Comfortable with Concealing Terrorism

Over the last two weeks international news organisations have come under increased scrutiny of their reporting of the violence at the border between Gaza and Israel.

Violent protest at the Gaza border.

One example is that of the baby that Gazans claimed had died due to Israeli actions on 14^th May. Ten days later the Guardian reported a statement from Gaza’s health ministry that the baby had been removed from the casualty list because it had died from a heart defect. The father now stands accused of lying to CNN.

Indeed, it is CNN that has come in for some of the strongest criticism, accused of being comfortable with concealing terrorism as a result of repeatedly stating that the Gazan ‘protesters’ were ‘largely unarmed’ when in fact some of them were clearly armed with grenades, guns, and firebombs.

Then there is the case of volunteer paramedic Razan Najjar, claimed to have been shot by an Israeli sniper. But one eagle-eyed Australian blogger has reviewed a number of the reports of her death and spotted a significant number of inconsistencies in the claims about it made by the Arabs involved in the ‘protest’.

Later in the week the US Ambassador to Israel followed a different line of reasoning when he told journalists to stop criticising the Israeli defence forces unless they could think of a better way of defending the border against these repeated attacks. He said:

“It seems to me that in a journalistic environment where nine out of ten articles  
that are written about the Gaza conflict are critical of Israel, you would think that  
some journalists would take the time to go meet with experts and understand
what could have been done differently before they criticise.”

Thus it is that Israel Today have published an analysis of the media coverage suggesting that the international media are simply serving as an echo chamber for Hamas and its propaganda.