#847 3/26/17 – The Next Hamas and/or Hezbollah War: How Will the Media Portray Both Sides’ Civilians???

 

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Multiple news sources reported this week on Israel’s “Safe Distance” plan to evacuate civilians from cities and towns near the Lebanon and/or Gaza border at the start of the seemingly inevitable next fighting round.  The media has not portrayed fairly either the ratio of civilian-to-military Arab-side casualties in previous fighting rounds, or that Arab attacks aimed at Israeli civilians have caused tens of thousands of Israeli civilians to flee.  Now, before the next, inevitably higher civilian casualty counts on both sides, round of fighting begins, we need to make clearer to Westen publics Israel’s efforts to minimize civilian casualties on the Arab side and on which side the fault for civilian casualties on both sides will lie.

The Next Hamas and/or Hezbollah War:  How Will the Media Portray Both Sides’ Civilians???

“Each and every time, without fail, when escalating Palestinian violence provokes a large-scale Israeli response, the media and ‘human rights’ activists portray Israeli military actions as indiscriminate and reckless, harming Palestinian civilians ….”

                                    – CAMERA Snapshot, May 1, 2015

We all recall, during and following the 2014 round with Hamas, the relentless reporting of Gaza casualties, “the vast majority of them civilian,” when in fact the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff stated that the IDF made unusual efforts to minimize civilian casualties, with Israeli analyses putting the Arab-side civilian-to-military casualty ratio at c. 1:1, far lower than the U.S. analyses of coalition-caused casualty ratios in Afghanistan and Iraq of 3:1 to 4:1.  See CAMERA report May 5, 2015, “Washington Post Falls for Breaking the Silence ‘Report’”.

Exaggeration of civilian Lebanese casualties likewise occurred in media reporting of the 2006 fighting between Hezbollah and Israel.  See, e.g., CAMERA Media Analysis, September 7, 2006, “Questioning the Number of Civilian Casualties in Lebanon.”

What has gotten less media focus, exemplified below, is the effect that Hamas and Hezbollah tactics in fighting with the IDF has had on Israeli civilians.

What makes all this particularly relevant this week is a flurry of reports by the AP, JNS, the Jerusalem Post and others that Israel is preparing a “Safe Distance” plan, to evacuate up to hundreds of thousands of civilians from communities close to Israel’s borders with Lebanon and Gaza.  AP:  “The mass evacuations would be the biggest in Israel’s history, part of a bigger plan where the army works with municipalities to keep civilians safe.”

Israel Aims at ‘Militants’ While ‘Militants’ Aim at Civilians

What is exceedingly infuriating about incessant media focus upon and exaggeration of Arab-side civilian casualties, which Israel takes unusual steps to minimize, and has done so effectively, is that, as this same media acknowledges, Arab rocketing aims at Israeli towns and cities.

AP (not known as Zionist propagandists) this Tuesday, 3/21/17, “Israel Plans Mass Evacuation If War Erupts Again”):

***  Lede:  “If Islamic militants in Gaza or Lebanon go to war with Israel, they could find their usual targets empty.”  (emphasis added)

***  “Hezbollah fired more than 4,000 rockets on Israeli communities in the 2006 war, while Israel bombarded militant targets in southern Lebanon.”  (emphasis added)

***  “[In the 2014 war] there was widespread devastation in Gaza and thousands of rockets fired by Hamas and other Islamic militants at Israeli towns and cities.”  (emphasis added)

A couple comments at the time from the “militants”:

First, from the 2014 Israel-Hamas war:

***  “Our fingers are on the trigger, and our rockets are trained on Tel Aviv” – “Hamas official” quoted by McClatchy (Phila Inquirer, 8/8/14, A6, emphasis added)

Second, from the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war:

***.  The A.P. reported on August 10, 2006: 

“Hizbullah Leader Urges Israeli Arabs to Leave Haifa

“BEIRUT — Hizbullah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah yesterday warned all Israeli Arabs to leave the port city of Haifa so the militant group could step up attacks without fear of shedding the blood of fellow Muslims.

“Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city, has been the frequent target of Hezbollah’s rocket attacks.

“’I have a special message to the Arabs of Haifa, to your martyrs and to your wounded. I call on you to leave this city. I hope you do this….Please leave so we don’t shed your blood, which is our blood,’ Nasrallah said.”

