At a nursing hospital. Right now, there are eight premature babies in the NICU room and around ten other premature babies and the baby friendly room, according to the Ministry of Health. The hospital is expected to work through the upcoming 48 hours. Literally, the lives of these babies depend on electricity and fuel. [00:00:20] So that is citizen journalists. Plestia Alaka. And she is she has just been everywhere. She has over 2 million followers on Instagram and she is there at Nasser Hospital following what is about 80 infants in incubators, preemies [00:00:38] who could be who could lose their lives if Nasser Hospital runs out of fuel? Okay, that's not the story. The story is about Plestia herself. Because just yesterday, The Jerusalem Post released an article, published an article [00:00:53] calling her and other citizen journalists in Gaza right now, Hamas propagandists, and that was promptly picked up on by some American gulls as well. But here's the headline exposed Hamas's propaganda team. Are these individuals independent journalists or are they associated with Hamas? [00:01:10] Now, the reason this is so dangerous is because of how dangerous the Gaza war and the Israel's war on Gaza has been for journalists, and we'll talk about that in a second. But this is a massively serious claim to make on citizen journalists, who are arguably are only ways of finding out what is going on on the ground in Gaza. [00:01:28] Remember, international journalists are not allowed in through the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza. So a lot of the people that we have following are these people on social media, as well as Al Jazeera media network. Again, the bureau chief's entire family was killed by an Israeli bombardment. [00:01:45] He's still out there. He is still going. But the article what is what proof do they have that she's a Hamas propagandist? They say that Pellecchia Al-aqqad spread the lie on Instagram and in an interview with British TV that Israel bombed the Al Ahli hospital and killed more than a thousand people. [00:02:02] Now that bombing of the hospital is again the contentious, controversial one because it's unclear from multiple video footage and video evidence whether it was a Hamas rocket that misfired or if it was an Israeli bombardment. That is still something that is ongoing and the investigation is still ongoing. [00:02:19] But as we just talked about, Israel does have a history of targeting hospitals. Again, what else? What else is proof that she and others could possibly be Hamas propagandists? The article says a source in The Know told the post that a high percentage [00:02:36] of these so-called journalists have been discovered to be working for Hamas and given amenities to do their jobs, such as a car and a driver, internet and shelter in Al-Shifa. Well, Al-Shifa was the hospital that we just talked about being bombed, so not a lot of shelter there, but so a source, an unnamed source. [00:02:54] Again, the this is this this article is published the day that Al-Shifa gets bombed. So what happens when you call a journalist a Hamas propagandist? And then, lo and behold, the military targets [00:03:09] where they're working from, it's wild. And guess what? Plestia was not the only potential target. In fact, there's another woman named Bisan Odeh. I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing her name. She's been reporting from the ground in Palestine as well. And she was at the Al-Shifa hospital when that convoy of ambulances [00:03:26] trying to exit was bombed. Here is footage that she took herself from. What happened? Take a look. They. They up the hospital. They booked. I've been there before. Two minutes. [00:03:44] The massacre. Thousands of people. Around thousands of people. It's good to be me. So though she says it could be me. Thousands of people are out and around. And again, we know an estimated about 12 to 13 people were killed and many wounded. [00:04:01] Those who were who were targeted were also wounded. But of course, this Jerusalem Post article was picked up by none other than American ghoul Ben Shapiro and a rabid defender of every Israel war crime. He tweeted, it's truly shocking how many Hamas influencers are given [00:04:20] full credibility by the Western press. And with a photo again, this article leads off with a photo of Plestia herself, who's been risking her life bringing us this information. But I wanted to stop down you guys because it is wild to me. I mean, I know that people get prickly when we use comparisons, [00:04:39] but we're human and so we have to put ourselves in other people's shoes and understand what situations we've been in. Well, for me, I can think of, look, if I was on the ground at a Black Lives Matter demonstration, remember what happened during the BLM summer? How many citizen journalists had had footage of cops beating protesters? [00:04:56] Right. All of the footage that we've relied on or what about on our shows, you know, people who film someone, you know, a Karen going crazy or whatnot, like all those people are targeted, right? Like it's just wild to me that you're posting their face right there and you're [00:05:13] basically putting a target on their back. Yeah. And he's conflating Hamas with Palestine and Palestinian citizens, which we know is like what J.R. has been saying this whole time. It's just another way to discredit people and to dehumanize them entirely, [00:05:30] saying, oh, they're just Hamas. So they don't matter. They're disposable. We don't have to worry about them. You know, these people in Palestine, too, or in the Gaza Strip, I should say they don't have access to internet like we like they do. Maybe in Israel they don't. They're displaced from their