Beware of terror’s seduction

In Britain, the BBC and other media outlets were also criticized by government lawmakers for rushing to report the Hamas version of events.

Major league media spanning the world have fallen prey to the sweet seduction of the ratings game to forget about disseminating the truth, which is what journalism is all about.

Terrorist forces have proven themselves adept in the art of deception that it lured the eminent The New York Times, or NYT, with its lies.

Among the most prominent American newspapers, NYT, to its credit, issued an unprecedented “editorial note” admitting that a story it ran on the bombing of a Gaza hospital “left readers with an ‘incorrect impression,’” saying that its staff should have been more careful in the initial presentation of information and in explaining what could be verified.

NYT had prominently and repeatedly featured Hamas’s claim that an Israeli airstrike caused last week’s blast at Gaza City’s al-Ahli Baptist Hospital.

The note it issued on Monday acknowledged that its coverage should have been more journalistically rigorous.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza immediately blamed the 17 October explosion on an Israeli airstrike amid the war that erupted when the Palestinian terror group killed over 1,400 people in Israel in its assault on 7 October.

Hamas provided no evidence to back up its false claim or for its claim that hundreds had been killed, but international media, including the NYT, swallowed the claims hook, line, and sinker.

Shortly after, Israel produced evidence showing the explosion was caused by a failed rocket launch from Gaza by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group, an assessment endorsed by the United States, which has said it has data that supports this.

NYT admitted that its initial reports “relied too heavily on claims by Hamas and did not make clear that those claims could not immediately be verified. The report left readers with an incorrect impression about what was known and how credible the account was.”

In Britain, the BBC and other media outlets were also criticized by government lawmakers for rushing to report the Hamas version of events.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told the House of Commons last week, “We don’t treat what comes out of the Kremlin as the gospel truth; we should not do the same with Hamas.”

In the war coverage, it must be clear there is no moral equivalence between Israel, a legitimate democracy, and Hamas, a terrorist organization that employs lies as a weapon. Media reports often frame both sides as being equivalent and engaged in a tit-for-tat.

Hamas is the de facto ruler of the Gaza Strip, but major democracies consider it a terror organization.

Israel, as a free and democratic sovereign state, does everything to minimize civilian casualties, while Hamas is an Iran-backed terrorist group that openly seeks the destruction of Israel and actively hunts Israeli civilians to murder or abduct. It deliberately fires projectiles into civilian areas to kill as many Israelis as possible.

Israel’s military specifically targets Hamas infrastructure, such as rocket launchers and production facilities, terrorist headquarters, terror tunnels, weapons warehouses, and senior terror leaders.

Israel employs a tactic known as “roof knocking,” which warns civilians to evacuate a building through text messages and phone calls before targeting it for destruction.

In contrast, the American Jewish Committee said Hamas deliberately puts Palestinian civilians in harm’s way.

Hamas fires rockets and stores weapons in civilian areas, including around homes, schools, offices, mosques and hospitals.

Hamas staged a large-scale incursion into southern Israel on 7 October during the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, where over 600 Israelis were murdered.

Often, the conflict with Hamas and other terrorist groups, such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, is framed as a dispute between Israelis and Palestinians.

Any coverage of Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad must mention that both terror groups are armed, trained, and financially supported by Iran.

While its origins are with the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas has been funded, armed, and trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps since the early 1990s.

Equating Israel with Hamas would provide legitimacy to the use of terror tactics, which most nations have vowed never to consider as a subject of negotiation.

Credit belongs to: tribune.net.ph