Israeli Children’s Trauma Ignored by Washington Post
January 6, 2013 14:47 by Simon Plosker
The Washington Post has published a story examining the trauma suffered by Gazan children as a result of conflict. The scene is set with a vivid and emotive opening:
Fatima still dreams about Ahmed. Sometimes they’re playing with toys as they used to do. But in other dreams, she’s looking over the edge of the balcony at her brother’s smashed and bloodied body, his pink brain spilling from his skull, her father screaming through his tears.
Ahmed was 7 when he was killed by an Israeli airstrike during the 2008 Israeli invasion of Gaza. Fatima was 8 at the time — but that was “old enough to remember,” said her father, Osama Mohamed Qurtan.
And herein lies the fundamental problem with the story – the description of an Israeli “invasion” paints a picture of Gazan children suffering as a result of Israeli malevolence. Indeed, later in the article is the following:
Gaza was attacked, they say, for the same reason Israel struck in 2008 — to kill Palestinians and seize more Palestinian land. (Israel says its warplanes carry out precision strikes on carefully identified terrorist targets.)
A short sentence in parentheses is all that Israel’s narrative warrants according to the Washington Post. This article could not be any more one-sided. Nowhere is there any reference to the thousands of rockets fired at Israeli targets from Gaza. While the writer refers to Gaza experiencing two wars in four years, what about Sderot and the surrounding areas of southern Israel that have experienced barely a day of quiet during the past decade? Israeli children have been brought up experiencing almost daily alerts that give them some 15 seconds to take cover or run for a bomb shelter.
While the trauma of Syrian children has featured in the Washington Post, it seems that Israeli children just don’t suffer. Is this because fewer Israeli children have died than Palestinian children? This reduces the story to one based purely on unequal body counts and ignores the bigger picture.
Nobody disputes that Gaza’s children have suffered as a result of conflict. But resorting to the knee-jerk “blame Israel” routine completely ignores reality. A reality where Palestinian children are exposed to danger as a direct result of terrorists operating from within civilian areas turning children into human shields. A reality where Israel makes supreme efforts to avoid causing harm to Palestinian civilians while Palestinian terrorists do their utmost to indiscriminately kill and maim innocent Israelis.
Indeed, following much of the mainstream media, the Washington Post exhibits the familiar tendency to absolve Palestinians of any responsibility for their situation. In this framing of the story, Palestinians can only be victims and are never capable of affecting their own circumstances.
But you wouldn’t know this from the Washington Post where Israel is responsible for the trauma of Palestinian children while the trauma of Israeli children doesn’t even register.
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Israeli Children’s Trauma Ignored by Washington Post | Blogs about Israel aggregation
5:43 pm
Jan 06, 2013
[...] article can be viewed at Israeli Children’s Trauma Ignored by Washington Post on [...]
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Vicki
6:02 pm
Jan 07, 2013
To The Editor.
Your recent article in which the trauma suffered by Fatima who still dreams of Ahmed, her brother, reflects trauma experienced by children who live a life in extremely troubled times. She is one of many experiencing trauma in this very troubled world.
It is not a happy situation, what can be your motive for such a story I wondered.
Trauma will certainly have an impact on any human being, but it is also necessary to understand how these situations occur and that trauma exists on all fronts.
The trauma on one side of the fence causes for the adults to create shelters for their children. On the side where Fatima lives the children are exposed to danger and death for maximum p
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Anthony Garland
8:24 pm
Jan 06, 2013
What can you expect from Americans the majority of whom do not have a passport, have no idea of what goes on outside the US? Remember the Noraid supporters giving money to the murdering IRA? Ask many of them what was actually going on in Northern Ireland and all you would get is total ignorance! Plus, it is fashionable to be anti-Israel.
