21/02/2025
FALSE EQUIVALENCE
- by Augustine Zycher Founder & Editor WomanGoingplaces.com.au
Both the ABC and SBS have created a false equivalence in their reporting of the Israeli hostage and Palestinian prisoner exchanges taking place under the ceasefire agreements between Israel and Hamas.
Why does this matter?
It does, because the fundamental truth is that this exchange is only taking place as a result of crimes under international law. The International Convention Against the Taking of Hostages prohibits taking hostages; the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits taking civilian hostages in international armed conflicts.
As the leader of Hamas, one of Yahya Sinwar’s key objectives in launching the attack of October 7 was to take Israeli hostages. He, of all people knew the power that would give him. After all, he had benefitted from being released from an Israeli prison in 2011 when serving four life sentences
for the murder of 12 Palestinians. Sinwar’s release was part of a deal that saw 1,027 Palestinian and Israeli Arab prisoners released in exchange for a single Israeli hostage, the IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. Shalit had been held captive for five years after being kidnapped. The prisoners released in that exchange were collectively responsible for the killing of 569 Israelis.
That is why, on October 7, in addition to r**e, committing atrocities and the massacre of 1200 Israeli babies, children, men and women, mostly civilians, Sinwar made sure to kidnap 250 Israelis and foreign nationals as hostages back to Gaza.
And indeed over the last 16 months, the hostages have served as human shields to protect Hamas. Now they serve as a powerful bargaining tool during the ceasefire negotiations. In order to obtain the release of the hostages, Israeli is prepared to release disproportionate numbers of Palestinians prisoners, even many murderers with ‘blood on their hands’. Hostage taking is a very profitable and effective way to release convicted murderers en masse.
For example, in exchange for Agam Berger, Israel released 50 security prisoners, for Arbel Yehoud, 30 prisoners, and for Gadi Mozes, 30 prisoners. Israel has agreed to release 1,904 Palestinian security prisoners and detainees. More than 200 of them were serving life sentences.
It is therefore very disturbing that both the ABC and SBS in their reporting on the exchange are downplaying the seriousness of the crimes committed by many of the Palestinian prisoners. In doing so, they are creating a false equivalence between Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners.
This has become a pattern in the reporting of both the ABC and SBS on these hostage-prisoner exchanges.
Let’s take a closer look.
The 250 hostages who included babies, children, women and elderly people, were seized by Hamas from their cots, beds, homes, offices and from a music festival. Most were civilians. Even the Israel female spotters were non-combatants. Nor had any been convicted of crimes by any court of law.
The ABC and SBS however did not mention the fact that a considerable number of the Palestinian prisoners had been convicted by Israeli courts of murder. Throughout their various news reports, reporters for both networks preferred to focus of those held in administrative detention, or held either without charge or for offences like stone throwing. Both networks glossed over the crimes of prisoners convicted of murder and terror or they vaguely mentioned their crimes as serious charges.
At the same time, in a number of these reports, released Palestinian prisoners freely made lengthy allegations of torture, beatings, and neglect while in Israeli prisons.
But there was much that both the ABC and SBS were not telling the viewers in these same reports.
On January 30, 2025 Israel released 110 Palestinian security prisoners as part of the third phase of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal in exchange for three Israeli hostages: Gadi Mozes 80, and two young women, Arbel Yehoud, and Agam Berger.
The SBS coverage of this exchange reported that Zakaria Zubeidi “one of the leaders of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Fatah, was the most prominent Palestinian prisoner to be freed.” “Zubeidi has been known as the strongman of the West Bank city of Jenin, a hotbed of Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation and the site of frequent Israeli army raids, including a major operation just a week ago.” There was however, not a single word about him being convicted for killing at least 6 people by placing bombs in civilian offices.
John Lyons, global affairs editor ABC in his report just mentioned that Zakaria Zubeidi led a group of deadly attacks. Most of his report focused on the joyful reunion of Palestinian prisoners with their families and their statements about bad treatment and torture in Israeli prisons.
Neither Lyons nor SBS mentioned that also released in that exchange was Mohammad Abu Warda, a Hamas operative involved in placing bombs on buses that resulted in the deaths of 45 Israelis. Abu Warda was sentenced to 48 life terms and is the prisoner with the most Israeli murder convictions among those being released.
On February 1, Matthew Doran, Middle East correspondent for the ABC, reported at length on a young Palestinian man suffering from a bad condition of scabies. He had been arrested for stone throwing and reported on the lack of hygiene in detention and a beating.
On February 2, Eric Tlozek ABC Middle East correspondent reported on the release of 183 Palestinian prisoners, 72 of whom were serving jail sentences. He did a short feature on Palestinian prisoner Atta Mohammed Abdel Ghani who was released after spending 23 years in jail. Tlozek mentioned that Abdel Ghani was imprisoned for “fighting with one of the Palestinian militant groups against Israel during the second intifada.” He made no mention of the fact that Ghani had been serving 3 life sentences for murder. Just that he fathered his two youngest children with s***m smuggled out from an Israeli prison.
Both the ABC and SBS in their coverage did background stories on released Palestinian prisoners. This is entirely legitimate. But it is not legitimate for them to only do background features on Palestinian prisoners and not on the Israelis hostages who were released. Their coverage of the Israelis was principally about the reunion with their families in Israel. Nothing about who they were and under what conditions they had been held hostage by Hamas for almost 500 days.
