Watch the news on the Web? On tv? In one of the few surviving newspapers?
for the most part the news is one sided; as an example, look at the picture the UK's Daily Mail posts at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2702485/Israel-investigated-war-crimes-Gaza-UN-says.html under a hed that screams Israel should be investigated for war crimes in Gaza says UN, as it warns that they have not done enough to protect hundreds of Palestinian civilians (this followed by a pull quote by UN human rights chief Navi Pillay stating Israel must end blockade and respect obligations as an 'Occupying Power' (even though Israel has not occupied Gaza since Sharon's expulsion of Jews from the area in 2005.)
There are, to be fair, the rare report that fails to condemn Israel. Such a report was printed in the Washington Post under the heading While Israel held its fire, the militant group Hamas did not. The WashPost reported that
* Hamas rejected an Egyptian-brokered cease fire.
* Hamas uses a hospital as headquarters
* Hamas calls PA president Abu Mazen a traitor” and “collaborator” for allegedly supporting the cease-fire proposal by Egypt
* Israel warned non-Hamas residents in Gaza, by telephone and by noon-lethal bombs, that they were in danger of an Israeli attack
The WashPost article includes an embedded AP video showing Hamas rejecting the cease fire.
The Algemeiner, claiming to be The fastest growing Jewish newspaper in America, the NEW Algemeiner serves as a valiant media voice addressing the most compelling issues of our time, with vision, integrity and moral clarity has additional material lifted from the WashPost.
While the WashPost and a few others are reporting both sides of the conflict without an obvious bias for one side over the other - the WashPost's article While Israel held its fire (ibid.) included a photo of smoke rising over an unseen structure followed by the two captions:
Panicked residents flee their homes in the northern Gaza Strip as Israel continues its attack on Hamas. As of July 15, at least 185 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed and nearly 1,400 injured, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
July 17, 2014 - Smoke rises following what witnesses said was an Israeli airstrike that took place before a five-hour humanitarian truce in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters
Note there is no mention of Israeli causalities or the reason behind the Israeli air strikes.
Hamas' willingness to negotiate as stated by its leader in Gaza:
When the U.S. went to war in Iraq (both times) and elsewhere, it carefully embeds reporters and photographers. It hopes these people will report truthfully (and farther hopes editors and managers will disseminate the reports fairly).
In a generally pro-Hamas article from Reuter's heded At least 50 dead in Israeli attack on Gaza district – hospital by Nidal Al-Mughrabi and Jeffrey Heller, after three paragraphs of how Israeli attacks are hurting Gazans, Reuters allowed two paragraphs:
The Israeli military said on Sunday Hamas had deployed rockets and built tunnels and command centres in Shejaia.
"Two days ago, residents of Shejaia received recorded messages to evacuate the area in order to protect their lives," an Israeli military spokeswoman said.
After returning to the plight of the Gazans, Reuters did admit basing its article on a (V)ideo given to Reuters by a local showed at least a dozen corpses, including three children, lying in rubble-filled streets, though the footage could not be verified independently.
Later, in the same article, the Reuters reporters noted that Hamas had urged people across the territory not to heed the Israeli warnings and abandon their homes.
Israel, to protect itself, must embed not just Israeli media but both international media and UN representatives with its front line troops. Let the media - especially the likes of the UK's Daily Mail - see why "innocent civilians" are victims (even after Israel has warned them where it plans to attack); let them see if some of these "innocent" victims really are victims of Israeli attacks or are they victims of Hamas' desire for photo ops (as has been proven in the past).
In truth, it is more important to embed hostile media with the front line troops that it is to embed media known to be favorable to Israel. UN "observers" must be included so that the misconceptions (lies?) of UN human rights chief Navi Pillay and others like her can be exposed.
See related blog entry:
Excerpts from Times of Israel Thursday article on this site.
