Readers of Mosaic are likely familiar with the combination of distortion, credulousness, and confusion that characterizes so much of the coverage of the Gaza war in the mainstream press. But far worse is what can be found in what the British journalist John Ware dubs the alternative media—hard-left, obsessively anti-Israel, and usually anti-Semitic outlets that have persistently denied that Hamas slaughtered civilians, raped women, and engaged in other acts of unspeakable barbarity. They take their cues from Hamas itself, which both distributed video of the atrocities and sent its representatives to claim they never happened on the BBC.

Backing up this campaign of lies are such Islamist outlets as Al-Hiwar TV, which Ware describes as a “Muslim Brotherhood-aligned TV station broadcasting daily to the Arab diaspora from its London studios.” And then there are Hamas sympathizers with academic pedigrees, which the alternative and mainstream media cite as respected authorities:

Khalid El-Awaisi, a lecturer in early Muslim history/Islamic Jerusalem studies at University of Aberdeen, told Muslims at the Masjid-e-Umar [mosque] in Bradford on October 21: “What you heard about attacks on concerts, and all this nonsense, it turns out to be lies.”

One wonders most of all why one of Scotland’s leading universities has a professorship in “Islamic Jerusalem studies” and what precisely that means.

The last part of the equation are such U.S.-based outlets as Max Blumenthal’s Grayzone (famous for denying atrocities committed by Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin), Mondoweiss, and Electronic Intifada. Ware presents a careful forensic dissection of their arguments, which makes for difficult reading. He concludes:

The alternative media are likely to play an increasingly influential role in how the conflict now plays out in Britain and elsewhere. For it is their journalism which the growing number of Hamas sympathizers and apologists here hope will resonate most closely with British Muslims, a large and growing constituency. The fact that six months into the war, a poll showed 76 percent of British Muslims had yet to accept that Hamas had committed murder and rape on October 7 should ring alarm bells. Muslim university graduates were slightly more in denial than non-graduates.

Yesterday, the Iranian foreign minister flew to Geneva to meet with European diplomats. President Trump, meanwhile, indicated that cease-fire negotiations might soon begin with Iran, which would presumably involve Tehran agreeing to make concessions regarding its nuclear program, while Washington pressures Israel to halt its military activities. According to Israeli media, Iran already began putting out feelers to the U.S. earlier this week. Aviram Bellaishe considers the purpose of these overtures:

The regime’s request to return to negotiations stems from the principle of deception and delay that has guided it for decades. Iran wants to extricate itself from a situation of total destruction of its nuclear facilities. It understands that to save the nuclear program, it must stop at a point that would allow it to return to it in the shortest possible time. So long as the negotiation process leads to halting strikes on its military capabilities and preventing the destruction of the nuclear program, and enables the transfer of enriched uranium to a safe location, it can simultaneously create the two tracks in which it specializes—a false facade of negotiations alongside a hidden nuclear race.