“Like Holocaust survivors.”
That was Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar’s description of the appearance of Eli Sharabi, 52; Or Levy, 34; and Ohad Ben Ami, 56, the three hostages released this past Shabbos by Hamas in exchange for 183 Arab prisoners awaiting trial or serving sentences, many of them for the attempted or successful murder of Jews.
Mr. Saar’s observation was born of the fact that the Israeli hostages, emerging from their long and cruel captivity, were gaunt and hollow-eyed. Dr. Yael Frenkel Nir, who was appointed to arrange the treatment of two of the hostages, said they were in poor condition. The third was in a “severe nutritional state,” according to an official at the hospital where he was being treated.
Even The New York Times, a medium not often sympathetic to Israelis or given to portraying evil as evil, described the Jews’ release thus: “Three frail, painfully thin hostages were paraded on a stage before a crowd in the city of Deir al-Balah, each holding a Hamas-issued ‘release certificate,’ and made to mouth words written for them.”
The release, the paper wrote, was a “staged handover where rifle-toting Hamas fighters prodded their gaunt captives to give short speeches, effectively at gunpoint, thanking the militants who had held them captive for 16 months.”
Mr. Sharabi mentioned how excited he was to be able to see his wife and two daughters, apparently not having been informed by his Hamas captors that their compatriots had murdered his family.
Friends and relatives of two of the released hostages, The Times further reported, “cheered and shuddered as they watched a live broadcast of the men’s release.” It quoted one Israeli as recalling that “People were joyous and shouting as they were coming out of the car. But as soon as we saw them, there was total silence. People started to cry. It was gut-wrenching.”
But, of course, in the interest of “balance,” the Gray Lady saw fit to go on to report that “Many of the released Palestinian prisoners were in visibly poor condition,” also “appearing frail and thin.”
As if killers and would-be killers who have been enjoying three meals a day, climate-controlled shelter, access to pens, pencils, paper, books, newspapers and radio broadcasts, not to mention literacy and language courses (but who regularly go on hunger strikes) are some sort of parallel to law-abiding civilians who were violently snatched from their lives, sadistically abused and held in dank tunnels.
Other news organizations were even worse.
Honest Reporting took note of the BBC’s live news coverage, in which the broadcaster, having long exhibited an astoundingly tone-deaf attitude toward Israel, reported that there were “concerns over [the] appearance of hostages on both sides.” Hostages? Imprisoned murderers are hostages?
And both sides? Like red and black in checkers, or players facing one another across a tennis net? Just two sides. Pick a winner.
For its part, the British daily The Guardian offered the following headline: “Fifth Ceasefire exchange sees gaunt captives emerge from Gaza and Israel.” Equally gaunt, equally captive, equally, presumably, mistreated.
Then there was CNN, which also took pains to “balance” its report on the condition of the Hamas-held hostages with that of the criminals released from Israeli jails. “Many of” the latter, the network claimed, appeared emaciated and in poor health.” Hamas itself reported (if even that carries any credibility) that a mere seven of the 183 prisoners were “transferred to hospital” upon their release.
I’m trying to imagine media reporting at the end of the Second World War aiming for some sort of “balance,” by equating the physical state of Jews released from concentration camps with that of newly freed Nazi prisoners of war, some of whom may not have thrived in Allied prison camps. I can’t.
The reason I can’t is because during that time, a time of sanity and clarity, people—including journalists—didn’t hesitate to call evil evil and treat it accordingly, rather than aim for some spurious “impartiality.”
It’s time the world reclaimed that clarity.
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