Israel’s brutality cannot continue in plain sight 94%

7/19/2026, 8:45:45 AM

BS Summary: This article contains 27 faulty reasoning types, including Biased Writer Voice, Appeal to Authority, and Indoctrination, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 63.6% saturation with 264 hits. Analysis detected 1,750 faulty-reasoning hits from 415 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 89.3% and a BS Rank of 94% (1,431 of 21,887 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 93.50% of the article peer group.

Nesrine Malik’s incisive piece (In Israel’s prisons, torture and death have become a norm that it barely tries to hide, 13 July) lays bare the fact that all the illegal detentions, deaths, torture and sexual abuse in Israeli prisons are not aberrations from a legal system, but deeply embedded in the practices and intentions of the state. 
She mentions the psychological dimension to deliberately eroding the capacity of Palestinian civil society to exert any kind of autonomy. 
As mental health practitioners, working alongside our Palestinian co-professionals, we have long recorded the ways in which practices of degradation, humiliation and debilitation constitute attacks on minds and relationships as well as bodies. 
They are designed to undermine the fabric of family, social and community life, and to destroy those systems of connectivity upon which all citizens, especially children, are dependent if they are to flourish. 
The carceral system is part of a set of state interventions which not only detain, murder, maim and mutilate Palestinian bodies, but also conduct an unrelenting assault on their growth, dignity, personhood and identity. 
Malik is right to highlight the extent to which western governments and most mainstream media act as if it is the “extremist fringes” rather than the state itself that should be criticised or sanctioned. 
In doing so, they fail to heed the pronouncements from Israeli government representatives themselves and do a profound disservice to the victims of this violent, racist and unrestrained regime. 
Gwyn Daniel 
UK and International Palestine Mental Health Networks 
Thank you once again for Nesrine Malik’s continued efforts to draw attention to the brutality that has been inflicted on the Palestinian people. 
While Andy Burnham has acknowledged that the British government’s response to the Israel bombardment and mass killing in Gaza “didn’t get it right”, there have since been innumerable atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank, even after a ceasefire was declared. 
Sanctions on illegal settlers who attack and kill Palestinians will not be enough  the Israeli government provides them with immunity, leaves the people of Gaza camped amid devastation and detains thousands of Palestinians without trial in reportedly dreadful conditions. 
The UK and Europe need to act far more decisively regarding trade with Israel and take meaningful steps to ending the illegal occupation of Palestine. 
Phil Gaunt 
Dumbarton 
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Article reasoning-pattern comparisonThis article: 21.9%the Guardian: 3.7%Confirmation Bias21.9%This article: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.6%Anchoring Bias0.0%This article: 8.0%the Guardian: 3.1%Availability Heuristic8.0%This article: 0.0%the Guardian: 1.2%Representativeness Heuristic0.0%This article: 0.0%the Guardian: 1.0%Hindsight Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%the Guardian: 1.6%Overconfidence Bias0.0%This article: 7.7%the Guardian: 6.1%Framing Effect7.7%This article: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.6%Loss Aversion0.0%This article: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.6%Status Quo Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.2%Sunk Cost Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%the Guardian: 2.5%Optimism Bias0.0%This article: 14.5%the Guardian: 2.1%Pessimism Bias14.5%This article: 63.6%the Guardian: 10.4%Negativity Bias63.6%This article: 0.0%the Guardian: 1.6%Self-Serving Bias0.0%This article: 14.9%the Guardian: 1.4%Fundamental Attribution Error14.9%This article: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.3%Actor-Observer Bias0.0%This article: 8.2%the Guardian: 1.3%In-Group Bias8.2%This article: 8.2%the Guardian: 0.7%Out-Group Homogeneity Bias8.2%This article: 0.0%the Guardian: 3.2%Halo Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.3%Horn Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.0%Dunning-Kruger Effect0.0%This article: 9.9%the Guardian: 1.2%Recency Bias9.9%This article: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.4%Primacy Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.1%Blind-Spot Bias0.0%This article: 7.0%the Guardian: 2.0%Ad Hominem7.0%This article: 8.2%the Guardian: 0.6%Straw Man8.2%This article: 26.0%the Guardian: 3.8%Appeal to Authority26.0%This article: 17.6%the Guardian: 1.7%False Dilemma17.6%This article: 0.0%the Guardian: 1.1%Slippery Slope0.0%This article: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.1%Circular Reasoning0.0%This article: 13.7%the Guardian: 6.3%Hasty Generalization13.7%This article: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.2%Red Herring0.0%This article: 2.7%the Guardian: 0.7%Bandwagon2.7%This article: 14.2%the Guardian: 5.6%Appeal to Emotion14.2%This article: 19.8%the Guardian: 0.9%Begging the Question19.8%This article: 9.9%the Guardian: 2.9%Post Hoc (False Cause)9.9%This article: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.1%Tu Quoque0.0%This article: 9.6%the Guardian: 0.4%Burden of Proof9.6%This article: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.2%Appeal to Nature0.0%This article: 8.2%the Guardian: 0.4%Composition/Division8.2%This article: 0.0%the Guardian: 3.1%Anecdotal0.0%This article: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.1%No True Scotsman0.0%This article: 4.8%the Guardian: 1.6%Ambiguity (Equivocation)4.8%This article: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.0%Gambler’s Fallacy0.0%This article: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.1%Middle Ground0.0%This article: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.1%Personal Incredulity0.0%This article: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.1%Special Pleading0.0%This article: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.3%Genetic Fallacy0.0%This article: 17.8%the Guardian: 1.6%Unattributed Quote17.8%This article: 13.7%the Guardian: 1.1%Quote-first Misdirection13.7%This article: 54.0%the Guardian: 10.4%Biased Writer Voice54.0%This article: 22.2%the Guardian: 1.8%Indoctrination22.2%This article: 11.6%the Guardian: 3.1%Politically Left Leaning Bias11.6%This article: 0.0%the Guardian: 0.3%Politically Right Leaning Bias0.0%This article: 3.9%the Guardian: 1.0%Attempt to Sell a Product or S…3.9%

415 words analyzed.

Speakers

5speakers17%attributed speech343writer words
Voice mapSelect a segment to jump to its words
Writer's voice • 7 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 57 words • 100.0% coverageNesrine Malik • 20 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 33 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 33 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 34 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 34 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 29 words • 100.0% coverageGwyn Daniel • 2 words • 0.0% coverageUK and International Palestine Mental Health Networks • 7 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 23 words • 100.0% coverageAndy Burnham • 41 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 40 words • 100.0% coverageWriter's voice • 25 words • 100.0% coveragePhil Gaunt • 2 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 1 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 11 words • 0.0% coverageWriter's voice • 16 words • 100.0% coverage
Selected voice

Andy Burnham

100%flagged-word coverage
41 attributed words57% of attributed speech100% writer coverage
0%50.0%100.0%Unattributed Quote+90.4 ptsWriter: 9.6%Andy Burnham: 100.0%100.0%Biased Writer Voice-65.3 ptsWriter: 65.3%Andy Burnham: 0.0%0.0%Indoctrination-26.8 ptsWriter: 26.8%Andy Burnham: 0.0%0.0%Quote-first Misdirection-16.6 ptsWriter: 16.6%Andy Burnham: 0.0%0.0%Politically Left Leaning B-14.0 ptsWriter: 14.0%Andy Burnham: 0.0%0.0%Attempt to Sell a Product -4.7 ptsWriter: 4.7%Andy Burnham: 0.0%0.0%

Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.

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Analysis

Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.