Current

Israel’s military campaign in Gaza that began Saturday December 27th has triggered global coverage, some of it notably fair and complete and some skewed and misleading. American reporters in the first days produced a number of stories that contained important context for readers and viewers, including in the New York Times (Israelis Say Strikes Against Hamas Will Continue, Dec. 28). On the other hand, the BBC’s World Service, true to form, skewed the story in segments like a Dec 29 one hosted by Claire Bolderson in which two interviewees – one British and one Israeli agree that Israel is wrong.

As in the Hezbollah War of 2006, the story is quickly shifting in some coverage to questions of disproportionate use of force by Israel with focus on relative losses by the parties. CNN’s Rick Sanchez has gone awry in this regard, saying Monday that “300 people have been killed there in Gaza, as a result of the 17 who have been killed by rocket fire in parts of southern Israel. Now, think about that as we go through the story...”

Balanced, accurate news stories should include certain key context without which this conflict as a whole will be misrepresented -- and misunderstood. Israel’s military action is occurring against a backdrop of earlier events that need to be reported consistently:

1) Israel was motivated to act militarily after eight years of bombardment by Palestinians targeting civilian towns inside Israel – not just after the recent Dec 19th collapse of a cease fire and a week of rocket attacks. Since 2001, 3984 rockets and 3, 943 mortar shells have been launched at Israel. The aim of the intervention in Gaza is self-defense – to end the bombardments of Israel, not retaliation.

2) Israel withdrew every man, woman and child from Gaza in 2005 (even removing the dead from their graves) in hopes of advancing peace, but instead Palestinian rocket fire dramatically intensified.

3) Israel is targeting Hamas and, as even Palestinian sources note, a substantial majority of casualties in Gaza have been Hamas members.

4) Hamas intentionally places its rocket launchers, rocket factories, rocket caches and general armories in civilian neighborhoods. When Israel accurately hits these targets, the missiles and bombs explode in all directions, putting Palestinian civilians at dire risk of injury or death. It seems likely that many if not most of the Palestinian civilian casualties in the present conflict have been caused by secondary explosions when these Palestinian missile and weapons caches are struck. Click here for one such example of a bombing strike followed by secondary explosions and Palestinian missiles striking adjacent Palestinian neighborhoods.

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