The press here in the United States has been predictably biased and generally insufferable when it comes to reporting on the Hamas-instigated war with Israel. But the European media, in my opinion, has been even worse, with a Sky News interview from earlier this week being the latest example.
Kay Burley is a presenter for a morning program on Sky News, and one of her guests Thursday was Eylon Levy, a spokesman for the Israeli government.
During the segment, they talked about the ongoing hostage release negotiations, which were being delayed at the time because Hamas was busy doing the things that terrorist groups do.
Burley then brought up who she says was a “hostage negotiator” she spoke to who she said compared the number of hostages under discussion for release – 50 Israeli hostages for 150 Palestinian prisoners – and alleged in the form of a question that the ratio was indicative of how little Israel valued Palestinian lives.
Understandably, the question shocked Levy, who responded accordingly:
“I was speaking to a hostage negotiator this morning,” the presenter told Levy during the televised interview. “He made the comparison between the 50 hostages that Hamas has promised to release as opposed to the 150 prisoners that are Palestinians that Israel has said it will release. And he made the comparison between the numbers and the fact that does Israel not think that Palestinian lives are valued as highly as Israeli lives?”Visibly taken aback, Levy described her question as “an astonishing accusation,” declaring that “if we could release one prisoner for every one hostage we would obviously do that.””We are operating in horrific circumstances. We’re not choosing to release these prisoners who have blood on their hands. We are talking about people who have been convicted of stabbing and shooting attacks,” Levy said.”Notice the question of proportionality doesn’t interest Palestinian supporters when they’re able to get more of their prisoners out. But really, it is outrageous to suggest that the fact that we are willing to release prisoners who are convicted of terrorism offenses, more of them than we are getting our own innocent children back, somehow suggests that we don’t care about Palestinian lives. Really, that’s a disgusting accusation.”
Watch:
Levy also addressed the issue in a tweet response to one Twitter user’s suggestion that to solve the supposed “undervalued Palestinian lives” problem only one Palestinian prisoner gets released for all the Israeli hostages:
There was also this proposal from another Twitter user, which probably was not made in jest:
For her part, Burley tried to defend herself by claiming she was simply taking the “some people said something” interview approach:
Others, like British Jews Board of Deputies Public Affairs Director Daniel Sugarman, were skeptical though, and pointed to a short video Burley shared on Twitter where she had an odd reaction to the mention of the Israeli hostages:
Sugarman later gave her the benefit of the doubt, suggesting he didn’t think the issue was that Burley was anti-Israel, just a terrible representative for Sky News:
Burley, I should point out, is absolutely representative of much of the “news” coverage the network has given of the Israel-Hamas war:
In the race to the bottom, my thought at the moment is that it’s Sky News who is winning, though the BBC is not far behind.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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