The problem is that empathy must not trump facts.'
As horrible as the scenes of the dead are, they do not reveal the reasons nor the circumstances for their deaths - and it is unlikely in the politically charged atmosphere of Gaza that the real reasons of any of their deaths can be determined.
It was recognized days ago that the crowded civilian neighborhood of Shuja'iya was a major center of Hamas' military operations. As Times of Israel reported at the time:
During the morning (Wednesday), the Israel Air Force dropped flyers while recorded phone calls and SMS messages to residents warned a series of military strikes was imminent, the military said.
The flyers said the military would carry out air strikes against targets in Zeitoun and Shuja’iya, two flashpoint districts east of Gaza City, noting that “a high volume of rocket fire” had been directed from there. Residents were advised to evacuate to Gaza City by 8.00 a.m. local time.
“In spite of the ceasefire, Hamas and other terror organizations continued to fire rockets, therefore it is the intention of the IDF to carry out aerial strikes against terror sites and operatives in Shuja’iya and Zeitoun,” the leaflets read. “A high volume of rocket fire at Israel has originated in this area.”
“For your own safety, you are requested to vacate from your residence immediately and head towards Gaza City by Wednesday morning, July 16, 2014, at 08:00 AM. The IDF does not want to harm you, and your families. The evacuation is for your own safety. You should not return to the premises until further notice. Whoever disregards these instructions and fails to evacuate immediately, endangers their own lives, as well as those of their families.”
However, residents of Shuja’iya and Zeitoun were not evacuating their homes, in spite of the Israeli ultimatum issued, Palestinian sources in the Gaza Strip told The Times of Israel.
As on Sunday, Hamas urged residents to ignore the warnings, dismissing it as “psychological warfare”.
“There is no need to worry about these (warnings), or deal with them. Do not respond to them in any way,” a Hamas interior ministry statement said. “This is part of the psychological war, intended to disrupt the domestic front.”
Now, what happened when the IDF troops entered Shuja'iya?
Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israeli army spokesman, said that Israeli forces had been moving toward Shuja'iya, which he called a "Hamas stronghold" from which about 140 rockets had been fired at Israel since the start of the Israeli offensive.And, as we now know, 13 IDF soldiers were killed.
The forces were "on the way to deal with tunnels they have in Shuja'iya and to deal with rocket launching from there," Lerner said. "We met extensive resistance from Hamas terrorists shooting at forces from houses in the neighborhood, firing rocket-propelled grenades from several directions. Artillery was fired in support, to address that challenge."
How can any reporter know which of the dead children were killed by Israeli fire and which were killed by Hamas RPGs? How many were killed by IDF bombers and how many from Hamas weapons caches that were detonated by those bombs? Hamas made no secret that it is booby-trapping civilian areas and attempting to lure IDF soldiers and vehicles into deadly ambushes - how many civilians were killed through Hamas' extensive efforts to kill or capture IDF soldiers?
These are questions that most journalists in Gaza are ill-equipped to answer. And they are unlikely to emphasize how much effort the IDF placed in trying to empty the area from civilians while Hamas used implicit threats to keep the same people in their houses that are on top of Hamas tunnels and bunkers. In a medium driven by imagery, photos and video of dead children are going to override the desire for sober analysis.
In this Sky News interview, Naftali Bennett does a fair but not great job defending the IDF as the (blurred) scenes shown in the video above are shown:
Notice how the Sky News anchor takes it as a given that every death is the result of Israeli actions. He says explicitly, without any knowledge of reality, that Israel is "indiscriminately kill[ing] women and children."
He is clueless and he is making accusations based on emotions rather than facts.
When they see dead kids, most reporters reflexively assume they were killed by the "enemy," not their own side - but they have a hard time internalizing that Hamas is the enemy of these children, and the IDF is not.
Bennett should have emphasized that under international law, Israel's actions in Shuja'iya were entirely legitimate. Since Wednesday, the IDF did everything possible to ensure that innocents would not be harmed, and Hamas did everything they could to keep them in place as human shields - nearly explicitly, in their own statements. It is even possible that the Hamas edicts were being backed up by force.
The IDF's actions in trying to save civilians, in all probability, made the operation far more complex and dangerous for their own soldiers, which is not at all mandated in international law. Nowhere does the Geneva Conventions say that armies must place their own soldiers at risk to avoid civilian casualties. Israel, and Israel alone, is expected to adhere to superhuman standards and is castigated even when it does so.
The existence of civilians in the area during what is being described by all observers as a fierce firefight does not make the area immune from being a target in any reasonable interpretation of international law.
Bennett should similarly have challenged the anchorman as to whose munitions actually killed so many civilians, and why the anti-Israel anchor assumes that Israel alone is responsible. He doesn't know and his asking loaded questions based on his ignorance should have been fiercely countered.
The sad fact is that with every dead child, Hamas wins and Israel loses. For all the effort Israel expends to minimize innocent lives lost (on both sides of the battlefield), Hamas does the opposite. This is clear from both IDF and Hamas official statements.
That simple fact should be what every reporter thinks of when they see sickening scenes of dead civilians.
Only Hamas benefits from their deaths.