By Barry Shaw
NETANYA, Israel — Accuracy is essential when reporting claims of Palestinian casualties during Palestinian-induced wars. But accuracy is always the missing ingredient in the mainstream media when covering Palestinian wars against Israel.
Instead they offer bland reporting damaging to Israel with such recent examples as a story about 20 Palestinian killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza including women and babies, which leaves the readers with a totally wrong impression.
Their inaccurate reporting leaves Israel’s reputation destroyed as part of their collateral damage. It has to stop!
They should do what I do. Pause, then look for hard facts and evidence to identify the casualties. That’s when the truth begins to emerge.
I have three sources for my facts. The Palestine Ministry of Health. The Meir Amit Intelligence & Terrorist Information Center and, surprisingly, from the Palestinian terror organization who love to glorify their “martyrs.”
In the latest round of Hamas and Islamic Jihad initiated violence Palestinian civilian deaths, including women and babies, were killed by misguided Palestinian rocket fire. The majority were terrorists accurately targeted by Israeli return fire.
What is incredible, and should be lauded by the press, was the remarkable lack of collateral damage resulting from the massive tonnage of Israeli air and ground attacks against hundreds of terror targets destroyed throughout the Gaza Strip,included many high rise building in civilian areas that acted as terror centers and infrastructure.
The Intelligence & Terrorist Information Center even names the terrorists and identifies their affiliations. This is the basic work we expect, but do not get, from professional journalists. Instead, they prefer to sensationalize their reporting for emotional effect, thereby becoming mouthpieces of the terrorists.
This type of sloppy reporting has to stop.
If they want to add one more element of truth to their reporting they should accurately reflect of solid fact.
Terrorists target Israeli civilians. Israel targets terrorists.
If this was their headline they would be accurate in every incident of Palestinian rocket fire and Israeli response.
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Barry Shaw, International Public Diplomacy Director at the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies, is author of Fighting Hamas, BDS, and Anti-Semitism.