This is entirely consistent with the coverage of both the ABC and SBS of the hostages during their entire incarceration since October 7. Other than a passing reference to the numbers being held, Australian audiences received hardly any coverage.
It is true that the ABC and SBS did not have access to the hostages. But they did have access to verified information and sources, they could speak to the hostages’ families and most importantly follow up U.N. and ICC reports.
So again, let us fill in some of the missing parts of their coverage because they did not inform the public of what Israeli hostages experienced.
Seven young Israeli female spotters and one female civilian were released after almost 500 days in captivity by Hamas in these exchanges. Spotters are unarmed soldiers who monitor computers on borders to report on any unusual activity. They had been taken hostage after Hamas massacred 15 of their colleagues on October 7.
During captivity they were moved around to different locations including the underground tunnels. “There was a point when we barely had any food at all,” one of the released spotters told relatives. “We all sat around a plate of rice and tried to divide it equally between us, to the last grain. You find yourself counting. Such hunger can’t be explained.” Daniella Gilboa was shot in the Hamas attack and still has a bullet in her leg. Emily Damari said she was held in UNRWA facilities during her captivity in Gaza but denied medical care after being shot twice, losing two fingers on her left hand, and carrying the unhealed wound in her leg. One was held alone in the underground tunnels for over 50 days. The Red Cross did not visit any of the Israeli hostages at any time during their captivity.
The ABC and SBS chose not to make any reference to evidence that Israeli female hostages have been subjected to ongoing sexual violence.
Both networks had access to the U.N. Report on the sexual violence committed by Hamas on October 7 since it was published on March 4, 2024 and adopted in April by the U.N. Secretary General. In this Report on the widespread r**e, sexual atrocities and massacre of Israeli girls and women across multiple locations committed by Hamas it found that “with respect to hostages, the mission team found clear and convincing information that some have been subjected to various forms of conflict-related sexual violence including r**e and sexualized torture and sexualized cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.” “The team was also convinced that this violence persists against the remaining hostages.” https://news.un.org/en/sites/news.un.org.en/files/atoms/files/Mission_report_of_SRSG_SVC_to_Israel-oWB_29Jan_14_feb_2024.pdfOffice of
In addition, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan referred to the hostages when he pursued an arrest warrant for Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar for “extermination, murder, taking of hostages, r**e and sexual assault in detention.” https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/20/middleeast/icc-israel-hamas-arrest-warrant-war-crimes-intl/index.html
But neither the ABC nor SBS during the last 15 months did any feature reports on this, if they even mentioned the existence of this Report. They certainly did not refer in any of their coverage to sexual violence that any of the hostages may have experienced.
And yet both networks in their coverage had no hesitation in reporting allegations by Palestinian prisoners of torture, beatings and bad conditions.
They also failed to report on the conditions endured by other Israeli hostages. Gadi Mozes aged 80 for much of his time in captivity was held in a two-square-meter room, in which he regularly paced some 7 kilometers (over 4 miles) every day, counting the tiles on the room floor and solving math problems to pass the time and keep his mind sharp. For some 70 days of his captivity, Mozes was in complete isolation, locked alone in a dark room. Mozes lost some 15 kilograms in captivity.
Hostages Ohad Ben-Ami, Or Levy, and Eli Sharabi were paraded by Hamas in shockingly emaciated condition after 16 months in captivity. In its commentary, SBS on February 9 sufficed to note that “They appeared pale and weak as armed Hamas fighters escorted them from a van onto a stage in Deir al-Balah.”
All three hostages actually endured severe torture under Hamas captivity, their families reported to Israeli media. They were choked, bound, gagged with cloth to the point of suffocation, hung upside down, and burned with a heated object. They were deliberately starved, receiving only a rotten pita every few days, which they had to share with other hostages. At times, they went days without water.
One of the freed hostages said he had been chained for 15 months. "I was shackled inside a dark tunnel, with no air or light. I couldn't walk or stand, and only before my release did my captors remove the chains, forcing me to learn to walk again," he told his family, who shared his account with Israel’s Channel 12.
Neither the ABC or SBS reported any of this in their coverage of the exchange despite the terrible appearance of all 3 hostages. Mathew Doran on February 9 reported on the emaciated appearance of all three. But made no effort to explain how they came to be in this condition. Instead Doran then went on in the same report to say that “Israeli authorities have been repeatedly accused of severe neglect of Palestinians in Israeli prisons with diseases ripping through facilities and alleged beatings.”
In its February 9 broadcast, SBS reported that it was only when Eli Sharabi returned home that he learnt that his wife and two teenage daughters “had been murdered”. But failed to mention that it was Hamas that had murdered them or that they had done so by burning them alive in their “safe room” during its assault on October 7, the same day they took him hostage. Sharabi’s brother was also taken hostage and murdered in captivity.
When the ABC and SBS downplay the seriousness of the crimes of Hamas, it is not balanced reporting. It actually obliterates their war crimes in both the taking of Israeli hostages and their treatment of them in captivity.
When the ABC and SBS downplay the seriousness of the crimes of many of the released Palestinian prisoners and present some sort of false equivalence between Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, it just masks the deadly game of extortion that is taking place in this exchange.
