was “clearing and leveling…the ground and clearing it of brush in order to expose hiding places used by terrorists, who would sneak out from these areas and place explosive devices with the intent of harming IDF soldiers”.

Corrie placed herself in front of the bulldozer, whose driver, seated high up in his cabin, could not see her and ran her over. She was not “trying to protect Palestinian children” — there were none around — but to stop the operation to clear the brush where terrorists used to hide.

• Zomot [sic] referred to the Israeli government, collectively, as “war criminals”.

The Sky News interviewer did not challenge that characterization, but let the calumny stand..

• On the IDF’s recent anti-terrorist operation in the northern West Bank, Zomlot accused the army of “masss murder”, despite the fact that at least half of those Palestinians killed in gun battlers were claimed by terror groups as their members, and that the cites wher [sic] the army operated in, such as Jenin, are knwon [sic] hotbeds of terror….

What “mass murder” does Zomlot mean, and why did the Sky News interviewer not remind the audience of the facts? To wit, fewer than fifty Palestinians have been killed in the recent nine-day anti-terrorist operation in the West Bank. Of those, at least about half —26 — were killed in gun battles with the IDF; they were not civilians, but members of the terror groups Hamas and the PFLP. At most — if we accept Hamas figures — twenty-four civilians may have been killed. That is not “mass murder.” The Sky News interviewer ought to have immediately challenged Husam Zomlot’s use of the term “mass murder” to describe the deaths, in gun battles, of 26 terrorists and the possible deaths — still unconfirmed — of a slightly smaller number of civilians. Given those figures, the ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths was less than  1:1, which would be the lowest such ratio ever achieved by any army in the history of warfare. The Sky News interviewer ought to have been ready to contradict with facts Zomlot’s claim, but chose to remain silent about his absurd charge of “mass murder.”

The IDF does not intentionally destroy civilian infrastructure as long as it remains purely civilian in nature. It does attack buildings that, while ordinarily civilian in nature, such as apartment houses, schools, mosques, and hospitals, are being used by Hamas to hide combatants, weapons, rocket launchers, and even command-and-control centers. When put to such use, these structures lose their civilian status and become legitimate military targets.

Zomlot also made it sound as if Israel was for no good reason, but out of simple malignity, withholding the import tax revenues it collects for the PA. Mohsin failed to note that, in fact, Israel only withholds the precise amount that the PA continues to pay imprisoned terrorists and the families of terrorists who were killed during their attacks — this is the infamous “Pay-For-Slay” program. That program both incentivizes and rewards terrorism. Why shouldn’t Israel try to pressure the PA to end that program by refusing to transfer taxes it collects for the PA? And why didn’t Mohsin explain to the audience what the “Pay-For-Slay “ program is all about?

Husam Zomlot was allowed to make a series of false statements in his interview, all of them unchallenged by Salma Mohsin, about everything from a claim of “mass murder” in the West Bank by the IDF, to a false story about Rachel Corrie “trying to protect Palestinian children,” to Israel “for no apparent reason” withholding tax revenues from the PA, to calling Israelis “war criminals.” Given Mohsin’s abject performance, Sky News might want to rethink using her on any matter connected to Israel and the Palestinians ever again.