Key Takeaways:
- Several media outlets sought to whitewash the Palestinian prisoners released as part of the ceasefire deal, sanitizing their terrorist actions and sympathetically profiling their families as they awaited their release.
- While producing sentimental pieces on the families of these prisoners, these same media outlets largely ignored the victims of these terrorists and their families.
- The inclusion of these one-sided sympathetic profiles of some terrorists and their families alongside reports on the release of Israeli hostages creates a false moral equivalence.
An elderly father awaiting the return of his sons after 32 years in prison.
A grown man excited to see his father, who was arrested when he was only 9 years old.
This was the sympathetic portrayal of a Palestinian family awaiting the return of their long-imprisoned relatives as presented by France24 on October 12, 2025.
Only near the end of this nearly two-minute report are viewers informed why two members of the Shamasneh family have been imprisoned for over 30 years: They took part in a terror attack that killed 3 Israelis in Jerusalem.
This sympathetic profiling of the family of a Palestinian terrorist by a mainstream media organization was not a singular occurrence.
Since Israel announced that it would release 250 high-profile Palestinian prisoners as part of its ceasefire agreement with Hamas, several other media organizations have helped whitewash these terrorists’ crimes by focusing on the family members awaiting their release.
On the eve of the prisoner release, The New York Times published a piece that focused on several Palestinian terrorists and their families, including those who had suffered a “crushing blow” when they found out that their violent relative would not be released.
Aside from gleaning sympathy for these terrorists and their families by describing the travails that they supposedly endured over these long prison sentences, The New York Times also sought to whitewash their violent actions by noting that some of their victims were “settlers” (an implicit justification for their actions) or focusing on their non-terror activities, referring to one’s career as a “veteran Fatah member” and another as a “writer” who “has published poetry collections and several novels” from prison.
BBC Fails to Tell Viewers That Palestinian Prisoner Happens To Be a Suicide Bomb Plotter
The UK media also took part as the BBC’s Lucy Williamson published an emotion-laden story about the sister of one of the released prisoners, Murad, who was distraught at the fact that he was not being released to Ramallah, but was going to be exiled to outside the West Bank.
What Williamson left out of her report was that Murad was a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade who was responsible for sending a suicide bomber who killed four Israeli civilians in 2006.
“Floods of Tears”
Similarly, Sky News published a report on the return of Palestinian prisoners to Ramallah, noting the sadness of families whose released relatives were not sent to the West Bank but were deported elsewhere.
Sky’s Middle East correspondent Adam Parsons is effusive with his descriptions of “floods of tears” and “pockets of utter sadness.” But when it comes to the Israeli victims of these dangerous prisoners, hardly a word. It appears that reminding readers why these Palestinians were imprisoned in the first place does not lend itself to the sympathetic coverage that Sky News was going for.
Drawing a False Moral Equivalence
When it comes to the release of 250 dangerous Palestinian terrorists in exchange for 20 living Israeli hostages, the media not only sought to sanitize them and their families by publishing sentimental puff pieces, but it also sought to draw a moral equivalence between the terrorist prisoners and the hostages by referring to both groups as either “hostages” or as “prisoners.”
The following are just some examples of this phenomenon that permeated the mainstream media over the past few days:
There are not two morally equal sides in this story. But that hasn’t stopped the media from misreporting it that way.
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