One of the most prominent pro-Palestine media outlets, Palestine Chronicle has been slapped with a lawsuit, claiming its editor, Ramzy Baroud, has financed hostage-taking on 10/7. A veritable legal mob has filed this lawfare suit on behalf of three hostage survivors of the al Nuseirat massacre, which slaughtered nearly 300 Palestinians. The rescued hostages are Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov, and Shlomi Ziv. Notably, the fourth rescued hostage, Noa Argamani, has not joined the case. They were recruited to sue Baroud and the Chronicle in federal court in Washington State.
This is clearly a SLAPP suit designed to destroy a major pro-Palestine media outlet. If it succeeds, it will be open season not only on this publication, but any that offers the Palestinian perspective or criticizes Israeli genocide.
The plaintiffs have enormous legal firepower at their disposal. Their representation includes the DC firm, Holtzman Vogel, the National Jewish Advocacy Center, NGA, Schoen Law, Blair Russ, and Eric Bomsztyk. Holtzman Vogel has an entire practice devoted to “anti-Semitism and anti-terrorism.” Apparently, there is good money to be made by extorting universities on the basis of trumped up anti-Semitism claims. Another party, the National Jewish Advocacy Center offers “innovative legal approaches to fighting anti-Semitism.” Essentially, what both their legal practices are–is pro-Israel lawfare.
It’s doubtful Holtzman is taking this case pro bono. There is no payday for them. There is no deep pocket defendant. My strong suspicion is that there is another party funding this operation.
The plaintiffs have brought the case in Washington State’s US Western District in Tacoma, before Judge Tiffany Mae Cartwright. Baroud is represented by Dan Kovalik.
The essential argument the complaint offers is that Baroud’ was born and grew up in al Nuseirat. It continues–one of the alleged hostage guards, Abdallah Aljamal, had contributed articles to the Chronicle, for which he was paid (again allegedly). Thus, Baroud in effect financed terrorism.
Not only did Baroud not pay him for his contributions to the publication, the plaintiffs have produced no evidence that he did. They claim that Aljamal was a Hamas operative. In truth, he had worked in the Hamas labor ministry, which has nothing to do with its military wing. This work predated 10/7. The period in question, and contentions against Ramzy in the lawsuit fall after 10/7. He did praise the Hamas 10/7 attack as a legitimate act of armed resistance. Tens of thousands of Palestinians and pro-Palestine activists did so as well. None of them were assassinated (except the Palestinians).
Even more far-fetched is this claim concerning Aljamal found in the case filing:
Ziv [the Israeli hostage] said Aljamal…told the hostages that “Hamas was in contact and actively coordinating with its affiliates in the media and on college campuses. Hamas was going to ensure that the United States, as well as Jews and Israelis, are hated everywhere and that Hamas in Gaza was coordinating with its allies…to foment hatred against Israel and Jews…
Conveniently, the alleged hostage guard and his wife were murdered in the rescue operation. He’s no longer available to dispute the charge against him. Quite convenient for Ziv and his lawyers.
Israel put forward another claim that Aljamal held the hostages in his home. Thus, he was (allegedly) a Hamas operative. CNN noted that the hostages were held on the third floor of the building, while his family lived on the first floor. If I lived on the first floor of an apartment building and another tenant murders someone, as I am murderer? Or an accessory to murder? As for the allegation itself, CNN writes:
Three hostages rescued during a deadly Israeli military operation on the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza were held captive by a journalist, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) alleged Sunday, without providing evidence to support their claim.
Even if this is the case (it isn’t), Ramzy had no idea that the hostages were in that building. Therefore, there is no basis for the claim that he aided and abetted Hamas, knowingly or even unknowingly.
This gives you a sense of the troubling nature of the case brought by the plaintiffs. GOP Congress members have also claimed (baselessly) the student protests were funded by Hamas. Among the groups accused (and sued): Students for Justice in Palestine. How would the former, fighting a desperate battle for survival in Gaza, coordinate anything with anyone outside it? Even if it could, does anyone believe it has money to spare to fund a “global anti-Israel conspiracy?”