homes. [00:05:46] They don't have access to electricity and things like that. So whenever we do get news coming out of the Gaza Strip, you know, that's pretty valuable. We know that there are drones flying over there, but they're Israeli drones and they're American drones that are flying over. So a lot of what we see coming out of the conflict is coming from [00:06:03] more from one side than from the other. So we have to take everything that we're getting with a grain of salt. And so that's what makes people like Jesse here so valuable. You know, back when Trump first came out and what was like 20, 1516 or something, it was so dangerous when he started talking about the fake news [00:06:21] and he started getting people to distrust the news media and things like that. I'm not saying that we should trust everything coming out of the news, out of CNN, MSNBC, Fox, whoever I am saying, though, that we have to look be able to be discerning viewers, discerning news consumers, right? [00:06:38] We have to be able to kind of understand that this is war. There are things going on down there that we can't trust. You know, things that we're going to hear about that we won't always be able to trust, things that we will think sound a little funny, and maybe they are a little [00:06:54] funny because they're coming from one side and things are going to be colored with one perspective or one bias, right? So we have to be very careful with that. These on the ground reporters, these citizen reporters are incredibly valuable and they need to be protected. Their freedom of speech needs to be protected. [00:07:11] Freedom of press is a thing in this country for a reason, right? Because the people need to have a voice and that's how we do it. Well, yeah. And it's not only that, but it's a it's a war crime under the Geneva Conventions to target journalists. J.R., before you jump in, I just want to note that 33 journalists have been killed in the Gaza Strip since October 28th Palestinians, [00:07:28] four Israelis and one Lebanese citizen. Just last night, a TV correspondent named Mohammad Abu Hatab was killed as well. And, you know, these are these are people whose colleagues then have to report on their colleagues death as news. They're reporting the news. They become the news, J.R. and. [00:07:46] If I'm not mistaken, that's quite unprecedented, too, right? Like like that's those are astronomical numbers for for what we usually see in war zones. Yeah. It's one of the most dangerous in in decades for journalists. Yeah. Think, think. I mean, there's a fax. I mean, that was a thing from CNN. [00:08:02] So we always dispute whether or not what's being said, what's being done. Numbers. You know, we saw President Biden talk about as well how he doesn't believe whatever. Fine. So if you don't believe there's a reason why, of course, to discredit certain folks on the ground that are reporting certain things, as you mentioned, just like when you see police brutality or anything happening on our streets and you see it, [00:08:18] you can no longer say it's not happening. It's right there in front of your face. So you have to discredit who's doing it and why they're doing it. Fine. Okay, so discredit all these folks who are reporting exactly what's happening. Discredit the woman who's literally crying. Is she faking that? Is she an actress? So as we're seeing folks actually report from the ground and the idea, [00:08:34] if you're believing the folks who say this is all fake, she's a Hamas propagandist. Okay, cool. So what is happening? Something's happening. Right? Is nothing happening? Is there no fuel and everything else running out from hospitals? Our hospitals are not being bombed. If if these folks are Hamas journalists, which. [00:08:52] Okay, what is it that they're doing actually on the ground? You should tell us your side of the story. - Tell us the full thing. - Do you do Hamas journalism? I mean, this is my question right now, truly. Like, are you putting a like, terrorist filter over everything you're seeing? [00:09:07] Are you doing I, you know, in all of the incredible facilities that you've got that haven't been bombed, it is wild to me to say something like that. It is. We have to understand and step back how egregious that sounds, how creepy and murderous and truly paving the way. [00:09:23] This is so when plestia, when bizarre, when they end up dead, what will we say? What will Ben Shapiro say? A Hamas influencer was killed. And if they're Hamas, that's okay. We can write them off. Well, what about all these children? [00:09:38] Oh, I don't know. Forget about them. We don't have a story for them. The story is they shouldn't have been hiding on top of a Hamas terrorist tunnel. It's the best they got. Yeah. I'm sorry to interrupt. Lazy rebuttal is what it is. It's. There's nothing else to it. Because you've convinced enough people that are following everything that you say [00:09:56] that everything you say, no matter how much it doesn't make any sense. They'll just buy it because you're providing them an excuse for what they would like to believe. Yeah, yeah. And then also real quick, I know we have to go to a break, but that's why Francesca that's why he framed it that way as. That's why he called her a Hamas influencer. [00:10:12] So that if and when something, God forbid, happens to her, then he doesn't have to feel bad about it. And he doesn't have to justify it to his audience. - Yeah. 100%. - Thanks for watching the video, guys. We also love it if you hit the join button below, because that makes you a member. And members allow us to be independent, honest. [00:10:29] We could be as progressive as we want, no corporate media influence. 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