Time and again, major English-language news outlets have presented a deeply distorted view of the Gaza war, a fact that is perhaps in keeping with much of the history of reporting on the subject. Zach Kessel and Ari Blaff take a systematic look at how the Washington Post has handled the conflict and conclude that the paper, highly influential with the nation’s political class, has been particularly egregious. While other publications quickly backed down from the story that Israel struck the al-Ahli hospital when it was shown to be false, the Post was slow to come around to the truth. Later it invested much effort in denying that Hamas was using the al-Shifa hospital as a base.

What followed was even worse:

Two days after the al-Shifa report, on December 23, the Post ran an in-depth visual analysis of Israel’s campaign in Gaza, arguing that it was among the “most destructive wars” of this century and “has outpaced other recent conflicts.” The paper relied on a combination of satellite imagery, airstrike data, and UN damage assessments to reach its conclusion. Based on its review of the evidence, the Post concluded that the Gaza war far outpaced the destruction of Aleppo during the Syrian civil war and the U.S.-led anti-Islamic State coalition’s assault on Raqqa.

As a bevy of experts on military affairs observed, there was little basis for these claims, which included factual errors that were later retracted. “To compare Gaza to the deliberate, nationwide destruction of Ukraine is not just a stretch, it’s idiotic,” Chuck Pfarrer, a former squadron leader of Navy Seal Team Six, told Blaff and Kessel.

Once more, three days after the Post’s flawed military analysis, a team of the outlet’s senior reporters, including its Istanbul and London bureau chiefs, wrote about Israel returning dozens of Hamas bodies recovered in northern Gaza. . . . In its report on the body return, the Post cites a statement from the “Hamas-run government media office,” advancing the well-worn anti-Semitic conspiracy that the Jewish state had “stolen” the organs of slain Palestinians and “mutilated” their bodies.

“The claims could not be independently verified,” the Post wrote of the Hamas-ministry reports. . . . “It’s factually absurd. They’re harvesting organs from dead terrorists who’ve been lying around for days?” Reed Rubinstein, deputy associate attorney general for the Trump administration, said.

It’s unclear what explains such consistent failings, but Kessel and Blaff note that many of the journalists covering these stories have previously written for Qatar’s propaganda mouthpiece Al Jazeera.

Tamir Hayman analyzes the latest reports about an offer by Hamas to release three female soldiers in exchange for 150 captured terrorists, of whom 90 have received life sentences; then, if that exchange happens successfully, a second stage of the deal will begin.

If this does happen, Israel will release all the serious prisoners who had been sentenced to life and who are associated with Hamas, which will leave Israel without any bargaining chips for the second stage. In practice, Israel will release everyone who is important to Hamas without getting back all the hostages. In this situation, it’s evident that Israel will approach the second stage of the negotiations in the most unfavorable way possible. Hamas will achieve all its demands in the first stage, except for a commitment from Israel to end the war completely.

How does this relate to the fighting in Rafah? Hayman explains:

In the absence of an agreement or compromise by Hamas, it is detrimental for Israel to continue the static situation we were in. It is positive that new energy has entered the campaign. . . . The [capture of the] border of the Gaza Strip and the Rafah crossing are extremely important achievements, while the ongoing dismantling of the battalions is of secondary importance.

That being said, Hayman is critical of the approach to negotiations taken so far:

Gradual hostage trades don’t work. We must adopt a different concept of a single deal in which Israel offers a complete cessation of the war in exchange for all the hostages.