Would Hamas have tailored its air targeting to avoid as much as possible innocents from becoming casualties? Would Hamas have dropped millions of leaflets to warn civilian residents before staging bombing runs? Or made tens of thousands of phone calls telling non-combatants to flee the areas which are to be attacked, or discriminated between combatants and non-combatants in a ground war, or abided by the Geneva Conventions' rules for the treatment of prisoners of war?
Would the group have arrested the Hamas operatives who murderer Israeli civilians, or investigated "mistakes" that resulted in civilian casualties?
 A children's health clinic in Ashkelon, Israel, that was hit this week by a rocket launched from Gaza. (Image source: IDF) |
The American media, by drawing almost exclusive attention to the wide difference in casualties between Gaza and Israel -- a disparity that did not ensue from Hamas's lack of trying -- do a disservice to humane people on the front line of a global war between Islamic extremists and liberal-democratic civilization.
The media also does not mention that Hamas leaders have set up their military headquarters beneath hospitals and established arms storerooms in homes, mosques and even in an empty UNRWA school. Journalists do not discuss the Hamas tactic of regularly mixing their operatives with the women and children of their own families. This is the intentional use of innocents as human shields and as hostages, to serve their propaganda objective of casting Israel in the role of aggressor and villain. The media networks leave this narrative to Israeli diplomats and spokespersons.
But the faint rhetorical support of an ally from U.S. leaders is cowardly and a disingenuous insult to the intelligence of the American people who are not swayed by the phony handwringing of its so-called intelligentsia.
Colonel Lawrence A. Franklin (Ret.) is a former USAFR Attaché to Israel.
Alice Maxwell