Financing terrorism is a crime under US law. However, the plaintiffs have not filed a criminal complaint because no prosecutor in this country would do so on such flimsy evidence. First, there is no evidence that this individual guarded the hostages except, of course, an unsupported accusation offered by the IDF, which their attorneys have regurgitated. Aljamal lived in the same building, but many Gazans live in buildings which housed hostages without involvement in their captivity. Second, Aljamal was not paid by the Chronicle. Baroud told an interviewer: “we never paid him a dime.” If there was no payment, then the Chronicle didn’t finance anything, let alone the kidnapping of the four hostages or any act of terrorism.
Though the lawsuit is based on a claim of one individual’s financial support for terrorism, that is not the real basis. In the eyes of these plaintiffs and their lawyers, all Palestinians are terrorists. A Palestinian becomes one merely by being Palestinian. It is a common refrain by Israeli ministers: every Gazan is Hamas; every Gazan is a terrorist; there are no civilians in Gaza, even babies and mothers are culpable and legitimate targets because they failed to overthrow Hamas, etc.
The lawyers in this case probably care little about the outcome. Their real sights are on the Justice Department, which can bring a terrorism charge against Baroud. That is a criminal charge with far more severe consequences than a civil action, as the current case is. On that note, one of the main lawyers representing the hostages is Kellen Dwyer, a former deputy assistant US attorney in the national security division. Given his former position, it’s credible that he will be encouraging his former colleagues to take up the case upon conclusion of the current proceedings.
Not content to put Baroud alone in their crosshairs, the lawyers have targeted his daughter, 26 year-old Zarefah Baroud. She holds a PhD in Palestine studies and is a lecturer at the University of Hawaii. She is a digital media associate with American Muslims for Palestine. Though she has nothing to do with the Palestine Chronicle case, they’re attempting to drag her into it as well subpoena her to site for a deposition.
This is clearly a campaign to destroy Baroud and his family as well. Wear him down with endless legal proceedings. Impose the burden and anxiety of defending oneself in an extended judicial process. Bankrupt him with a long trial, racking up potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees.
This is a carefully crafted, well-funded campaign of harassment and intimidation against one of America’s most important Palestinian journalists. They’re targeting him because the Chronicle is a leading voice for Palestine and a leading media opponent of Israeli genocide. As such, he must be silenced. Not just silenced, but humiliated in order to destroy his credibility as a journalist.
Israel and its legal henchmen see the US media and social media platforms as their most potent enemies. It is where the pro-Palestine movement is most active and most successful. That’s why Israel monitors social media content and flag thousands of pieces of allegedly anti-Semitic content to platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. They dutifully take down much of this content. The Chronicle lawsuit is the first US foray into suppressing pro-Palestine journalism.
Will it work? Can American justice see through this shoddy case and dismiss it? Or will it permit the plaintiffs to drag Baroud through the mud? Given the crisis facing our courts in the Trump era, the jury is still out (so to speak). Though Baroud’s attorney says “I have confidence the judge will see through the claims of the plaintiffs.”
Fischberger: media influencer, creature of the hasbara industry
Fischberger’s LinkedIn profile describing his role as a pro-Israel media influencer
Fischberger is a key figure in the smears against Baroud. He’s published multiple threads (and here) to amplify the false charges against the latter. As I argue below, this is the first stage of vilification in a process that leads, in the case of Palestinian journalists, to their murder; and in the case of Baroud, to irreparable damage to his credibility as a journalist and his ability to maintain his critical voice on Palestine. This is a campaign no less serious, with no less consequences than an actual military operation.
Fischberger’s Linkedin profile reveals a long employment history working in the hasbara “industry.” He’s worked briefly for NGO Monitor, CAMERA, and the Jewish Center for Public Affairs, Israeli slash-and-burn hard-right NGOs. For lists his current employment as a “freelance strategic communications consultant.” He served as an IDF staff sergeant. In one of Fischberger’s articles he describes himself as an “activist and veteran of the Israeli air force. His TikTok features his culinary prowess. He published a cookbook, Eitan Eats the World.
IPC declaration of Gaza famine
His Substack is full MAGA and genocide apologetics (“Starvation by Feeding”), including a paean to Charlie Kirk (“The Second Death of Charlie Kirk”). Apparently he isn’t aware that Kirk had quite the reputation as an anti-Semite.
This article smearing the two human rights lawyers who penned the recent UN report declaring Gaza was in the midst of famine, was based on Fischberger’s “research.” The Kan story was based on material he offered, which it labelled “OSINT.” This is a military intelligence phrase denoting material based on open-source (public) information. OSINT is considered a rudimentary form of raw intelligence, as opposed to HUMINT (human intelligence) or SIGINT (signal intelligence).
