NIR OZ, Israel—Irit Lahav, a 58-year-old professional tour guide, knows how to walk clueless foreigners through unfamiliar terrain.
But in the year since she survived the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre in her kibbutz, Nir Oz, Lahav has struggled to explain to international media what happened that day. No matter how many interviews she arranges with her traumatized neighbors or tours she gives of their burned-out homes, many journalists have continued to tell the story of the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust as another chapter in Israel’s supposed persecution of the Palestinians.
“People are saying Israel is bad,” Lahav, a former peace activist, told the Washington Free Beacon during a visit to Nir Oz last week. “What? The Palestinians are holding our hostages … How would one feel if it was their daughter, their grandfather, their father, their 2 -year-old children, baby Kfir [Bibas in Hamas captivity]?”
Nir Oz was one of the first Israeli communities to be overrun on Oct. 7, and it was among the hardest hit. Some 120 Hamas and Hamas-affiliated terrorists and 800 Palestinian “civilians,” including women and children, poured into the kibbutz, massacring 41 people and abducting 76 others, according to Lahav. Israel responded with an ongoing war to destroy Hamas and return the hostages.
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— Read More: freebeacon.com
Independent Journalism Is Dying
Ever since President Trump’s miraculous victory, we’ve heard an incessant drumbeat about how legacy media is dying. This is true. The people have awakened to the reality that they’re being lied to by the self-proclaimed “Arbiters of Truth” for the sake of political expediency, corporate self-protection, and globalist ambitions.
But even as independent journalism rises to fill the void left by legacy media, there is still a huge challenge. Those at the top of independent media like Joe Rogan, Dan Bongino, and Tucker Carlson are thriving and rightly so. They have earned their audience and the financial rewards that come from it. They’ve taken risks and worked hard to get to where they are.
For “the rest of us,” legacy media and their proxies are making it exceptionally difficult to survive, let alone thrive. They still have a stranglehold over the “fact checkers” who have a dramatic impact on readership and viewership. YouTube, Facebook, and Google still stifle us. The freer speech platforms like Rumble and 𝕏 can only reward so many of their popular content creators. For independent journalists on the outside looking in, our only recourse is to rely on affiliates and sponsors.
But even as it seems nearly impossible to make a living, there are blessings that should not be disregarded. By highlighting strong sponsors who share our America First worldview, we have been able to make lifelong connections and even a bit of revenue to help us along. This is why we enjoy symbiotic relationships with companies like MyPillow, Jase Medical, and Promised Grounds. We help them with our recommendations and they reward us with money when our audience buys from them.
The same can be said about our preparedness sponsor, Prepper All-Naturals. Their long-term storage beef has a 25-year shelf life and is made with one ingredient: All-American Beef.
Even our faith-driven precious metals sponsor helps us tremendously while also helping Americans protect their life’s savings. We are blessed to work with them.
Independent media is the future. In many ways, that future is already here. While the phrase, “the more the merrier,” does not apply to this business because there are still some bad actors in the independent media field, there are many great ones that do not get nearly enough attention. We hope to change that one content creator at a time.
Thank you and God Bless,
JD Rucker
