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JERUSALEM/GAZA (Reuters) - The Islamist group Hamas urged Palestinians on Thursday to abandon peace efforts and launch a new uprising against Israel in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as its capital.

Another application of Reuters fauxtography Reuters is notorious for its fauxtography scandals, where photos published by the agency have been doctored in an effort to conceal or distort the facts associated with the incident portrayed (see our right side panel). Less well-recognized is that Reuters editors frequently select photos for publication that only tell one side of a story.  Even more egregious, are those times when editors select photos which are entirely unrelated to the associated story. Consider this story by Reuters historical fabricators Nidal al-Mughrabi and Allyn Fisher-Ilan about the latest round of (92) Palestinian rockets and mortars...

"I know it when I see it" was the famous response by a U.S. Supreme Court justice to the vexed problem of defining pornography. Terrorism may be no less difficult to define, but the wanton killing of schoolchildren, of mourners at a funeral, or workers at their desks in skyscrapers surely fits the know-it-when-I-see-it definition.The press, however, generally shies away from the word terrorist, preferring euphemisms. Take the assault that led to the deaths of some 400 people, many of them children, in Beslan, Russia, on September 3. Journalists have delved deep into their thesauruses, finding at least twenty euphemisms...

Israeli forces killed a Hamas militant during a firefight with gunmen in the Gaza Strip yesterday, hours after Palestinian President Yasser Arafat said he would kill himself if Israel tried to expel or kill him. Israeli soldiers shot and killed Jihad Abu Swerah, 34, a senior activist in the Izz-el-Deen al-Qassam armed wing of Hamas during an operation to arrest him at his home in central Gaza, military sources said. The raid was part of a series of Israeli measures to clamp down on militants who have been behind the killing of 38 people in suicide bombings in Israel over...

Spielberg's 'Munich' miffs Palestinian mastermindSep 06 9:18 AM US/Eastern By Nidal al-Mughrabi GAZA (Reuters) - The Palestinian mastermind of the 1972 Munich Olympics raid, in which 11 Israeli athletes died, said director Steven Spielberg should have consulted him about a new film on the episode to be sure to get the story right. In an irony worthy of a John le Carre novel, Mohammad Daoud echoed veterans of Israel's Mossad spy service in questioning the sources used for "Munich," a thriller chronicling the massacre and the Israeli revenge assassinations that followed. "I know nothing about this film. If someone...

GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli warplanes and helicopters pounded the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Saturday, killing at least 205 people in the bloodiest one-day death toll in 60 years of conflict with the Palestinians. Militants in the Gaza Strip, who have launched dozens of rocket attacks against Israel since a truce expired just over a week ago, fired more salvoes that killed one Israeli man and wounded several others. Both sides said they were ready to stage wider assaults, threatening to plunge the region into a crisis that could leave stalled talks over Palestinian statehood in tatters. Black smoke billowed over...

GAZA, April 23 (Reuters) - When Um Khaled wants to see her grandchildren on the other side of the Gaza Strip, she faces an exhausting, day-long journey of just a few miles. "It's as if you are travelling to another country," Um Khaled said of her visits to Gaza City from the town of Khan Younis. Gaza has been spared the destruction and fierce fighting of Israel's West Bank offensive, but the Palestinians who live there say its checkpoints and road closures have guaranteed misery as they try to go about their daily lives. Many cannot work because they cannot...

GAZA (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein has gone from hero to zero among Palestinians angry that the man they deemed their only true Arab champion was removed so easily by the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. "It has become clear that we all were deceived by Saddam's words," said Gaza taxi driver Ahmad Yahya. "Where is Saddam now? Why did the Iraqis not fight (more)? It is a shame!" For Palestinians, the Iraqi president was the sole Arab leader to offer more than rhetoric against the United States and its perceived pro-Israel bias in their long conflict with the Jewish state...

Israeli artillery pounded the northern Gaza Strip on Wednesday as troops and tanks prepared to widen an offensive designed to force Palestinian militants to release an abducted soldier. Israel also turned up the heat on Syria, sending warplanes low over one of President Bashar al-Assad's palaces to warn him against backing militants who kidnapped the soldier, the Israeli army said. Bashar was there at the time, Israeli media said. Threatening what he called extreme steps if Corporal Galid Shalit was not freed, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said a large-scale operation that began with a push into southern Gaza earlier...

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas are trying to recruit Palestinian militants for attacks on Israelis in order to sabotage Middle East peace efforts, senior Palestinian officials said on Wednesday. The accusations from political and security officials, a day after Israel and the Palestinians announced a cease-fire, echoed charges from the Jewish state. The officials declined to be identified. Hizbollah, backed by Syria and Iran, declined comment. One top Palestinian official said security services were investigating Hizbollah funding for militants in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip (news - web sites). Another said clear links had been...

GAZA (Reuters) - The Palestinians have been promised substantial U.S. aid if they ensure peace in the Gaza Strip (news - web sites) should Israel end its 37-year occupation, their foreign minister said on Thursday. Nabil Shaath told Reuters in an interview that talks were going ahead on drawing Islamist militants into a body to help end violence in Gaza and further a U.S.-backed peace plan that promises statehood to Palestinians. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) wants to evacuate Jewish settlers from Gaza in a unilateral move that could supersede Washington's "road map" plan, stymied by...