The term is associated with state intelligence gathering agencies. This is an indication Fischberger is not an independent researcher. But rather a figure associated with and/or funded by the Israeli government or other pro-Israel sources. There are numerous agencies funding such activity who are possible suspects. Among them, the ministry of Diaspora Affairs, headed by a notorious political thug, Amichai Chikli.
Fischberger’s byline also graces far-right foreign media (Tablet, New York Post, Wall Street Journal, National Review, New York Daily News, etc.). He joined with another virulently pro-Israel media influencer, David Collier to promote the obscene (and false) claim that the image of the emaciated little baby Mohammed wasn’t solely due to starvation, because he reputedly had a pre-existing condition, cerebral palsy. His mother says he does have muscular dystrophy, which has nothing to do with starving to death.
The Wall Street Journal published this scurrilous piece of ersatz journalism. Shaun King savaged this article, calling it “the lie of the century.” This follows a familiar Israeli hasbara strategy of peddling lies in an effort to sow confusion among a global audience, in order to dampen the opprobrium Israel faces. They key to understanding the methods of this cabal represented by Fischberger and his cronies, is not to determine what/which of their claims are true. Because almost nothing is true. Rather, you must determine what isn’t false–if you can find anything that isn’t.
Like Bari Weiss (more below), Fischberger is a vessel of the IDF killing machine. He follows a standard hasbara protocol, which begins with a relentless campaign of vitriol consisting of hundreds of tweets posted over months against targeted journalists. Following his “softening up” such a target, the IDF steps in and finishes the job with murder. This was the case regarding Anas al-Sharif (more on this below), whose death he praised: “Anas is now with his heroes — in hell.” After his murder, he tweeted: “bye bye Anas, we hardly knew ye.” This was his triumphant boast after a job well done: “I exposed Anas’ deep ties to terror. Less than 24 hours later, the IDF confirmed them.” This indicates a likely orchestrated campaign in which both parties collaborated, eventually targeting him for death.
If you transform a human being into a monster, it becomes that much easier to eliminate them. Any moral stain and opprobrium you might suffer evaporates in the face of such relentless dehumanization. That is Fischberger’s MO. In reality, he is the monster, not his victims.
The Chronicle ran this damaging story about him.
I’ve highlighted some of his media propaganda in the Addendum below.
View this post on Instagram
Fischberger unwittingly characterized his own MO perfectly in this video, which purported to describe Hamas’ “media campaign” to turn the world against Israel. As they say, every lie is an admission. Every claim here illustrates his own methods:
“They [Hamas] see it as part and parcel of the battlefield…They don’t see it as: “we’re going to give you facts.” They say: “we don’t have the firepower to defeat Israel.” That’s what Hamas says and they’re right. They know that and we know that they know that and everyone knows that they know that. But the thing is–how do they know that and mitigate that? How do they offset that lack of firepower that they have? They say: “we’re going to rig the media apparatus against Israel. We’re going to concoct these certain narratives. We’re gonna doctor footage. We gonna set and stage certain quote-unquote “war crimes” that they’ll invent out of thin air.
The very premise of Fischberger’s existence as a pro-Israel propagandist is based on “rigging the media apparatus” and “concocting” pro-Israel narratives. While he doesn’t doctor footage, he doctors reality. He sets, stages and invents his account “out of thin air.”
Regarding his grievance against global media in the above video: Israel has created the monster itself. All the images they claim are “doctored” and narratives that are “concocted” by Hamas and what he calls its “so-called journalists,” would not exist without Israel’s genocide. There would be no dead babies whose purported medical history would be exploited to let Israel off the hook. There would be no desperately hungry Palestinians clamoring outside food distribution sites, to which he must respond: “no starvation here.”
IDF’s campaign to smear, murder Palestinian journalists
972 Magazine profiled a similar effort by an IDF unit whose OSINT mission is to scour social media content by Palestinian journalists. It seeks information (implausible and sloppily researched) to associate them with Hamas. From there it is a small step to labeling them terrorists and therefore legitimate targets for “elimination.”
The article describes a complex campaign against Anas al-Sharif, who was initially targeted by Fischberger and allied hasbara accounts. Subsequently, the IDF Arabic spokesperson chimed in with the charge that he was a Hamas terrorist. That was followed by the assassination, which wiped out the entire Al Jazeera media team.
