The reasons that the IDF is destroying buildings are barely addressed. The thrust of the article is widespread destruction, and any reasons given for such destruction are treated skeptically.
Yet a close look at the evidence in the article itself indicates that the IDF has very specific, solid reasons for each and every controlled demolition.
For example, one demolition is described this way:
Another demolition in December destroyed over a dozen buildings around the city’s central Palestine Square, which the Israeli military said was home to a large network of tunnels.
Here's the video:
The explosion is in a straight line. The tunnels and their shafts were the primary targets, not the buildings themselves.
This is the only mention of the word tunnels in the article, although it admits in passing that "in some videos, the demolitions appear to be targeting underground infrastructure. "
Here is one diagram showing how the Israeli demolitions follow a right angle, strongly indicating a tunnel system underneath:
Even when the tunnels aren't an obvious target, Israeli demolition engineers are careful to avoid collateral damage outside the targets themselves. Check out this diagram:
Look at how the perimeter of the damage is so unusually shaped, with buildings surrounded by the explosions untouched - even a building with a curved facade:
This is not wanton destruction for no discernible reason, as the article implies. These are military targets. Buildings that are not targets are not destroyed.
The few times the article quotes Israeli claims it shows skepticism:
While the site had been cleared and secured by Israeli ground troops, military officials said it had once served as a Hamas training camp and weapons-manufacturing facility — a claim The Times was unable to verify.
But claims by Palestinian officials who pretend to be able to read Jewish minds don't require any verification or skepticism at all:
“Israel’s plan is to destroy Gaza and make it unliveable and lifeless,” said Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador to Britain. “Israel’s goal has always been to make it impossible for our people to return to their land.”
As always, the Times finds an "expert" to support what the article is heavily implying, that there is no military necessity for these demolitions:
“That it has previously been used by enemy fighters is not a justification for such a destruction,” said Marco Sassòli, a professor of international law at the University of Geneva, who emphasized that such demolitions should only be carried out if absolutely necessary for military operations. “I cannot imagine how this can be the case for a university, parliament building, mosque, school or hotel in the midst of the Gaza Strip.”
Sassòli's lack of imagination is extensive. We know that Hamas used universities for manufacturing bombs, "parliament buildings" to plan attacks, mosques to serve as weapons depots and cover for tunnel shafts, schools as rocket storage and protection for underground military locations, and hotels as command and control centers.
Israel has intelligence that the New York Times and that know-it-all professors do not have. The patterns of attack even in this article indicates very specific targets, not random destruction for destruction's sake.
But what is arguably worse is the subliminal anger that the article, and hundreds like it, exhibit towards Israel. And they are meant to get the reader to be angry as well. There are very few similar articles that show the same level of anger at Hamas for deliberately turning civilian objects into military centers. The extent of this plan to turn all of Gaza into a shield for Hamas' terror infrastructure - the thousands of tunnel shafts, hundreds of miles of tunnels, weapons discovered in hospitals and schools - are not treated with anything close to the same level of vitriol that Israeli actions are.
The military assets found and documented by Israel are always treated as if they are suspect, but unfounded implications that Israel has no reason to blow things up are the headlines.
