U.S. media is obscuring the painful soul searching taking place in some Israeli news outlets.
by Ari Paul, FAIR
As the world watches the ongoing horror in southern Israel and in the Gaza Strip, media grapple not only with the immediate violence, but to understand why this happened and how it can stop. This is truly no other Middle East skirmish anymore. Likely the deadliest offensive against Israel on its soil, and perhaps the most audacious operation by Palestinian militants, it’s been compared both to 9/11 and to the bloody 1973 war between Israel and a coalition of Arab nations.
How could Israel—so famous for its military might and advanced intelligence capabilities—have missed the warnings of such an attack? The coordinated nature of the rocket attacks and assaults on nearby towns make clear that this was a huge operation that took time and planning; paragliding attacks require practice runs that are not easy to hide (L’Orient Today, 10/9/23), for instance. Already, Israeli media have begun looking closely at the Israeli government’s actions to understand how and why this happened—in sharp contrast to US broadsheet opinion, which has largely rallied unquestioningly behind Israeli “national unity.”
The Times of Israel (10/8/23) noted that Netanyahu was quoted telling Likud Party members in 2018 about his stance on Gaza, summarizing his quote saying “those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza”—meaning to Gaza’s Hamas-led government—as doing so maintains the “separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza,” thus dividing and conquering the Palestinians once and for all.
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