The JPost explains (sort of)

Khaled Abu Tuomeh has written an explanation of how the Jerusalem Post was gulled on the supposed Gaza “honor killing”. It is not entirely inconsistent with my guess of yesterday. Apparently, the reporter was gulled by some phone calls from “Fatah” telling him the video, readily available on the Internet with Iraqi provenance, was of a crime committed by Hamasmembers.

Unfortunately, Tuomeh gives us no proof the phone calls were inded from Fatah, though it is possible; his explanation is insufficient and self-serving. He lays blame on the Israeli military for his own failure to authenticate:

Since the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip, the IDF has banned Israeli journalists from entering the area. Consequently, the Israeli media (and many foreign journalists) are forced to rely on local reporters and Fatah and Hamas officials as a main source of information.

As the French say, Qui s’excuse, s’accuse. Or is it the other way around in this case? Tuomeh doesn’t seem capable of taking responsibility for what happened and his own role in it. Everything is impersonally written, yet this is clearly a personal event.

Who is Tuomeh and how is he being used and for what end? We also don’t know the veracity of his previous report of lurid Fatah videos confiscated by Hamas – or where that came from.

In the larger scheme of things, this is just another small incident, but it is also another chink in the grand myth of media objectivity. Who is reliable? Probably no one.