One of the anti-Israel calumnies that has gained traction in the past few weeks is that the IDF is taking the lives of a disproportionate number of journalists. The idea seems to come from a report issued last month by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), whose president claims that the Gaza war has been the “deadliest conflict for journalists” since the group started keeping records over 30 years ago. CPJ and those who cite its report also insinuate—or claim flat out—that Israel is systematically targeting these reporters, in what one Washington Post columnist called “an assault on memory, truth, and . . . Palestinian culture.”

The groundwork for these claims—which are entirely without merit—was laid in 2022 after the death of Al Jazeera’s Shireen Abu Akleh. Besides being absurd and unfounded, wrote Michael Oren at the time, “the charge that Israel deliberately killed Abu Akleh and other innocent correspondents reflects an image of Jews as demonic.”

Already in November, the media watchdog CAMERA pointed out that several of these supposed journalists worked directly for Hamas, and others indirectly. Another watchdog, Honest Reporting, observed the blurred lines between reporters and terrorists in Gaza by exposing the active participation of two photojournalists, who work for Reuters and other agencies, in the events of October 7, and their eager messages encouraging others to join in.

In a comprehensive study, David Collier dissects the specific evidence mustered by CPJ, and shows its flimsiness:

Half of the people that CPJ lists as journalists work for Hamas or Islamic Jihad channels. CPJ admits some do, but either from ignorance or laziness it appears unaware of the others. In any case it still lists them all as journalists. This is in direct breach of CPJ’s own guidelines which says working for terrorist groups should discount them. The situation is absurd.

Part of the problem appears to be that CPJ did one-dimensional, lazy, and amateurish research. It took the Hamas list and worked backwards. They probably googled the name and if they found a couple of links in support then they ran with it themselves. This is working the wrong way round.

Because CPJ did not research properly, the entire CPJ list was full of errors. [In fact], many of those included in the lists are not journalists at all.

As the war in Gaza appears to be coming to close, writes Michael Milshtein, Israelis are left with “a sense of failure and bitterness” despite the IDF’s “military successes and strategic achievements.” Meanwhile, he writes, Gazans are likely to see the war as a “historic achievement,” and thus once more fall into the cycle of ecstasy and amnesia that Shany Mor identified as the key pattern in Palestinian understanding of the conflict.

Milshtein too acknowledges how much the present results resemble what preceded them, reminding us that Arabs and Israelis felt similarly after

the 1956 Sinai Campaign when, like in the current war, Israel was pressured by the United States to withdraw from conquered territories and bring the conflict to an end. The same applies to the Yom Kippur War, the second intifada, the Second Lebanon War, and the 2014 Operation Protective Edge [against Hamas]. Arab collective memory regards these events as achievements resulting from sacrifice and the ability to absorb severe blows, exhibit steadfastness (sumud), and make it impossible for Israel to declare decisive victory.

This phenomenon shouldn’t lead Israel to conclude it has been defeated but must be understood so as to formulate sober goals and courses of action in dealing with enemies in the region.

For now, there are no signs of soul-searching [among Palestinians] concerning the price of the war. Responsibility for the carnage and destruction, described as a nakba greater than that of 1948, is laid at Israel’s doorstep. This reflects a long-standing fundamental Palestinian flaw: a “bipolarity” with, on the one hand, fighting spirit and praise for the ability to harm Israel and, on the other, victimhood from the results of the war the Palestinians themselves started.