Why does the media encourage Hamas violence against Israel?

The Washington Examiner - By Alan Dershowitz – 16-5-2018

For the full article go to - https://tinyurl.com/y8mttfyr

If this were the first time that Hamas deliberately provoked Israel into self-defense actions that resulted in the unintended deaths of Gaza civilians, the media could be excused for playing into the hands of Hamas.

The most recent Hamas provocations — having 40,000 Gazans try to tear down the border fence and enter Israel with Molotov cocktails and other improvised weapons — are part of a repeated Hamas tactic that I have called the “dead baby strategy.” The goal of Hamas is to have Israel kill as many Gazans as possible so that the headlines always begin, and often end, with the body count. Hamas deliberately sends women and children to the front line, while their own fighters hide behind these human shields.

Hamas leaders have long acknowledged this tactic. Fathi Hammad, a Hamas member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, stated as far back as 2008, “For the Palestinian people, death has become an industry, at which women excel, and so do all the people living on this land. The elderly excel at this, and so do the mujahideen and the children. This is why they have formed human shields of the women, the children, the elderly, and the mujahideen, in order to challenge the Zionist bombing machine. It is as if they were saying to the Zionist enemy, ‘We desire death like you desire life.’”

Hamas used this tactic to provoke two wars with Israel in which their fighters fired rockets from civilian areas, including hospitals, schools, and mosques. When Israel responded, it tried its best to avoid civilian casualties, dropping warning leaflets, calling residents of potential targets and dropping nonlethal noise bombs on the roofs of houses that were being used to launch rockets and store explosives. Inevitably, some civilians were killed, and the media blamed Israel for these deaths, despite the precautions it had taken.

The same was true when Hamas built terror tunnels used to kidnap Israeli civilians. The entrances to these tunnels were in civilian areas as well, including mosques and schools. Using their own civilians as human shields, while targeting Israeli civilians, is a double war crime. Yet, the media generally focuses on the reaction of Israel to these war crimes, rather than the war crimes of Hamas.

The cruel reality is that every time Israel accidentally kills a Gaza civilian, Israel loses. And every time Israel kills a Gaza civilian, Hamas wins. Israelis grieve every civilian death its army accidentally causes. Hamas benefits from every death Israel accidentally causes. That is why it encourages its women and children to become martyrs.

Calling this the “dead baby strategy” may seem cruel because it is cruel. But don’t blame the messenger for accurately describing this tactic. Blame those who cynically use it. Blame the media for playing into the hands of those who use it by reporting only the body count and not the deliberate Hamas tactic that leads to one-sided body counts.

It is true that Gaza is in a desperate situation and that it is wounded. But the wound itself is self-inflicted. When Israel ended its occupation of Gaza, removing every single soldier and settler, the territory could have become the Singapore on the Mediterranean Sea. It is a beautiful area with a large seacoast. It received infusions of cash and other help from Europe. Israel left behind agricultural equipment and hot houses.

But instead of using these resources to feed, house, and educate its citizens, Hamas built rockets, terror tunnels, and Molotov cocktails. It threw dissenters off the roof and murdered members of the Palestinian Authority who were willing to recognize Israel and negotiate with it. Hamas rejects the two-state solution or any solution that leaves Israel intact. The only solution for it is violence, and the events at the fence these past days are a manifestation of that violence.

Would any country in the world allow 40,000 people, sworn to its destruction, to knock down a border fence and attack its citizens living peacefully near the border? Of course not. Could Israel have done more to reduce casualties among those trying to breach the border fence? I don’t know, and neither do the legions of armchair generals who are criticizing Israel for the steps it took to prevent a catastrophe among the residents of Kibbutzim and towns that are proximate to the border fence.

One thing is crystal clear: Hamas will continue to use the ”dead baby strategy” as long as the media continues to report the deaths in the manner in which it has reported them in recent weeks. Many in the media are complicit in these deaths because their one-sided reporting encourages Hamas to send innocent women and children to the front line. Perhaps Israel could do a better job of defending its civilians but it is certain that the media can do a better job of accurately reporting the Hamas strategy that results in so many innocent deaths.

There is a marvelous cartoon that illustrates the difference between Hamas and Israel. It shows an Israeli soldier standing in front of a stroller with a baby in it, shielding the baby. Then it shows a Hamas terrorist standing behind a stroller with the baby in it, using the baby to shield him. This cartoon better illustrates the reality that is occurring at the Gaza fence than most of the “objective” reporting by the media.

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BLACKLISTING OF PRO-ISRAEL ORGANIZATION BY ASSOCIATED PRESS

By David Bernstein 2/12/2014

For the full article see; http://tinyurl.com/nllnlz7  

Former AP journalist Matti Friedman wrote an article this past Summerabout how the media frames the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians for an online magazine called Tablet. To his surprise, it went viral, with almost one hundred thousand Facebook shares. It was recommended at the VC by David Post and me. Many people think it’s the single best article ever written on the topic, in part because it provides a rare insider perspective, from someone who actually worked for a major media company’s Jerusalem bureau.

Friedman is back with an even longer and, I think, even more revealing article on the same topic, this time in The Atlantic. Among other things, he ruminates about how many Israel correspondents act not as objective journalists, but as part of class of mostly foreign elites who live in Israel or the territories and have taken up the Palestinian cause. This class includes the employees of international organizations based in the Palestinians territories, and several left-wing Israeli NGOs.

Friedman points out that these highly influential organizations are almost never subjected to any real scrutiny by the reporters who rely on them as objective sources. And indeed, the Associated Press, according to Friedman, actually banned its journalists from interviewing Gerald Steinberg, an American-Israeli professor who runs the watchdog organization NGO Monitor out of Jerusalem. Here’s the relevant paragraph:

Around this time, a Jerusalem-based group called NGO Monitor was battling the international organizations condemning Israel after the Gaza conflict, and though the group was very much a pro-Israel outfit and by no means an objective observer, it could have offered some partisan counterpoint in our articles to charges by NGOs that Israel had committed “war crimes.” But the bureau’s explicit orders to reporters were to never quote the group or its director, an American-raised professor named Gerald Steinberg. In my time as an AP writer moving through the local conflict, with its myriad lunatics, bigots, and killers, the only person I ever saw subjected to an interview ban was this professor.

Long-time readers will recall that I’ve relied on NGO Monitor’s work in the past. Indeed, one of the most consequential “scoops” I’ve had as a blogger, that Human Rights Watch Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson fundraised among rich Saudi Arabians with a pledge to use the money to counter pro-Israel forces in the West, came from NGO Monitor. My blog post on this, reprinted at the Wall Street Journal’s website, set off a controversy about HRW’s anti-Israel bias that has yet to fully recede (and assuredly won’t until someone less maniacally anti-Israel than Whitson and her boss Kenneth Roth is in charge).