Edited footage of protesters chanting “gas the Jews” at the rally outside the Sydney Opera House in October was shared on social media, but NSW Police said an extensive investigation found no evidence of it happening.
This shouldn’t surprise anyone. Political propaganda/lies has been a war tactic for as long as wars have existed and pretty much everyone does it.
Our news organisations are failing us by reporting on things that they haven’t been able to verify. I can forgive regular people spreading unreliable info on social media… but journalists should be held to a higher standard than that.
With all the rapidly developing technology for sound and image manipulation, I imagine it would be difficult if not impossible for media to forensically unpick every video. I don’t know what the solution is, and I’m worried it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Inciting social unrest or political support just got a whole lot more sophisticated.
I think the solution is to clarify that the veracity of the claim has not yet been independently verified, as is practice for wartime reporting and coverage of natural disasters.
“ABC News has received the following video allegedly showing the event, but ABC journalists have not been able to receive independent verification of the claim(s) or the accuracy of what is depicted and spoken”.
This shouldn’t surprise anyone
I’ll admit to, not surprise per se, but certainly a sense of relief. If there were antisemitic chants from a minority of protesters, it wouldn’t at all take away from the importance of the message of the majority. But it would undermine the effort in the eyes of the disinterested public.
There’s no denying that a small minority of actual antisemitic extremists are taking advantage of this moment to harass and target Jewish people, and I also wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear that Israel is promoting false flag operations (after all, it’s a known fact that they propped up Hamas in its early days, and this would be so much less extreme than that). Those two factors combine mean I wouldn’t be surprised if I heard the finding went the other way.
No evidence… unlike the genocide Israel is committing. Bunch of Nazis they are.
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Worth noting the Crikey had an article on this back in December with Cam Wilson and, notably given events since, Antoinette Lattouf on the byline.
https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/12/13/viral-footage-gas-the-jews-police-factcheckers-unverified/
Advocates for a genocide have no standard they will not violate. They are, after all, advocates for a genocide.
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“Where’s the jews?” Who says that? It isn’t a thing. What it does sound like is cops covering their arses for not making arrests.
If they said the entire chant was added later that would have been plausible but the cops are gaslighting us.
Here is the video.
Meanwhile there is gaslighting from others saying the Oct 7 massacre didn’t happen.
watching that video all I can reliably say for certain is they’re chanting something with three syllables. The last one has an oo sound in it.
I heard an expert talking about it and they said analysis of the sound showed some kind of audio loop indicating copy-paste (I didn’t understand the technicalities) which indicated the audio was manipulated.
So the police experts were to be trusted that the chant was “Where’s the Jews?” (absurdly, mind you) rather than “Gas the Jews” and yet…
…and yet we cannot trust them when they explicitly say that there was no doctoring?
Is that what you are suggesting? Where is this expert you heard?
Please update the post title to match the article headline:
Police find no evidence of antisemitic ‘gas’ chant at pro-Palestinian Sydney protest
Since the article also mentions other anti-semetic phrases were employed:
When asked whether there was evidence of other antisemitic phrases being used at the rally, Lanyon said “certainly”.
“There is evidence of that, and those are offensive and completely unacceptable,” he said.
“But I think the major contention has been about the phrase that was chanted, and quite emphatically, our expert has said that it is ‘Where’s the Jews?’”
I will add this to the sidebar but it is best to stick with the original title as in this case. However, SBS may have changed it throughout the day. Thanks
@LineNoise@kbin.social please adhere to my comment
He did not
Decided to have a look at what it looks like from their perspective and as far as a kbin user is concerned I’m not even a moderator of this community and the comments are not distinguished.
Kbin federation appears to be half-arsed at best, which is really disappointing on Kbin’s part.
Police do not say it was edited. That is the the journalist adding unnecessary speculation.
What is the point? To say there was no chant, it was edited, but if there was a chant it was more likely “kiss the jews” or “where’s the juice” (protesting is thirsty work).
