“The children killed in a war the world doesn’t want to know about” – a reference to Darfur perhaps? No – the headline story from the Independent of 19 September, which was accompanied by the frontpage to the right.
HonestReporting UK does not wish to minimise the tragic loss of young life on both sides of the conflict. The Independent, however, fails to draw the important distinction between Palestinian and Israeli intentions. While Palestinian terrorists purposely target Israeli civilians, including children, Israel makes every effort to avoid killing civilians and sincerely regrets when innocents mistakenly lose their lives.
Israel also contends with the dilemma of confronting terrorists operating within civilian areas – a difficulty magnified since the 2005 Israeli disengagement from Gaza. The Palestinian response to the withdrawal has been the continuous firing of Qassam rockets, culminating in the cross-border attack and kidnap of Gilad Shalit, which led directly to the current Israeli military operation.
In fact, only one day after the publication of the Independent’s article on the deaths of Palestinian youths, a 15-year-old Israeli Bedouin was injured by a Qassam attack from Gaza, an incident unlikely to be reported by the Independent or other UK media outlets.
While Israel, with its developed democratic and civil society, is subject to the critiques of human rights organisations such as B’Tselem, which regularly holds the IDF to account, the Independent relies on the highly politicised Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. The paper lauds the organisation for criticising inter-Palestinian violence and even the killing and injuring of children by Qassam rockets which fall short of their intended target inside Israel.
However, unlike Israeli human rights organisations that address civilian victims on both sides, the PCHR is evidently unconcerned with the Israeli children who are the intended Qassam targets. By terming Hamas and Islamic Jihad “resistance organisations”, PCHR thus legitimises their terrorist activities.
The Independent is content to base its story on casualty figures and information provided by PCHR, whose policitised agenda is covered in detail by NGO Monitor. PCHR’s credibility regarding who the organisation classifies as “terrorists” is further called into question by Palestinian Media Watch (scroll down to 9 Sept. bulletin), which states:
PCHR falsifies news items to fit its political anti-Israel political agenda.
One example is the July 16 press release, issued after Israel killed three Palestinian terrorists. While all three Palestinian dailies identified the dead as belonging to Hamas or Islamic Jihad, the PCHR falsely reported in its press release that is was only Israel who “alleged” their membership in the “resistance groups”: “The IOF [Israeli Occupation Forces] state” that they “belong to the military wing of Hamas.”
This distortion allowed PCHR to mask the true identities of the terrorists and give support to its fallacious assertion that Israel was targeting “civilians.” The title of their press release stressed this lie: “IOF [Israeli Occupation Forces] Escalate Attacks on Civilian Targets.”
DEMONISATION ON THE FRONT PAGE
This recent article and front page, is, however, only the latest in a string of anti-Israel stories and front covers that specifically demonise Israel and portray her as a “child killer”. The Independent has recently adopted a policy of printing graphic front covers relying solely on imagery to draw in readers – a tactic that has been used consistently against Israel, as shown by this July 2006 example (right).
The Independent’s warped moral equivalence between Israel and Palestinian terrorists is also graphically illustrated by this June 2006 front cover image (left) portraying Israel as an aggressor whle promoting a flag-flying Hamas supporter as a representative of peace.
Other examples of the Independent’s anti-Israel imagery include the infamous cartoon of Ariel Sharon eating a baby (see this communique on why a Parliamentary Inquiry concluded that this cartoon drew upon “anti-Semitic themes”), and the April 2006 magazine front cover depicting the American Stars & Stripes flag with the stars replaced by Stars of David to imply Jewish control over the US.
The Independent appears to have adopted a consistent campaign of demonisation against Israel using emotive and graphic imagery as well as disreputable sources to back up its stories.
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