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M. Edward Triefler
9:14 pm
Jan 06, 2013
My letter to Mr. Buffit: I’ve always been an admirer of Mr. Buffett, his contributions to philanthropic endeavors are commendable, more than commendable they are outstanding. I am writing in the hope that Mr. Buffett, as a major stockholder, thru Berkshire Hathaway, looks into the objectivity or the lack thereof, on both the biased news reporting and the anti-Semitic vitriol displayed by the Washington Post. Time after time the WP glorifies the atrocities of the Palestinians while at the same time vilifying the Israelis. As a recent example the Post expounds on the suffering the trauma of the children living in Gaza while completely ignoring the trauma caused by the terrorist incessant rocke
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PA Finances Stymie Membership in International Bodies | Blogs about Israel aggregation
11:14 pm
Jan 06, 2013
[...] 4. Israeli Children’s Trauma Ignored by Washington Post [...]
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Jeffrey
3:30 pm
Jan 07, 2013
I am sure that children in Gaza whose parentsd have been murdered by Hamas are not traumatised, nor are those who are forced to dress in military uniform and parade slogans of hatred from nursery school age, or who have missiles launched from their school playgrounds or from their homes. All that is part of a normal childhood. It is only those who are unfortunate enough to be bereaved or injured as a result of Israel defensive measures who suffer trauma. Where are the brains of the readership to believe such one-sided, incompletely reported and biased nonsense?
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Thlayli
4:43 pm
Jan 07, 2013
Let me share a banal observation of my twenty-year old son who worked in a three-week summer camp “up north” with the children of Sderot.
They (young boys from Sderot) never take more than a minute in a bathroom.
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Mike Germany.
4:55 pm
Jan 07, 2013
I’m ashame of such a ‘mistretement of information,by ‘The Wasington Post.
I’m cutting all gmail link with that peace of durty ‘newspaper’.
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gs
5:01 pm
Jan 07, 2013
Shame on you Washington Post. Posters, please educate youirselves. I can help you do it with a simple 5 minute video from Prager University http://www.prageruniversity.com/Political-Science/The-Middle-East-Problem.html
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jeb stuart
5:08 pm
Jan 07, 2013
I have been giving this some thought the issue of ignoring the trauma of Israel’s children is not new and has two features. The first is based on the notion that Israel is to blame and must be held accountable for the Islamist response to Israeli oppression. That requires a shovel so big I simply can not wield it. The second aspect that I am giving more thought to is the possibility that for decades Sabras and Israeli’s were caricatured as near supermen especially after the 67 War and time really hasn’t diminished or tarnished the image. So I wonder if the image of the strengths of Israeli settlers, survivors of Holocaust and anti-Antisemitism dulls our sensitivities for Israeli children.
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El Trauma de los niños Israelíes es ignorado por el Washington Post « Unidos x Israel
5:35 pm
Jan 07, 2013
[...] Comunicado del 7 de Enero 2013 Artículo traducido por ReporteHonesto de HonestReporting, escrito por Simon Plosker El Washington Post publicó un [...]
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drew reed
5:48 pm
Jan 07, 2013
Please can you put a link in to the article. So I can read it and consider my response and not react blindly to your comments. I am and always will be a supporter of Israel but, I feel you do yorselves and your readers a dis service by not putting in a link.
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rachel
6:27 pm
Jan 07, 2013
there is a link in the first sentence of the article.
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EthanP
6:24 pm
Jan 07, 2013
If you are reading this and buy the WaPost, NYTimes, any Gannet pub, then you are an enabler.
And Drew, yes a link is always welcome. However the above publications have long track records of anti-Israel bias. I have very liberal friends who no longer read them for that reason.
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mdoffman
6:38 pm
Jan 07, 2013
In terms of the Western mainstream media’s coverage of the Middle East this attitude is not at all unusual. We find the same ‘imbalance’ on the BBC and others in Europe.
It is now a given that, as one of the comments above states, “since Israel is seen as the bad guy any issues regarding Israeli civilians are not worth commenting upon. This demonisation of Israel is now so entrenched it is difficult to see how it can be reversed.
Perhaps the media will only be satisfied when Hamas get their way and “Palestine will stretch from the river to the sea!”
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murray chass
7:31 pm
Jan 07, 2013
To letters@washpost.com
To the editor:
I wish I had the equivalent space to reply to your article about the alleged effect Israeli bombing had on the children of Gaza. Then I could relate stories my granddaughters have told me about the effect Hamas missiles had on the children they work with in Beersheva and Kibbutz Sa’ad in Israel. Whatever happened to the responsibility newspapers have to tell two sides of a story.
