HS Insider, the Los Angeles Times’ initiative “for students, by students,” strives to “advance media literacy and empower the next generation of storytellers.” Accordingly, the program allows students to publish articles under the LA Times’ banner. These stories are then aggregated as news items by websites like Google News and Yahoo News, thereby reaching tens of millions of people.

“HS Insider was created as a forum for young journalists to develop their skills and share their experiences,” then-LA Times publisher Austin Beutner said when the initiative was launched in 2014.

However, instead of promoting responsible journalism and critical thinking, the outlet publishes items that fall way short of basic editorial standards.

On Saturday, HS Insider gave a platform to an article titled, “The story behind #istandwithpalestine,” written by a Fountain Valley High School student. Virtually every paragraph of the 980-word piece misrepresents the facts and contains historical falsehoods, raising questions about the LA Times’ commitment to educating future journalists.

For example, the article begins by placing blame on the Jewish state for the War of Independence. “The conflict began in 1948 when Israel went to war with neighboring Arab countries of Jordan, Syria and Egypt,” it claims.

In reality, the Arab armies initiated an all-out attack on the Jewish state on June 15, 1948, barely a day after Israel declared independence. Six months earlier, the Arabs had rejected the UN Partition Plan, which endorsed the creation of Jewish and Arab states side by side. The Yishuv — the Jewish community in what was then-British-controlled Mandatory Palestine — accepted the proposal, whereas Arab nations rejected it.

Similarly, the article in question rewrites the history of Hamas’ evolution: “Hamas, which translates to Islamic Resistance Movement, has been identified as an Islamist, militant and nationalist group that has been launching attacks against Israel from residential areas since the 1980s in hopes of restoring the power Palestine once had.”

Describing Hamas’ aim as simply interested in “restoring the power Palestine once had” is misleading on two counts.

First, the US-designated terrorist organization’s genocidal charter (1988) calls for the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews worldwide. Second, there has never been any sovereign state named “Palestine.”

The piece also falsely blames the Second Intifada — the Palestinian terror wave that rocked Israel between 2000 and 2005 — on then-Likud leader and future prime minister Ariel Sharon. The author maintains that his visit to “Islam’s third holiest site, Temple Mount at Jerusalem [sic]” sparked the Intifada, eventually “causing the Palestinians to take Hamas as their leader.”

The piece then asserts that the May 2021 conflict between Israel and Gaza-based terror groups was the “result of an Israeli Supreme Court decision to evict the Palestinian famiilies [sic] in neighborhoods of East Jerusalem such as Sheikh Jarrah using a series of police raids.” In reality, the Supreme Court has yet to render a verdict in the Sheikh Jarrah case.

The highly contested court session was delayed in May at the request of Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit. According to local media, Israel’s security services feared that the trial could further fuel tensions in the holy city. The Palestinian squatters remain in the properties until a new court date has been set.

More importantly, the sentence quoted above reinforces the false narrative that the property dispute in Sheikh Jarrah/Shimon Hatzadik was the catalyst for the latest round of hostilities. In fact, the actual sequence of events began with a wave of Palestinian attacks on Jews, which spread through TikTok.

HonestReporting has debunked this simplistic framing repeatedly (see here, here and here).

HS Insider’s editorial process is not transparent and submissions like “The story behind #istandwithpalestine,” in addition to others (see here and here), clearly do not meet the ethics guidelines of the outlet.

Although the HS Insider Quick Start guide claims that an editor reviews articles before publication, this is seemingly not the case. This not only effectively results in the promulgation of falsities but also serves to reinforce the inaccuracies that students are apparently being taught, which warp their viewpoints and opinions on Israel.

Akiva Van Koningsveld is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias, where this video was first published.

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