A television documentary and accompanying written article produced by Australia’s ABC television network and its reporter Sophie McNeill, accuses Israel of forcing children in Gaza to travel without their parents to receive medical assistance.
The documentary tugs at the heartstrings, with a long diatribe about how scary it is for a child to receive medical care with “only” a grandparent or some other relative present.
The lack of context is simply startling.
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Gaza is ruled by Hamas, which is considered a terror organization by: Australia, Canada, Egypt, the European Union, Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States: in short, by most of the Western world.
Not only does Hamas consider itself to be at war with Israel, not only does Hamas work for Israel’s total destruction, but it also works for the murder of all Jews: a goal that Hamas espouses publicly, and is in fact a central component of its founding charter.
The result is that Israeli civilians live under constant rocket barrages and other attacks from Gaza.
Yet Israel treats enormous numbers of Palestinians from Gaza in Israeli hospitals every year: issuing an average of 100 travel permits per day, in excess of 190,000 just last year alone.
In a further example of missing context, ABC writes that Gaza’s hospitals are crumbling, with no mention of the $100 Million in foreign aid money per year that Hamas misuses to fund its war against Israel: building weapons and tunnels instead of hospitals and infrastructure. ABC also covers up that Hamas regularly turns its hospitals into military headquarters, and uses its ambulances for military transport, thus putting them at risk during times of war, to the detriment of Palestinian people.
Think about how remarkable this is: Gaza has declared itself an enemy of Israel, is engaged in an active war against the Israeli people, destroys its own hospitals and medical infrastructure for military purposes, and yet Israel nonetheless provides constant medical care to Gaza’s residents, often at great personal risk to Israel’s civilians. This kind of humanitarian care for an active enemy is almost unheard of, not only throughout the world, but throughout human history.
Given the massive danger that Gaza poses to Israel, is it any wonder that Israel might wish to perform security checks before allowing Gaza’s residents to enter?
Did ABC check whether any of the parents who were refused entry to Israel were in some way connected with Hamas’s military machine?
Did ABC praise Israel for performing thousands of humanitarian medical procedures every year in a manner that is almost unheard of in human civilization?
Of course not.
Instead, ABC has taken one of the most remarkable acts of humanitarian care in our world today, and somehow turned it into a bad thing.
In this case, ABC’s upside-down reporting has gone beyond unethical journalism: it is practically a magic trick.
Please share your considered comments with ABC by clicking HERE. Be sure to mention the title of the program which you can find above, and the lack of critical context.
Hamas gunmen image by: Abed Rahim Khatib /Flash90
