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| Boy George (TOI) |
That is how I feel every time I see images coming out of
Gaza showing children wandering through the rubble of their destroyed homes in
tattered clothing after having just lost their parents in an Israeli airstrike,
crying, “Where are my parents? Why were they killed? What will I do now?”
Last night, a network correspondent reporting on yet another
airstrike in Gaza practically had tears in his eyes, his voice filled with both
sympathy and anger—sympathy for the Palestinian victims and anger at the
Israeli government for continuing these attacks even now, long after the
ceasefire.
Of course, no one wants to see children suffering. It is
indeed heartbreaking. And the easiest target for blame is Israel’s continued
airstrikes against Hamas strongholds that remain armed and ready to resume
terrorist attacks against innocent Israeli civilians at the first opportunity.
But the heartbreak I feel is not the same as that expressed
by the reporter or by the typical viewer watching those images while listening
to the way they are reported. It is almost impossible for the average American
viewer not to blame Israel for the suffering of Palestinians. These
heart-rending images continue to appear on the nightly news. Although less
frequently than during the height of the war, they are still shown often enough
to remind Americans of the enormous number of Palestinian casualties resulting
from Israel’s military campaign.
And that’s the thing. Almost no one mentions how much Israel
has suffered, and is still suffering from the Hamas attack on October 7. Nor is
it ever mentioned that Israel has not deliberately killed a single innocent
civilian. Much less a child. The same cannot be said about Hamas.
On the contrary, the IDF goes out of its way, more than any
other military in the history of modern warfare, to warn civilians to evacuate
before carrying out airstrikes. Every one of those strikes is intended as a
defensive measure to prevent Hamas from ever again carrying out the worst
massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
Hamas committed those atrocities with glee and a sense of
religious righteousness. Its leaders value not only the deaths of Israelis but
even the deaths of their own people, believing that both serve their cause.
They understand the public relations value of civilian casualties. Every dead
Palestinian whom they can portray as an innocent victim helps convince the
world that Israel is committing genocide. Their ideology considers it a
virtuous religious act worthy of eternal reward.
Virtually the entire mainstream media ignores this reality
despite knowing full well that it is true…
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