Gaza-based terrorists continued to pound Israel with rockets on Thursday as Operation Shield and Arrow — Israel’s defensive strike against Islamic Jihad — entered its third day.
The recent conflagration began with Islamic Jihad terrorists firing a barrage of rockets from Gaza into southern Israel last week following the death of one of its senior leaders, Khader Adnan in prison as a result of a protracted hunger strike that saw him refuse medical treatment.
Early on Tuesday, the IDF launched precision strikes in the coastal territory, which took out Khalil Bahtini, who commands Islamic Jihad in northern Gaza, Jihad Ghanem, a key official in the group’s military council, and Tareq Izz ed-Din, who directs Islamic Jihad terror activities in the West Bank.
In the 48 hours that followed, more than 500 rockets were launched at Israeli towns and cities, with over 100 over those projectiles falling short and landing in Gaza.
Unfortunately, some media outlets can always be counted on for a botched job when it comes to their coverage.
The New York Times was among the outlets that failed in its effort to provide readers with context and background information about the conflict in a fact-box about Islamic Jihad.
HonestReporting called out the publication after it opted to sanitize its description of the Iran-funded organization — merely labeling them an “armed group” that was founded to “fight Israeli occupation, rather than an Islamist terror network that was established with a goal of destroying Israel through a holy war:
Related reading: Once Again, New York Times Whitewashes Islamic Jihad
Meanwhile, the Washington Post appeared to be confused about the very nature of Israeli airstrikes and suggested the pinpoint operations — which are designed to neutralize singular terrorists while minimizing civilian casualties — were akin to the indiscriminate rocket attacks emanating from Gaza:
Haven’t you got this backward, @washingtonpost?
It’s the Palestinian rockets that could and do land anywhere (including misfiring onto Gazans).
Israeli strikes are pinpointed & targeted at terrorists who fire their rockets from within populated areas. https://t.co/17qMzhZ0bB pic.twitter.com/yln1p3tZei
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 10, 2023
Voice of America, which receives tens of millions of dollars of funding from US taxpayers, was simply careless in its report on Israel’s striking of terrorist infrastructure in the Hamas-controlled territory, which the organization claimed was part of a pattern of “near-daily raids in the Gaza Strip.”
Of course, the IDF does not carry out frequent raids on the Strip, and it seems more than likely VOA confused the area with the West Bank, where counter-terrorism operations are frequently in effect.
No, @VOANews, Israel has not carried out “near-daily raids in the Gaza Strip.”
It has, however, carried out frequent counter-terror operations in the West Bank.
Please correct the error.https://t.co/kqC2aA7Cia pic.twitter.com/0yoeuTTSpI
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 9, 2023
CNN interviewed former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett, with some viewers calling out the misguided line of questioning.
If reporters covering the conflict imputed agency to Palestinians, the normal question would be: "Doesn't Palestinian Islamic Jihad have an obligation not to use human shields"? https://t.co/zFcxtGsZnj
— Adam Levick (@adamlevick) May 11, 2023
The Wall Street Journal’s headline drew a moral equivalency between the actions of the IDF and Islamic Jihad, despite the latter being a proscribed terror group by the entirety of the Western world.
Responding to the newspaper’s claims that Palestinian “militants” and Israel were “trading fire,” we noted the woefully inadequate way to describe terrorists bombarding Israel with rockets and the IDF stopping said attacks with precision strikes.
No, @WSJ. Israel and Palestinian “militants” are not “trading fire.”
One side is indiscriminately firing rockets in an attempt to kill civilians. The other is trying to stop the rockets by targeting terrorists.
There is no moral equivalence.https://t.co/4bIxFreypA pic.twitter.com/U7CwkUkTUI
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 11, 2023
Social media’s favorite terror apologist, Gaza Strip-based Palestinian author and Twitter activist Muhammad Shehada, used his platform on Newsweek to place the blame, not on Islamic Jihad or the hundreds of rockets, but on the Israeli government and specifically internal Israeli politics.
HonestReporting was also forced to call out several bad actors on Twitter, who variously sought to downplay the Palestinian violence or paint Israel as an aggressor, including the UN Special Rapporteur for Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese’s suggestion that Israel had violated a “truce” with Islamic Jihad when in reality it was the terror group that broke an agreement by firing rockets last week.
Since the August “truce,” 200+ rockets have been fired from Gaza targeting Israeli civilians; 100+ in the last week. Does that not constitute an “armed attack?”
It seems that “truces” are only in effect when Israel has to restrain itself, not terrorists… https://t.co/RRTtBVf74y
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 9, 2023
However, in a rare moment in the news cycle this week, the BBC was put on the spot when Jerusalem Post’s Senior Contributing Editor and Diplomatic Correspondent, Lahav Harkov, was invited to speak on the BBC’s World Service Newsday program.
Opening the segment, the show’s presenter distorted the recent outbreak of fighting by suggesting that Palestinian men who had been killed were civilians and not terrorists, and by appearing to claim Israel’s strikes came entirely out of the blue.
Refusing to allow the BBC to distort the facts in such a way, Harkov expertly called out the presenter and showed BBC hacks how real journalism is done:
Harkov’s intervention caught the attention of The Spectator’s Stephen Daisley who noted:
If you get your news on the Middle East from the BBC, every so often Israel appears to go mad and begins lustily bombing Palestinian civilians. No rhyme or reason. Jerusalem is simply pummelling Gaza for the hell of it.
This impression is often created by the BBC’s approach to reporting on Israel and terrorism. The story invariably begins when Israel responds to attacks, with those original attacks deemed insufficiently newsworthy until then or reported as a retaliation to some provocation. Then, once Israel engages, the inciting incidents are quietly smuggled into the coverage but framed as just another round in the cycle of violence. Thus self-defence is cast as aggression, and aggression as tit-for-tat.
The BBC World Service had a go at Israel this morning. Unfortunately for them, @LahavHarkov was on the line. What followed was a distillation of everything wrong with the Corporation’s reporting on Israel. https://t.co/sujT6wEWVX
— Stephen Daisley (@JournoStephen) May 10, 2023
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