Post-script:  Jerusalem Post this Thursday, 3/23/17:

“Hezbollah is known to have rebuilt its arsenal since the Second Lebanon war of 2006, with at least 100,000 short-range rockets and several thousand more missiles that can reach central Israel, including Tel Aviv.

“In February, Nasrallah, the terrorist organization’s leader, warned that ‘Israel should think a million times before waging any war with Lebanon,’ as in the next war with Israel, his fighters would have ‘no redlines.’”

2014 Gaza War:  Tens of Thousands of Both Sides’ Civilians Fled

On July 14, 2014, during that summer’s Israel-Hamas war, the Philadelphia Inquirer ran on its front page a Washington Post news article the Inq headlined:

“Tens of Thousands Flee Homes in Gaza”

The Inq headlined its page A4 continuation of the article

“Thousands Flee Homes in Gaza”

On 8/26/14, still during the fighting, the Inq ran on page A6 an AP article reporting that “tens of thousands of Israelis have fled the area [southern Israel near Gaza] in nearly two months of fighting.”  The Inq headlined this page A6 article

“Israelis Leaving Gaza Border”

relegating to a smaller sub-headline on that page A6 the counterpart of what it had headlined on its front page but a few weeks earlier:  “Tens of thousands have fled in weeks of fighting.  The extremist group Hamas hailed the exodus.”

Btw, in case you missed that page A6 Inq-headlined “Israelis Leaving Gaza Border” WP news article, or mistook its headline as meaning that Israel was pulling back troops from the Gaza border, not that Israelis (like Gazans) were fleeing their homes inside Israel, the AP’s news article this Tuesday (3/21/17) also mentioned: “Tens of thousands of Israelis left their homes near the Gaza border as the fighting dragged on, turning some areas into ghost towns.”

 

Arab Attacks Inside Israel Misportrayed as “On Periphery … On Border”

Misportraying Israelis fleeing their homes inside Israel during the 2014 Gaza war as “Israelis Leaving Gaza Border” is not the only instance of the mainstream media misportraying Arab attacks inside Israel as actions taking place “on the border.”

Two further instances:

***  On May 7 of last year, the Washington Post (Inq, 5/7/16, A4) reported:

     “… The current round of fighting in Gaza began earlier this week when Israeli troops entered the enclave and began to destroy offensive tunnels dug by Hamas along the Israeli periphery.” (emphasis added)

If you type “periphery” in a Microsoft Word doc and invoke the thesaurus, this is the synonym list that you get:

Margin

Edge

Side-line

Border

Fringe

Outside Edge  (emphasis added)

If you ask Webster, he’ll say: “1 an outer boundary ….”

But these “offensive tunnels dug by Hamas” weren’t “along the Israeli periphery” – margin, edge, side-line, border, fringe, outside edge, outer boundary.  These tunnels extended under the border into Israel (e.g. AP in Inq, the very preceding day, 5/6/16, A6).  That casts a different light on Israeli actions than if these tunnels, which are deep and well-built with extensive facilities, really ended, as they began, inside Gaza.

***   On August 18, 2011, infiltrators from Sinai killed six and wounded 30 civilians in cars and buses on Israel’s Eilat-Beersheba road, inside Israel.  The IDF pursued the attackers back into Egypt, killing four.  The Inquirer’s news article (N.Y. Times, 8/19/11, Inq.)  called the attack “the most serious on Israel from Egyptian territory in decades.”(emphasis added)  The Inquirer headlined:  “Day of Killings On Israeli Border.”

 

The Jerusalem Post’s article on Israel’s civilian evacuation plan, this Thursday, 3/23/17, reported that both Israel and Hezbollah “have warned that the next conflict would be devastating.”  Given ever more powerful Hezbollah’s deep entrenchment in civilian areas of southern Lebanon, it may be that in this next round the Arab-side civilian casualty ratio will be higher than the summer of 2014’s close to 1:1.  If so, the media’s inevitable incessant shrieks of “the vast majority of them civilians” will seem the more credible in Western ears.  As part of the preparation for this seemingly inevitable next round, we ought to begin making clear to Western publics which side’s fault it is that this may be so and cite the U.S. Joint Chiefs’ chairman, Col. Kemp and others’ confirmation of Israel’s long-standing efforts to minimize civilian casualties on the Arab side that takes aim at Israeli civilians.