The Associated Press recently reported that the death of a 15-year-old girl in the flashpoint West Bank city of Jenin during an anti-terrorism raid by Israeli forces earlier this month had “renewed scrutiny of the [Israeli] military’s record of causing civilian casualties.”
In the article — subsequently reprinted by The Washington Post and ABC News — the AP’s Middle East correspondent Isabel DeBre uses the funeral of Sadeel Naghniyeh, who was “killed by suspected Israeli fire” while reportedly standing in the driveway of her family’s home, as a hook to supposedly highlight the “rising number of children killed in the heightened violence and the extraordinary risks they face.”
DeBre quotes several people in the first half of the piece, including Naghniyeh’s father asserting that his daughter dreamed of being a nurse, and convicted PFLP member Shawan Jabarin, director of the terror-linked NGO Al-Haq, who appears to suggest Israeli forces are indiscriminately killing Palestinian civilians.
While highlighting the gruesome reality of civilian deaths in conflict zones is important, the article glosses over or outright ignores some very relevant details.
First, the piece presents the risks posed to civilians by armed terrorist groups who hide in densely-populated urban areas as merely an allegation made by the Israeli army — as opposed to an incontrovertible fact. This is despite the use of civilians as human shields by Palestinian terrorists being a well-documented occurrence that has been acknowledged and condemned by even the staunchest critics of the Jewish state.
Second, the article totally overlooks the use of children by Palestinian terrorist groups — either as lookouts or actual combatants.
Despite revealing some telling details about Naghniyeh, including that she was sending photographs of Israeli military positions on the encrypted messaging app Telegram (used by terror networks to communicate) when she died and that her Facebook profile picture consisted of “an unidentified girl wearing an abaya and holding up a rifle,” little consideration is given to the probability that she was affiliated with a terrorist organization.
The cause of death of Sadeel Naghnaghieh is still not clear but she seems to be associated with the Islamic Jihad https://t.co/U7CbhSGtc3 pic.twitter.com/mjOJ68ssst
— Adin – עדין (@AdinHaykin1) June 21, 2023
Instead, the grim reality that bloodthirsty terrorists are grooming young Palestinian girls and boys to do their dangerous bidding is merely alluded to.
The obvious pro-terrorist sympathies of Naghniyeh’s family are also tacitly excused, with DeBre referencing Naghniyeh’s uncle’s absurd claim that his niece’s “praise for militants” was an “inevitable outcome of life in Jenin refugee camp.”
What a shame that DeBre did not probe this assertion more. If she had, she would have pointed out that there is nothing inevitable or natural about terrorist-run training camps for kids in which young children are taught how to maim and murder Israelis.
Lovely picture…
This one tells a different story. https://t.co/jnNdUR1NHq https://t.co/rBPf0UAoRt pic.twitter.com/3Lfs9W0bHl
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) June 27, 2023
Meanwhile, the United Nations has declined to blacklist the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian terrorist groups, including Hamas, over their use of children as human shields, while claiming to have “verified the recruitment and use of 4 Palestinian children (3 boys, 1 girl) by Israeli forces as human shields” — a libel that is contradicted by evidence that the IDF has previously called off strikes because of a risk to Palestinian children.
In 2014 as the Gaza conflict raged, an Israeli group submitted a written statement to the United Nations about the exploitation of Palestinian children as weapons of war.
“Palestinian children, too, are exploited as weapons of war: Pictures abound of Palestinian babies dressed as suicide bombers and brandishing arms. Children’s TV programs, many sponsored by the Palestinian Authority itself, preach jihad, advocate genocide against Jews and infidels, and glorify martyrdom… The most shocking aspect of this deliberate disregard for children’s lives and dignity, however, is the blind eye turned to it by the UN, the EU, and so-called human rights organizations,” read the statement.
How utterly heartbreaking that nearly 10 years on, these words remain just as true.
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Photo credit: Mahmoud Issa/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Image
