As violence and tension between Israel and Hamas continue, many are questioning and contesting the obvious bias against Israel revealed in news reports.
Since Monday, Hamas has fired over 1,500 rockets into Israel from Gaza, according to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), but these numbers are often blurred by the mainstream media that is instead focused on Palestinian casualties and statistics.
“Israel is militarily stronger. There is a morally-flawed assumption that the stronger party is in the wrong and the weaker party is in the right,” said Asher Fredman, fellow at Israel’s Kohelet Policy Forum and former Chief of Staff to Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs.
Hamas is attempting to garner international sympathy towards the Palestinian cause by inflicting terror on its own people and using them as “human shields,” Fredman said.
The international community must “[clarify] Hamas’ responsibility for both Israeli and Palestinian casualties,” Fredman told The Foreign Desk.
There is also a “racism of low expectations – some Western media just accept that Palestinians will engage in terror but hold Israel to a different standard” while other “Western media outlets uncritically accept Hamas claims and propaganda.”
Not all Western reporters who propagate Hamas narratives are doing so knowingly.
“In some cases, it is just lazy reporting – i.e. counting how many Palestinians were killed compared to how many Israelis without asking how many of the Palestinians were active terrorists.”
“In other cases, Western reporters insist on interpreting the complex Israeli-Palestinian conflict through unconnected frames, such as U.S. racial tensions,” stated Fredman.
Thanks to ‘woke culture’ phrases like ‘ethnic cleansing,’ ‘settler colonialism’ and ‘apartheid state’ have become popular epithets for the Jewish State, sparking outrage from many who cite Israel’s record as the only democracy in the Middle East.
