Monday, August 05, 2024
Elder of Ziyon
A group of Hamas members operating out of two schools in Gaza City were struck by Israeli fighter jets a short while ago, the IDF says.According to the military, Hamas embedded command and control rooms within the Hassan Salama and Nasr schools in Gaza City’s Sheikh Radwan neighborhood.The schools were used by the Hamas operatives as a hideout and as a command room from where attacks on IDF troops and Israel were planned and carried out, the military says.
Here was how Al Jazeera headlined the same incidents:
Two different ways of looking at the same incident. One from a pro-terrorist, pro-Hamas, state controlled outlet whose employees have also been Hamas operatives, the others from independent media from a liberal democratic state with freedom of the press.
What about the rest of the world? Do they choose to report the stories the Israeli way or the Hamas way?
Invariably, they choose to make their headlines virtually the same as Al Jazeera's, and only bury IDF claims in the articles that most people won't bother to read.
Nearly all of the time, the headlines from the mainstream media are the same as those from Hamas and Al Jazeera, and Israel's [perspective does not make the headline.
The international media headlines are all technically accurate. They identify where they get their information from, even if they don't say "Hamas."
But the bias is still clear in how they choose to frame these stories. And most people do not look past the headlines - the headlines are all that Twitter/X followers of the major media outlets see, for example.
The overwhelming impression given is that Israel is striking schools for no reason, because they hate Palestinians so much or at the very least they don't care about Gazan lives.
No doubt, the media editors would claim that they care deeply about Palestinian lives and want to highlight civilian deaths. But by downplaying or ignoring that Hamas has used the schools specifically to shield themselves from attack, this decision ensures more Palestinian civilian deaths.
If the media would consistently castigate Hamas for using schools and mosques as military bases, Hamas would lose its PR advantage of positioning fighters in those schools, and would have less incentive to use human shields. But as long as the major news agencies parrot Al Jazeera's coverage, Hamas has nothing to lose and everything to gain by positioning its military assets in schools and displaced persons shelters.
The media is responsible for hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths of Gazans, because of its bias against Israel.
