UN Exonerates Israel in Gaza Child Death, Media Ignores
March 10, 2013 17:37 by Simon Plosker
Referring to the impact of Israeli air strikes on Gaza during November 2012′s Operation Pillar of Defense the BBC’s Wyre Davis wrote:
In the BBC Gaza office, that feeling was most tangibly felt on the first day of this conflict when Omar, the 11-month-old son of our cameraman Jihad Misharawi, was killed when a missile hit his home. It was a pointless, terrible tragedy that deeply affected Jihad’s colleagues who live and work here in these testing conditions.
Indeed, the BBC in its coverage, claimed Omar almost as one of its own, making sure to mention him in dispatches as the victim of an Israeli attack without even considering any other possibility:
Many of the Palestinians killed in Gaza during the last two days by the Israeli aerial and naval bombardment were members of militant groups, but civilians – including at least four children – were also among the dead. They included 11-month-old Omar, the son of Jihad Misharawi, a BBC Arabic picture editor.
And thanks to his links to the BBC, Misharawi’s tragedy became one of the highest profile incidents of civilian casualties during the conflict, appearing in many other media outlets including the Washington Post, where it made the front page and a behind the scenes feature which stated:
An Israeli round hit Misharawi’s four-room home in Gaza Wednesday, killing his son, according to BBC Middle East bureau chief Paul Danahar.
Similar charges against Israel appeared in The Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Huffington Post and others.
In an interview with BBC Arabic, Jihad Misharawi stated that his 11-month old son, his sister-in-law and his brother were killed by shrapnel that hit his family home in the Al-Zeitoun neighborhood.
Now an advanced version of a UN Human Rights Council report on the conflict states:
On 14 November, a woman, her 11-month-old infant, and an 18-year-old adult in Al-Zaitoun were killed by what appeared to be a Palestinian rocket that fell short of Israel.
This information was released on March 6. As yet, no mainstream media outlet has covered the UN report let alone revisited the story of Omar Misharawi.
The media, so quick to judge Israel as the brutal killer of Palestinian children, have not bothered to correct an error when it turns out that Hamas is responsible for the killing.
Perhaps as well, the media has not seen fit to even bother with the UN report itself, because it not only criticizes Israel but also reaches a conclusion that is only surprising in that it appears in a UN authored report:
Palestinian armed groups continuously violated international humanitarian law, by launching indiscriminate attacks on Israel and by attacking civilians, thereby disregarding the principle of distinction. The armed groups failed to take all feasible precautions in attacks, in particular by launching rockets from populated areas, which put the population at grave risk. Furthermore, several Palestinians were killed by rockets launched by the armed groups that fell short and landed in the Gaza Strip.
But Omar Misharawi certainly wasn’t the only victim of Hamas’s reckless disregard for its own people. One of fastest spreading images of the conflict showed a dead girl in the arms of Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. The only problem was that the girl wasn’t killed by Israel, but rather by an errant rocket fired by Haniyeh’s own organization.
Clearly, confirmation that Hamas is responsible for the deaths of its own people, including children, isn’t news for the mainstream media and that includes correcting those errors where Israel has wrongly taken the blame.
HonestReporting CEO Joe Hyams adds:
Yet again the reflexive anti-Israel attitude of the foreign media has led to false accusations against Israel. That the media is unwilling to correct the error or to hold Hamas publicly responsible is not only a slap in the face for Israel but also to the readers and viewers who are entitled to proper standards of accuracy from the media. Those media that published a falsehood should hold up their hands and print a retraction immediately.
You can help force the media to print those retractions by sending your comments to outlets including: the BBC – www.bbc.co.uk/complaints, the readers’ editors of the Washington Post - readers@washpost.com - and The Guardian - reader@guardian.co.uk, the Daily Telegraph - dtnews@telegraph.co.uk, and the Huffington Post - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/contact/.
UPDATE: The New York Times has published a short AP report on this story.
BBC: Die UNO “diskutiert” über die Tötung des Babys Omar | Medien BackSpin
12:26 am
Mar 12, 2013
[...] dass sie [die UNO, (bd)] einen anderen Punkt der Geschichte begriffen haben – und das ist das mindeste, was die Mainstream-Medien tun können, wenn man bedenkt, wie oft die Fotos seines getöteten Sohnes herumgereicht [...]
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M. Kerjman
4:40 am
Mar 30, 2013
Sie alle, zumeist verstehen, aber handeln, wie es Stellenanbieter geeignet.
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UN Exonerates Israel in Gaza Child Death, Media Ignores | HonestReporting | jamesbbkk
4:38 am
Mar 12, 2013
[...] UN Exonerates Israel in Gaza Child Death, Media Ignores | HonestReporting. Share this:TwitterRedditFacebookEmailPrintDiggStumbleUponGoogle +1Like this:Like Loading… This [...]
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John
7:49 am
Mar 12, 2013
Imagine if Israel claimed that a Jewish child was killed by Palestinians and he or she was really killed by Israeli soldiers. That would be one hell of a scandal, but the opposite doesnt even register on the mainstream media radar.
Years after the end of the Cold War, Marxist conditioning in our education systems has resulted in this bias.
