Propagandist Muhammad Shehada Continues to Promote False Claims

Propagandist Muhammad Shehada Continues to Promote False Claims

By: Karen Bekker | February 19, 2021

For over a year, CAMERA has been documenting the false statements made by Muhammad Shehada, a Gaza-based columnist associated with Richard Falk's NGO, Euro-Med Monitor for Human Rights.

In an article for the Forward, Shehada has:

Called the Palestinian Authority's payments to convicted terrorists a "canard" debunked by the Washington Post, when the referenced Post article actually confirmed the payments were being made.

Claimed he couldn't buy fruit for his dying father due to Israeli restrictions, later retracting the claim after being called out by CAMERA.

Falsely asserted that sewage ran through Gaza's streets due to Israel's bombing of Gaza's power plant, while the actual cause was a tax dispute between Hamas and the PA.

Falsely claimed at the start of the pandemic that Israel banned chemicals necessary to make disinfectants from reaching Gaza.

Apart from the claims about disinfectant, the Forward failed to correct Shehada's false statements.

Shehada has now found a new platform to spread his falsehoods. On February 11, in Newsweek, he wrote about Issa Amro's indictment and conviction:

"In June 2016, Issa [Amro] was indicted on eighteen counts by the Israeli military, on charges—some of them over six years old—that ranged from insulting a soldier to incitement to resisting arrest to participating in an assembly without a permit. In other words, he was indicted for nonviolent resistance. And this week, he was convicted of six of the charges, receiving a suspended sentence."

However, Issa Amro, co-founder of Youth Against Settlements, was convicted on January 6, including assault charges. The Jerusalem Post reported the conviction was for "shoving Israeli security forces."

When contacted by CAMERA, Newsweek amended the text to note that the February proceeding was a sentencing hearing but declined to correct the omission that Amro was indeed convicted on one violent charge.

Notably, Shehada has a pattern of creating misleading narratives about Israel by omitting important facts and even employing complete fabrications in service of his defamations. Now he has found a more mainstream platform to broadcast them.