The Gray Lady has some memory problems
The New York Times was widely and rightly ridiculed for headlining its initial report on Chol Hamoed’s attempted hijacking of a flydubai plane, wherein an Omani copilot stabbed the Indian pilot and sent the plane plunging downward, as “an altercation between” the two men.
After all, the plane was full of Israelis, and it was some of them who subdued the attacker and allowed the plane to be righted, likely avoiding a 9/11-style act of mass murder. And downplaying both anti-Israel terrorism and Israeli heroism is the default position, repeated ad nauseam, of “the newspaper of broken record” (I should copyright that, no?).
Eventually, the paper got up to snuff on the details of the act of terrorism. But a mere three days earlier, the Gray Lady offered up another of its misleading headlines (and headlines are often all that many readers pay attention to), and this one won’t likely ever be put into its proper context.
“Israel Keeps Expanding Into Gaza Despite Cease-Fire, Satellite Images Show” was the banner touting a report that, in the paper’s electronic version, included a good number of graphics.
Admittedly, the headline wasn’t inherently counterfactual. Because of ongoing Hamas activity, and the terror group’s refusal to disarm (“Despite Cease-Fire” obligation, one might add), Israeli forces in Gaza have had to expand safety zones to protect themselves from attack.
But the implication that Gaza is somehow some independent, legitimate national entity, without so much as a passing acknowledgement of the territory’s recent history, is journalistic malpractice.
Whatever Hamas-run Gaza is—and “well-armed, genocidal terrorist pseudo-state” would be a pretty good description—only happened after Israel, in hope of a peaceful coexistence with the strip’s residents, vacated its long-established and thriving presence there in 2005.
That fact belongs in every news report about Gaza.
Why? Because, well, context matters. Imagine a headline revealing, oh, say, a shocking “violent attack on a co-pilot of a plane” by irate passengers that omitted the reason for the action. A member of the media has a responsibility to help its consumers understand things.
The Times takes pains to inform its readers that “Israel has entrenched and expanded its control in the Palestinian territory” and “built at least a dozen military outposts and moved farther into the territory beyond the withdrawal line that they agreed to.” And it takes similar pains to display a panoply of “before and after” photographs of Gazan sites that have been leveled. But not to contextualize those photos by explaining that many edifices, including residences, harbored murderous people; or to remind readers that all of Gaza was under Israeli control from 1967 until 2005, and that Israel unilaterally vacated the territory. And that the withdrawal forced the abandonment of more than 200 Jewish-established farms and 21 Jewish communities; and it left extensive and productive agricultural infrastructure to Gazans for a hoped-for civilized Arab proto-state.
There is a good reason for the IDF’s continued presence and its “Expanding Into Gaza Despite Cease-Fire.” Namely, the unsettling and telling fact that Hamas, despite its obligation under the multinational-brokered ceasefire agreement, refuses to disarm. To do so, of course, would make it much harder to murder Israeli soldiers and citizens.
The IDF recently released footage that showed a young boy being used to transfer weapons into a civilian home in central Gaza. The poor kid was running while struggling to bear a large weapon and was shadowed by an adult man urging him along.
It doesn’t take Clausewitzian acumen to understand that the child’s shadow was deliberately involving him in an attempt to prevent Israeli forces from striking. The world might think that Israel intentionally targets Gazan children, but Hamas operatives know better. And, indeed, the IDF held its fire because of the presence of the child.
It’s been more than a week since the IDF released that footage, and The Times hasn’t so much as given it a parenthetical mention in a larger story.
After all, it doesn’t harmonize with what’s playing on the broken record. ●
