Are Palestinian medical and relief organizations involved in the “media war”?
Like the so-called Palestinian human rights organizations, the Union of Palestine Medical Relief Committees (UPMRC), run by Dr. Mustafa Al-Bargouti (brother of jailed Fatah Tanzim leader Marwan Al-Bargouti), coordinates its strategies with Dr. Fatchi Arafat’s Palestinian Red Crescent Society in disseminating wild reports of Israeli medicalneglect and torture of Palestinians. There have also been numerous incidents in which false information issued by UPMRC sources has been picked up by U.S. media. On July 11, 2001, for example, the Associated Press reported that a pregnant Palestinian woman was shot to death at an Israeli roadblock. In fact, she didn’t die, and the doctor who had told the AP reporter she’d been shot and killed hadn’t even seen her. He was in a different town at the time. AP reversed itself the next day, reporting that “Israeli soldiers did not bar a Palestinian woman in labor from passing an Israeli checkpoint, refuting initial claims by two Palestinian doctors.” Anoth
