Wednesday, March 18, 2026
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| photo: IDF |
The Jerusalem Post is one of the one of the most
widely read English news sources on Israel, the one English-speakers around the
world often turn to first. So when I saw a headline that said “Teen
injured after Iran pummels Israel with missiles.” I expected to hear about
someone who was at least 13. But when I read the article, I saw that the injured “teen" was only 12:
"We were led to a 12-year-old boy who had been hit by shrapnel and suffered
injuries to his limbs. He was in pain and frightened but conscious,” it read, citing an MDA paramedic on the scene.
This child—a boy not yet bar-mitzvahed, was correctly
identified as such by Eilat Fire Station Commander Yehuda Kazantini, who told Kan
Reshet Bet that "the child [was]
crossing a road at a pedestrian crossing when he was hit by missile
fragments.
Why did the Jpost headline refer to a 12-year-old as
a teen? It was likely a mistake. But mistakes like this often end up being used
against Israel by the international media. Which is why accuracy is important.
How might the media misuse this unintentional error? Perhaps
they might write or say something like, “So a rocket injured one Israeli
teenager. Meanwhile, Israel killed thousands of Gazan.”
If corrected and called on the lie, they can always assert
that “A one-year difference is no big deal.”
But it is a big deal. For one thing, journalists are supposed
to be precise. No mistake is really small in a news article. Even the way ages
are described can influence how suffering is perceived.
By contrast, while one Israeli outlet may inadvertently age up a genuine 12-year-old victim, Gaza casualty reporting works in the opposite direction—on a massive and deliberate scale—through definitions that group older teens together with much younger children. Under widely used international standards, anyone under 18 is classified as a “child.” As a result, casualty figures can include 16- and 17-year-olds in that category, without distinguishing between civilians and those involved in hostilities.
Salo Aizenberg’s X thread “Everything You Need
to Know About Gaza’s Fatality Numbers” exposes the truth. The Hamas
Ministry of Health (MOH) counts teenage terrorists killed in combat as “children”
in its official death toll statistics:
“There is no doubt that Hamas and other militant groups use child combatants, in some cases children as young as 12. Demographic analysis of the fatality lists already pointed to this reality, with roughly 2,000 excess deaths among male teens. That inference is now confirmed by direct evidence. Numerous martyr posters, funeral notices, and social media posts identify underage fighters killed in combat. Most recently, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) publicly acknowledged that 9% of its announced fighters killed were minors, based on its own fighter death lists cross-referenced with Hamas’ fatality list… Once child combatants are counted as combatants rather than automatically classified as civilians, another pillar of the prevailing fatality narrative collapses.”
How does this work in practice? A 19-year-old Hamas operative is counted as a “child” in aggregate statistics. A 17-year-old summer-camp “graduate” killed while firing at Israeli forces is listed as “child.” The Hamas death toll counts show thousands more dead teenage boys than dead teenage girls in the same age range—a skew that points to ‘terrorists,’ rather than random children. Yet there is no doubt that when the media uncritically reports on the raw Hamas MOH stats, the headline will always amplify the lie that when Israel kills young Hamas operatives, it is killing “children.”Journalists have one core duty: get the facts right. A 12-year-old boy may be only one year away from teenager-hood, but indeed, 12 is the cut-off point, the last year in which a child is not a teen and should not be referred to as such. The 12-year-old boy in Eilat is actually a child. As opposed to the 17-year-old Hamas operative actively involved in attacking Israel and Israelis.
The JPost slip is minor and corrected by the article text itself. But the broader issue—how categories like “child” are applied in conflict reporting—is more consequential. When media outlets repeat casualty figures without clarifying how those categories are defined, readers are left with an incomplete and definitely distorted picture.
It is Hamas practice to twist stats as a matter of routine. They know the mainstream media will report the false numbers uncritically to their readers, lemmings who believe what they read. The proof is our world today, a seething cauldron brimming with hate for the Jewish people.
People believe what they read and that is why journalists have a duty to tell them the truth. The average media consumer knows only what he is told or reads on the internet. Today, all of it tells him to hate Israel, and by extension, the Jews.
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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
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