Fischberger played a similar role in slandering a murdered Palestinian journalist, Hassan Abu Warda (“a man far more interested in armed jihad than honest reporting”). He added for good measure: a “propagandist in a flak jacket.” His justification for Warda’s murder is based purely on the latter’s tweets. He never presents any concrete evidence of any ties to Hamas other than a picture of the victim with Hamas leaders.
This war may be the first time journalists have been executed for their social media content. Who knew that a tweet could get you killed?
Not content to smear Palestinians journalists, he set his sights on a target no less exalted than the Grey Lady herself, the NY Times, which he called a “propaganda machine masquerading as media.” Its offense: “employ[ing] terror-linked freelancers, r[unning] op-eds by Hamas officials, and intentionally fuel[ing] hoaxes against Israel.” These claims are laughable, since the Times and its liberal Zionist editorial slant routinely favor the Israeli narrative and gives short shrift to the Palestinian perspective.
Bari Weiss’ character assassination of Refaat Alareer
Similarly, the Palestinian poet and teacher, Refaat Alareer, suffered a vicious campaign by Bari Weiss. She tweeted that Alareer was “a Hitler-loving reporter” who “celebrates the mass murder of Jews.” Actually, he praised the 10/7 attacks as an act of resistance against Israeli occupation and oppression. He has never expressed any hostility to Jews. It’s worth emphasizing that not all Israelis are Jews, not all Zionists are Jews, and not all Jews are Zionists. To claim Judaism and Zionism are one and the same is a class anti-Semitic trope.
Alareer had a premonition of his own death, which he blamed on the budding media mogul:
“If I am killed by Israeli bombs or my family is harmed, I blame Bari Weiss. There are many maniacal Israeli soldiers who take these lies and smears seriously and act upon them.”
He was wrong about one thing: his assassination was not an act by an “”Israeli soldier,” but rather a murder almost certainly planned and executed by the senior IDF command, based on surveillance by military intelligence and/or the Shin Bet. He even received a threatening phone call from an anonymous figure certainly associated with them This was part of an overall campaign to eliminate all Palestinian journalists, who document for the world Israel’s unspeakable crimes.
Weiss’ attacks on Alareer were the first stage of a campaign which led directly to his murder. Though there is no explicit proof she knowingly participated in such a plot, she clearly was an accessory (witting or unwitting). At the very least, her attacks legitimated the assassination.
State assassins generally do not target someone without laying the groundwork through a series of lies and fabricated evidence painting the victim as evil, degenerate, sadist, or generally undesirable. This has been the method of despots and police states for centuries. Weiss served that purpose quite well.
Fischberger smears UN famine-finding
Recently, a UN organization which tracks human food insecurity globally, issued a report finding that starvation in Gaza, engineered by Israel, constituted a “famine.” Fischberger’s dossier against the lawyers indicates how flimsy and mendacious it is. The article published by an Israeli state media outlet offers a few tweets to support the claims. It argues that one of the two authors, Prof. Andrew Seal, a senior global health lecturer at University College London, was a supporter of terror groups like Hamas and the Houthis, and thus a tainted source who reflects anti-Israel “bias.” Apparently a public health expert, after examining copious amounts of evidence and seeing famine with his own eyes, is “biased” rather than trustworthy.
Fischberger had the temerity to declare “only a month after 10/7,” Seal decried Israeli genocide. Apparently, one had to wait for an unspecified period of time before levelling such claims. Seal had also tweeted that removing Hamas from power would undermine efforts to negotiate a ceasefire. A claim that is transparently true, since there is no other Palestinian party capable of brokering one. For genocide-apologists, this apparently is an unpardonable offense. Also, one of Fischberger’s “deplorables”: Seal said Houthi attacks on shipping en route to Israel were intended to “prevent genocide in Gaza, as required under the Genocide Convention.”
He further declared Israel an “apartheid state” and marked the 70th anniversary of the Nakba as the “destruction of the state of Palestine.” Apparently, yet another indication of his links to terrorism. Fischberger had to draw on all his research expertise to find these nuggets on Seal’s Twitter timeline.