Hamas Founder Says Bush Has Declared War on Islam By Nidal al-Mughrabi GAZA (Reuters) - Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder of the Islamic militant group Hamas, emerged from hiding on Wednesday and denounced President Bush's speech to the United Nations as a declaration of war on Islam. "Today Bush declares war on Islam under the pretext of terrorism and ideologies that feed terrorism. Bush views Islam as terrorism," the wheelchair-bound cleric, 64, told reporters at a mosque in the Gaza Strip (news - web sites). Yassin has been in hiding because of Israeli missile strikes against Hamas leaders after a wave...

GAZA, Feb 6 (Reuters) - When entrepreneur Ahmed Abu Dayya first heard that Danish caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad were being reprinted across Europe, he knew exactly what his customers in Gaza would want: flags to burn. Abu Dayya ordered 100 hard-to-find Danish and Norwegian flags for his Gaza City shop and has been doing a swift trade. "I do not take political stands. It is all business," he said in an interview. "But this time I was offended by the assault on the Prophet Mohammad." A wave of anger has swept the Muslim world over the publication of the...

GAZA (Reuters) - The Palestinian mastermind of the Munich Olympics attack in which 11 Israeli athletes died said on Tuesday he had no regrets and that Steven Spielberg's new film about the incident would not deliver reconciliation. The Hollywood director has called "Munich," which dramatises the 1972 raid and Israel's reprisals against members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), his "prayer for peace." Mohammed Daoud planned the Munich attack on behalf of PLO splinter group Black September, but did not take part and does not feature in the film. He voiced outrage at not being consulted for the thriller and...

"We have begun to integrate reservist forces into the action in the Gaza Strip," military spokesman Avi Benayahu said on Israel's Channel 2 TV. "We aren't acting in panic, but cautiously." His phrasing left it unclear whether Israeli forces had been ordered to storm into built-up areas, risking higher military casualties as well as heavy civilian losses. Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni met to discuss their next move, Israel radio said, predicting more attacks on smuggling tunnels used by Hamas on the Gaza-Egyptian border, and possibly a wider operation. Thick black smoke rose over the...

GAZA (Reuters) - Around 10,000 Palestinians danced and sang, some firing rifles in the air, in early celebrations on Thursday of Israel's coming withdrawal from occupied Gaza and part of the West Bank. The festivities in Gaza City's main central square were sponsored by a special committee created by the Palestinian Authority government to raise public awareness of the pullout and encourage Palestinians to mark it peacefully. Egyptian security officers have been brought in to help train a new 5,000-man Palestinian force to safeguard vacated Jewish settlements and prevent feared looting and seizures of property by armed factions powerful...

GAZA (Reuters) - Flying chairs and punches thrown by women students at a Gaza university this week may seem a rather minor manifestation of the factional fighting that has riven Palestinian society over the past year or so. But with Hamas and Fatah still smarting from bloody armed clashes in 2007, when the Islamists routed President Mahmoud Abbas's PLO forces in the enclave, the scuffle shows how deep the rift runs. .... The fight at the university in Khan Younis was, according to witnesses, triggered by arguments over mutual allegations of repression between leaders of Hamas, who now control Gaza,...

GAZA (Reuters) - Israel warned the governing Palestinian faction Hamas that the "sky will fall on them" if they harm a captured soldier after a deadline passed on Tuesday for the Jewish state to accept a prisoner exchange. While Israeli tanks and infantry massed along the Gaza Strip's northern border for a threatened ground incursion, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the campaign to free Corporal Gilad Shalit could turn into "a long war." Three Palestinian factions, among them the Hamas armed wing, pulled out of negotiations with Egyptian mediators trying to end the standoff over Shalit, a Hamas political leader...

GAZA, Dec 30 (Reuters) - European Union monitors withdrew from Gaza's border with Egypt on Friday after Palestinian police imposed an armed blockade to protest the killing of a colleague in spiralling internal violence. Already busy searching for three Britons abducted nearby on Wednesday, officials scrambled to defuse the standoff at the Rafah border crossing, whose opening last month was hailed as a step to make Gaza a testing ground for Palestinian statehood. Unrest has been growing since Israel withdrew in September after 38 years of occupation. The power struggle among police, gangs and factions waging a 5-year-old uprising against...

NABLUS, West Bank (Reuters) - An Israeli special forces officer was killed in a West Bank raid on Tuesday, in which two Palestinian militants and two bystanders were also killed, witnesses and military sources said. Violence in an almost four-year-old Palestinian revolt is sputtering on in the extended run-up to Israel's planned 2005 evacuation of all settlers from Gaza and some from the West Bank. Each side aims to score "victory" in any Israeli pullback. Israeli commandos raided a residential building in the Ein Beit-Ilma refugee camp of the West Bank city of Nablus before dawn, killing two men from...