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Ben
1:17 pm
Mar 12, 2013
Shameful world media demonstrates the “sufferings of Palestinians” with such a scope that as an answer the Islamists formed a habit of public demonstrations of the corpses which they dragg over the cities.Sometimes they even dragg the injured! To the contrary, showing the terror in Israel they hide the Jewish victims from the camera! No comments of this loathsome tradition is allowed of course by the mass Media.
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ONU Exonera a Israel por la muerte del niño de Gaza, Los Medios lo Ignoran « Unidos x Israel
3:23 pm
Mar 12, 2013
[...] del 10 de marzo del 2013 Artículo traducido por ReporteHonesto de HonestReporting, escrito por Simon Plosker Al referirse al impacto de los ataques aéreos [...]
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Who killed baby Omar? Not Israel says the UN | Anne's Opinions
5:51 pm
Mar 12, 2013
[...] Honest Reporting shows us how the foreign media ignored the UN report for several days, and has only now reluctantly picked up the story. [...]
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Reb Mordechai
6:43 pm
Mar 13, 2013
The New York Times article starts off promising but then descends into the usual anti-Israel propaganda.
“During the 8-day conflict, about 160 Palestinians and six Israelis were killed.”
This seemingly innocuous statement which appears simply to be stating facts is actually dripping with anti-Israel hatred. Those six Israelis were murdered by terrorists whereas almost all the Palestinians killed were fighters! The statement thereby makes no differentiation between innocent victims and murderers.
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Washington Post: Verantwortung für Omars Tod spielt keine Rolle | Medien BackSpin
8:02 pm
Mar 13, 2013
[...] Washington Post-Blogger argumentierte im November und nun wieder, dass es keine Rolle spiele, wer das Baby Omar getötet hat. Gibt uns eine Schuldzuweisung für Mishrawis tragischen Tod, so schrecklich er auch ist, einen [...]
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Ken Kelso
2:38 pm
Mar 14, 2013
Ofcourse the BBC wont retract the story.
They would lose 80% of their readership?
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Ken Kelso
2:39 pm
Mar 14, 2013
All deaths, whether it was friendly fire or civilians killed collaterally because Hamas fires rockets from civilian areas could have all been avoided if Hamas just did not fire any rockets into Israel at all!
Again and again and again it is Arab aggression that causes Israeli defensive use of force!
Arabs cannot ever be trusted to tell the truth. Even when they kill their own, they will blame it on Israel or twist the truth to demonize Israel when it is always the Palestinian Arabs who refuse to live in peace with the Jewish state of Israel, it always has been.
Due to the many generations of Arab training to hate and kill Jews, there is no possibility of living with these Arabs.
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Ken Kelso
2:41 pm
Mar 14, 2013
A must read.
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_article=217&x_context=7
BACKGROUNDER: A Study in Palestinian Duplicity and Media Indifference
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After HRC Complaint, CBC Reports on Child Killed by Palestinian Rocket | Honest Reporting Canada
6:51 pm
Mar 15, 2013
[...] the time, many media outlets rushed to blame Israel for this Palestinian child’s death. In Canada, CBC News published a report to its website on November 15 which carried unsubstantiated [...]
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motti
3:46 pm
Mar 18, 2013
Sadly Ken, your post is spot on and I could not agree more with you.
The other stupid thouught is that the west can “westernise, or socially modify to a more civilised outlook all the Arab Islamic nations. What a waste of Allied lives, time, money, and obviously reflected on the attitude towards the “poor Fakestinians. .
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a jew whose nose was broken by prohitler muslims
11:45 pm
Mar 22, 2013
Ben, they don’t drag the “injured”, those “jihad”. they wantonly and blindly kill, murder people on the streets, hamas IS jihad and has murdered Palestinians on the streets of gaza only a few months ago. They drag the MURDERED bodies across the streets in efforts to intimidate ALL other people, no matter whether israelis or palestinians.
’tis no question of the “isr/pal” “conflict”. Violent and even fascist orgs, groups, have to be combatted, declared illegal, have to be disacknowledged and abolished for the good and security of all people. Yes I trust Israel to combat terrorism. More than I trust in USA. Obama lets Moh. Rashed, a plainbomber, get outta jail. not so good. all usaites angry.
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Saxeviverbwer
6:17 am
Apr 10, 2013
There are some fascinating points in time in this post but I do not know if I see all of them center to heart. There’s some validity but I will take hold opinion until I appear into it further. Fine post , thanks and we want even more! Added to FeedBurner as well
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swej-kcuf
7:27 pm
May 07, 2013
woo hoo complaining about the media not being fair once ….imagine being in the other end all of the time.. so all of the ones you killed were terrorist and that one child was not? every Hebrew we kill is a terrorist and that wicked evil G_D haShem who lied about the promised land of milk and honey being for jews.. I guess the new Palestine shall be carved out the collective a____S___S of every Hebrew of torah hate product.. we shall expose you and the lies you feed humanity that holoHOAX where your own killed the weak and sick to create and industry to get rich quick shall be bankrupt as your evil Judaism.. as always chosen to be Fu——Ked like your desert lost tribes
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