Tuesday, January 05, 2021
Elder of Ziyon
Israeli security forces committed “heinous killings” throughout 2020, shooting dead at least 27 Palestinians across occupied Palestinian territories and in Israel, according to Israeli rights group B’Tselem.“Over the course of 2020, Israeli security forces killed 27 Palestinians, seven of them minors: one in the Gaza Strip, 23 in the West Bank [including East Jerusalem] and three inside Israel,” B’Tselem said on Monday.
The B'Tselem press release likewise says:
Over the course of 2020, Israeli security forces killed 27 Palestinians, seven of them minors: one in the Gaza Strip, 23 in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and three inside Israel.
What B'Tselem doesn't mention is that according to its own statistics, this is a huge drop in killings from 2019 (133, 80% drop) and 2018 (290, 91% drop.)
Why doesn't B'Tselem give even a little bit of context? Surely, it is happy to see an 80% drop in Palestinian fatalities in one year!
If B'Tselem and Al Jazeera were honest and cared about Palestinians, they would want to encourage Israel to continue in the direction it is going in reducing casualties. It could still write about the deaths that should not have happened but it would add needed context. It might even investigate what the IDF did that was successful in reducing casualties, and share that information with other armies.
Why wouldn't B'Tselem and al Jazeera mention a simple fact that this is so much of an improvement over previous years?
The reason is obvious. B'Tselem doesn't want to pollute its anti-Israel agenda by publishing anything that could show context that makes Israel look like it is actually succeeding in significantly reducing the number of Palestinians killed.
And proof can be found from another section of the B'Tselem report:
Israel demolished 273 homes in 2020, leaving 1,006 Palestinians – 519 of them minors – homeless. By comparison, Israel demolished the homes of 677 Palestinians in 2019, 397 in 2018, and 528 in 2017.
Suddenly, B'Tselem is eager to compare 2020 with previous years - when that comparison makes Israel look bad. But for killings, comparisons would make Israel look good, so that information must be hidden from the public.
Instead, we are told it is "heinous" - a word not used in their 2018 or 2019 press releases.
