Time and again since the current war began, Western media have engaged in obfuscations, unfounded accusations, and absurd framings in their reporting. Robert Satloff carefully dissects one egregious, and especially insidious, example: a November 17 story in the Washington Post under the headline “Israel’s War with Hamas Separates Palestinian Babies from Their Mothers.” The purported horror this article seeks to expose is that Israeli hospitals are caring for ailing Gazan infants:
“Tragedy” is a much-used term in a conflict that began with Hamas’s murder and kidnapping of Israeli babies—a fact interestingly not mentioned in a story about babies and this war—but no one dies in this story; these Palestinian babies are all safe and protected. Indeed, the journalists could have written a wholly different story—“Despite war, Gazan babies safe and protected in Israeli and West Bank hospitals”—but they opted to focus on the alleged distress of the mothers instead of the well-being of the babies.
I say “alleged” because in this lengthy story, only one mother was quoted by full name and she was reached by phone in Gaza. Indeed, it’s not clear whether any of the journalists reported from Gaza. (The story was datelined Nablus, with one reporter in London.)
And then there is the uncomfortable fact that some of these babies are being cared for in Israel—yet the whole story rests on the inhumanity of Israel’s alleged policy of denying re-entry permits to some mothers, preventing them from reuniting with their children, but the reporters do not appear even to have sought comment from Israeli officials.
Strange story indeed—in a war filled with death, the Washington Post took a fundamentally good-news story about premature babies from Gaza cared for by compassionate people across enemy lines and turned it into a horror story, with diabolical Israelis lurking overhead.
Read more on Washington Institute for Near East Policy: https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/how-washington-post-turned-feel-good-story-anti-israel-attack