The belief in Israel’s moral fallenness could not have taken hold so widely—among Jews or Gentiles—were it not for the work of journalists and publishers, as Hamas knows all too well. Indeed, the terrorist group’s military strategy rests on maximizing civilian casualties in Gaza and then telling the world a tale of Palestinian suffering at the hands of bloodthirsty Israelis. So when yesterday a missile launched from Gaza at Israeli civilians fell short and landed near a hospital (possibly exploding a munitions dump), Hamas rushed to tell journalists that the IDF had bombed a hospital and killed 500 people. The New York Times and other outlets then rushed to amplify this claim without any sort of due diligence. John Podhoretz comments:
The point here is that the media in the United States and elsewhere are desperate—desperate—to blame things on Israel and credulous about doing so in a way that should be shameful to any sense of professionalism—or simple morality—they might possess.
Many decades ago, when Palestinians were massacred by Lebanese militiamen, an Israeli leader was alleged to have muttered, “Goyim kill goyim and they blame the Jews.” For this he was roundly denounced, and, obviously, speaking in such terms about a horrible killing spree was, at the very least, inappropriate. But today, unless the IDF is very wrong, we literally have a situation in which Palestinians [killed] Palestinians by the hundreds—and they blamed, or tried to blame, the Jews.
Read more on Commentary: https://www.commentary.org/john-podhoretz/how-the-nyt-and-others-do-hamass-dirty-work/