Half-True

NYT news analysis of Israel today is an example of why media shares blame for Jewish state’s tarnished image.

‘Half the news that’s fit to print:’ Mainstream media too often amplifies rather than questions Hamas false statistics and accounts of the conflict. (Above, preparing for a Tel Aviv demonstration last month in support of Israeli hostages still held in Gaza tunnels.)

All the facts in Michael Shear’s front-page New York Times news analysis (“Today’s Israel: More Secure, More Isolated,” July 6) are true. But he told only half the story about Israel’s involvement in war since October 7, 2023. It’s an excellent example of how mainstream media like The Times has added to the negative image of Israel, a democracy targeted by Iran and its proxies, including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, that as Islamic jihadists are ideologically and openly committed – not to create a Palestinian state – but to to destroy the world’s only Jewish one.

What’s missing in Shear’s analysis are history, context and basic facts. No mention is made of the fact that Hamas, designated by the U.S. as a terrorist organization, purposefully uses its civilian population as cannon fodder, offering them no shelters or protection while Hamas combatants hide in tunnels. No reference to the fact that foreign media reporters and photographers, under Hamas control, are limited to showing destroyed buildings, chaotic hospital and morgue scenes, and mourning men and women holding wounded or dead children. No mention here that casualty figures in Gaza come directly from Hamas and do not differentiate between citizens and combatants, though The Times and other media sometimes point out that latter fact.

It’s true, as Shear reports, that world opinion has shifted dramatically in a negative direction toward Israel and sympathetically toward Palestinians since October 7. The role of mainstream media, including The Times, is partly to blame for that by creating a false equivalency between the two sides of the conflict that are very different: Israel, which seeks to avoid Gazan civilian casualties by advance warnings, and Hamas, whose fighters videoed and celebrated their slaughter and rape of men, women and children on October 7. The group cynically exploits a military strategy that counts on world sympathy for the inevitable casualties that Israel causes.

The question critics of Israel are unable to answer is this: how would you defend your citizens from vicious jihadists who:

. fight a guerrilla war, dressed as, and purposely surrounded by, civilians;

. place military bases in mosques, hospitals and schools;

.hide in tunnels closed off to innocent civilians of Gaza;

.and use violence against those citizens to prevent humanitarian efforts to feed them?

No other country has had to fight a war like this, especially in an age of instant and global attention. But that is the reality Israel faces. And while doing its best to avoid civilian deaths, it is committed to protecting its citizens from further harm whether or not the rest of the world approves.

Note: This essay is in memory of my father, Rabbi Morris D. Rosenblatt, who served Congregation Kneseth Israel, and the Jewish midshipmen of the U.S. Naval Academy, in Annapolis, Md. for 38 years. His 40th yahrtzeit is Tammuz 11 (July 7). May his memory be a blessing.