Call it ‘Premature Palestinian Empathy Syndrome’

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A Washington Post foreign affairs blogger, Ishaan Tharoor, listed the names, ages, and places of death of the 83 Palestinian Arabs killed in the first three days of Israel’s Operation Protective Edge (“These are the names of 21 children killed in Gaza,” July 10, 2014), with the children identified by boldface type.

Tharoor noted that Israel said it was trying to minimize civilian casualties, but nevertheless, “civilians are dying.”

In a quick check of the first 24 names, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America’s (CAMERA) Israel office found that one through three were Hamas members. Numbers five through 12 were individuals who rushed into a house previously evacuated after an Israeli warning. (In violation of the laws of war, Hamas uses Gazans as “human shields.”) 

Number 17 was a member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, like Hamas a U.S.-designated international terrorist organization. The fatalities listed 18 through 22 were family members of his. And number 24 apparently was another terrorist, affiliation not confirmed.

Much news media coverage of the first week of Protective Edge fixated on “disproportionate” casualties—166 Palestinian Arabs killed, more than 1,000 wounded in 1,300 Israeli airstrikes; no Israelis killed, more than 160 wounded, some seriously, in southern Israel alone after approximately 800 Palestinian rocket attacks. Such lopsided statistics—especially when illustrated with video or photographs of Gaza’s wounded and grieving—appear unfair, evidence of Israeli aggression.

But reporting appearances without context is not journalism. The ratio of Palestinian dead to Israeli airstrikes was 1.25 in 10. That—plus a CAMERA analysis of an Al-Jazeera television report indicating that Palestinian fatalities were disproportionately males of combat age (“Reporting of Casualties in Gaza,” July 14)—suggested that, as with Operation Cast Lead in December 2008 to January 2009 and Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012, Israel was taking care to minimize noncombatant casualties.

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