Palestine Chronicle lawfare suit
Returning to the Palestine Chronicle, this lawsuit isn’t a one-off lawfare exercise. It is a test case of sorts. Until now, Israeli lawfare outfits like Shurat HaDin focussed their lawsuit targets on deep-pocket Arab like financial institutions and governments (like Iran). Whether they won or not mattered little. More important, was the legal intimidation and unfavorable publicity generated by these far-fetched charges of funding terrorism.
But until now, media has been off-limits. Israel understood that even if it didn’t respect press freedom at home or in the Conquered Territories, western democracies generally did. However, the Gaza genocide has breached such a taboo. The mass slaughter of over 270 journalists there has broken such barriers. Thus, the Chronicle could be the first of a flood of such cases brought in the US and elsewhere. As Baroud said: ““They are using us as a test case. If they succeed, it won’t just be the Palestine Chronicle. It will be every small outlet that dares to tell the Palestinian story.” Unfortunately, two separate Arab-American legal aid NGOs have either not understood the seriousness of the case; or they’ve shied away from it for some reason.
There won’t be much money at stake since independent media outlets are not well-heeled. But again, that’s hardly the point. The goal is reaching out the long arm of Israeli domination to both shape its narrative and suppress hostile (i.e. pro-Palestine) messaging.
Fischberger is the tip of the spear of Israel’s assault on western grassroots pro-Palestine activism. He is the internet warrior on behalf of Israeli war crimes and a creature of these horrible times.
ADDENDUM
Fischberger penned this for the pro-Israel shmatteh, Jewish Insider. It purported to be an expose of “incitement and hatred,” not on US campuses, as one might expect; but Israeli campuses. He called them “bastions of misinformation and terrorist sympathizers.” It’s bad enough, he opined, for students to rear their ugly heads spewing anti-Semitic slogans. Even worse, the faculty itself was getting in on the action.
The article was a litany of claims similar to those proffered by Israeli anti-university groups like Im Tirzu, which maintains a scorecard of faculty and courses which “harbor severe anti-Zionist biases.” Among other “offenses,” Fischberger singled out a Hebrew University protest, which it urged IDF soldiers to refuse military service. As a result Fischberger claimed (again without any evidence) that every soldier studying on campus would be the target of “reprisals.” It’s not clear who these terror suspects would be (there hasn’t been a campus attack for the last quarter century).
These demonstrations are traitorous acts in the vocabulary of Zionist thugs like Fischberger. It’s worth noting that most of his targets are Israeli Palestinian political parties, which have long been the scourge of the political far-right. For decades it has sought, so far unsuccessfully, to ban them from the Knesset.
He also targeted the anti-war group, Breaking the Silence, which offers soldiers’ accounts of war crimes committed by their units. For its collaboration with “anti-Israel” bodies like the UN, the NGO is excoriated by powerful Judeo-fascist interests. Fischberger plays his part by (falsely) accusing the group of “associating with BDS activists.” That term “association” does a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. He of course doesn’t name these shadowy figures nor provide any evidence supporting his claim.
In today’s legalistic world, there is no such thing as “Justice”; justice and the law, have nothing in common. Justice is imply seen as execution of the Law and as we know, laws have been created to oppress people throughout history. If our Justice system actually understood justice, they would have long since arrested liars like Fischberger but in our glorious “system” he is free to act as a tool for agencies who have the money to sue someone into the ground.
I wonder, upon fighting Fischberger and winning, can Baroud not sue him for filing a frivolous and defamatory lawsuit?
The lobby in Australia is one of the most relentless in the world, none of them ever lived in Israel or have any connection to the place at all, the worst are the facist Ukrainians and South African whites who left after the end of aparthied.
We have this envoy who funds a white supremacist organisation to influence elections (didn’t work because the party they support got nearly wiped out), she wants to control what is taught or allowed to be taught at universities and wrote a report claiming that a few very racist zionist students who felt uncomfortable were really 250 students being harassed.
OUr courts thankfully deemed that criticising Israel is fine, cops who arrested and bashed protestors have been charged with assault in a few cases – the same cops protect the neo nazis who support jews because they hate muslims more than they hate jews.
The global west is finally waking up but only due to massive pressure from the populations – of course our position here is the most ludicrous behind the UK because the UK and Australia had soldiers in Palestine during both wars.
So the lobby here has been defanged, the humanist secular jewish people have fought back against the pricks and won – it is jewish lawyers defending the Palestine supporters.