Indiscriminate?
Hamas-controlled Health Ministry has become more truthful than the Gospel for journalists
By Chuck Warren
On Saturday, the Associated Press reported that “Group of swing state Muslims vows to ditch Biden in 2024 over his war stance.” Reportedly, Muslim community leaders “from Michigan, Minnesota, Arizona, Wisconsin, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania gathered behind a lectern that read ‘Abandon Biden, ceasefire now’ in Dearborn, Michigan.” This is causing anxiety and fear among Democrats in that this important voting block is turning against Biden and will hand states like Michigan to Trump.
The electoral politics are fascinating, but it is the next line that exposes the Associated Press’s poor journalistic standards:
The Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza on Saturday updated the death toll in the Israel-Hamas war to 15,200 Palestinians, roughly two-thirds of them women and minors. Some 1,200 Israelis have been killed, most during the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas that triggered the war.
The press has learned a little—and not much more—from the Ahli Arab Hospital episode, when it blindly repeated Hamas’s lie that an Israeli missile had killed 500 civilians, causing embarrassment for many news agencies. Now, mainstream press clarify that their source is the Hamas-run Health Ministry, but nothing beyond that, whereas journalistic standards used to require verification of facts provided by any source before publication.
There is a good parallel for this. Russia has made countless false claims about Ukraine. These claims rarely get reported. On the rare occasions that the press reports them, news agencies use language such as “Without giving evidence, Russia says it probes Ukraine use of chemical weapons.” Hamas is no more reliable than Russia, and it deserves to get the same treatment that Russia gets.
Such special treatment exposes the sympathy of the members of the press. You can also see in their reporting on Democrats vs. Republicans and Biden vs. Trump. Journalists inevitably have some pre-existing biases, but it is troubling that they never bother to keep these biases in check.
Matti Friedman, an Israeli journalist who used to work at the Associated Press’s Jerusalem bureau, wrote in 2014 that the agency had “40 staffers covering Israel and the Palestinian territories.” This meant “significantly more news staff than the [Associated Press] had in China, Russia, or India, or in all of the 50 countries of sub-Saharan Africa combined. It was higher than the total number of news-gathering employees in all the countries where the uprisings of the ‘Arab Spring’ eventually erupted.”
This resulted in reporting every flaw in Israeli society, while, either because they were sympathetic to Hamas or feared losing access and credentials, the same reporters did not report on Hamas’s atrocities or intentionally misled their audience. Friedman continued:
The fact is that Hamas intimidation is largely beside the point because the actions of Palestinians are beside the point: Most reporters in Gaza believe their job is to document violence directed by Israel at Palestinian civilians. That is the essence of the Israel story. In addition, reporters are under deadline and often at risk, and many don’t speak the language and have only the most tenuous grip on what is going on. They are dependent on Palestinian colleagues and fixers who either fear Hamas, support Hamas, or both. Reporters don’t need Hamas enforcers to shoo them away from facts that muddy the simple story they have been sent to tell.
The “15,200 Palestinians, roughly two-thirds of them women and minors” statistics provided by the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza are propaganda. Counting the dead from a bombing campaign takes months. It requires inspecting every destroyed building and digging through the rubble. That’s why in initial disaster reporting the number of missing is always very high, and the number of dead is low. As the time passes, the number of the missing drops, and the number of the dead goes up. There is no way that, amidst a bombing campaign, Hamas has dug all the rubble in mere weeks.
But this begs the question: Even if we take the 15,200 number at face value and accept it as true, since that is too high, how many dead civilians is an acceptable number? Is 7,000 dead acceptable? Is 1,000 acceptable? Is 1 single innocent life lost acceptable?
No. None are acceptable. Only zero innocent deaths are acceptable. However, innocent people do die in wars, and that’s why international law, just war philosophy, and common sense all dictate that militaries should only attack military and strategic targets. The blame for civilian casualties should be placed on the aggressor and on the side that uses civilians as human shields for legitimate targets.
I do not want innocent women, children, or men killed in Israel, Gaza, or anywhere else. The suffering is horrifying, but Hamas leadership and their soldiers of rape, murder, and kidnapping need to face justice, and starting this war makes them responsible for any civilian death.
Those who accuse Israel of purposefully attacking civilians or the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza must bring forth evidence for their claims. But so far, all they have is a magic number, provided by Hamas, which they take at face value and conclude that it means the worst about Israel, even though that number is hardly proof of anything.
This is the rotten fruit of decades of lop-sided reporting from Israel and Palestinian territories. After such a long time, they have managed to demonize the Jewish state and nation to the point that so many don’t bother to pause and ask the most obvious questions, such as how Hamas has managed to retrieve 15,200 dead bodies in only a few weeks while under fire. Instead, they rush to conclude the worst about Israel.
Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Chuck Warren only and not his co-host Sam Stone or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.