If you had told the complete story, you would have told your readers that Israel followed a policy of precision bombing to avoid Gaza children while Hamas fired missiles into Israel indiscriminately without regard to what they might hit, children included.
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EthanP
7:43 pm
Jan 07, 2013
Murry; The media/press has always been biased. What’s new is the one sidedness of the bias. In the USA, with few exceptions, are cheerleading for Barak Obama and the liberal Democrats. I think you might have to look to the old Soviet Union to see such blatent, one sided bias. And that same bias is aimed against Israel.
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EmJay
8:22 pm
Jan 07, 2013
RE: Israeli Children’s Trauma Ignored by WaPo. The Islamist totalitarian ideology focused on “martyrdom” does NOT have the luxury of having western DSMIV mental disorders. Even to suffer western ICD9/10 dis-eases becomes questionable. IF there can be no re-view or re-vision of the holy book, the muslim/islamist is permanently stuck in Mohammet’s 7th century world. To do otherwise is hypocritical! This is the dilemma of the koran-believing, islamist! The MSM WaPo “wordsmiths” (i.e. editors /journalists/reporters) are aware of that! Has the WAPO joined the NYTimes, Al gorzzera, the BBC & etc.? & become a foe peddling the faux? Can WaPo be trusted to report real news?
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emes
12:06 am
Jan 08, 2013
A reminder that Golda Meir once said “I can forgive the arabs for killing our children but I cannot forgive them for making us kill theirs!! – This is a sickening situation when so-called high-class media joins the ranks of the ignorant and neanderthal.
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Dubblek2
2:59 am
Jan 08, 2013
Wow. I don’t know where to begin, so I’ll start by saying that I’m a goy who has spent about 3/4 of a year in Israel, whose son had to evacuate Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Be’er Sheva), where he was working on his Masters in Middle East Studies, during the ’08 “conflict” due to rocket fire from Gaza by Hamas and their cohorts.
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Dubblek2
3:03 am
Jan 08, 2013
(Continued from prior post.) I, and the rest of the family, all safely in the US at the time, quickly and certainly grew to sympathize and empathize with all Israeli citizens, men, women, and children, living for years now under constant rocket and missle barrage from Gaza, as well as Hezbollah and their cohorts barraging the people of Northern Israel from Lebanon in the same manner for years.as well. But, as others have said here, we can also sympathize and empathize with the people of Gaza, men, women, and children, as well.
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Dubblek2
3:14 am
Jan 08, 2013
(Continued.) I read, and see, the WP story very differently. I do not see it as violating some perceived journalistic responsibility to tell both sides of the story. I see it as the telling of an experiential story, which since it is addressing the experience of Gazans, will, by definition, only tell of their experience. And I don’t see the story, through its authors and editors, taking sides – either side. It is simply telling its readers the experience and psycological results of that experience, of what it is like living in Gaza. Nothing more, nothing less.
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Dubblek2
3:19 am
Jan 08, 2013
(Continued.) My opinion?
Both sides need to stop wasting time, and lives, on these teritiary issues and spend time on the real problem – figuring out how to live peacefully with each other.
And before either side tells me how that’s impossible becasue of the other side and their issues (the Qur’an, for example) let me say this: that’s part of the problem, and you need to get beyond it.
Otherwise the past, and history, will keep repeating itself, ad infinitum.
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emes
3:07 pm
Jan 08, 2013
Dubblek2 – Very nice that you spent 3/4 of a year in Israel and during that time you and your family have sucked the crap out of the place in education and lifestyle and now you are “back safely in the US” most noble of you to share your experiences and to underline that “both sides should spend time on the real problems – how to live peacefully with each other!” Lovely! well Mr Double Decker, it is easy to poke a stick through the rabbit cage to torture the inhabitants but don’t you think from the safety of your home that you could at least condone Israel for trying to survive? – how much education did your son receive in the muslim sector before his studies were stunted by their rockets?
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