Unlike a famous slogan, some news isn't fit to print

(JNS) — The New York Times Dec. 26 article, “Israel Loosened Its Rules to Bomb Hamas Fighters, Killing Many More Civilians,” which claimed Israel loosened its rules to kill Hamas fighters, resulting in the loss of many civilian lives, is disturbing precisely because of the assumption of objectivity, reliability and accuracy in its reporting. Yet, it is fair to question if this reputation is deserved, especially by those of us who closely follow developments in the Middle East and who know the Times has misreported when it comes to Israel. 

Without going into too much detail and enumerating all the paper’s errors, we can point to the Times’ false report blaming the bombing of the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Israel, which it refused to immediately correct. The paper’s biased reporting on Israel cannot be ignored. All of this must be taken into consideration when reading a report by The New York Times, no matter how many reporters they have researching a story, especially when many of those reporting are from Gaza, where, if they report anything other than the official line of Hamas or anti-Israel propaganda, they and their family will suffer dire consequences. This, too, must be taken into consideration.

The gist of the story is clearly to taint Israel with the brush of a ruthless, irresponsible, unrestrained response to eradicate the threat posed by Hamas. However, that is not the way it is described in the front-page story. Contrary to the article’s implication, Israel’s military response is not just to the massacre of Oct. 7 but to the existential threat posed by Hamas to its very existence, as the terror group clearly states in its charter.  

I find it especially ironic that the Times faults Israel for not loosening the unprecedented, extraordinary precautions that only the Jewish state has put in place to limit civilian casualties. Even if one were to accept Hamas’s proven-to-be inflated figures of approximately 40,000 casualties, keeping in mind that no distinction is made for deaths not caused by Israel, given that almost 20,000 terrorists have been killed, while math was never my strong suit, it still seems to be the lowest ratio of combatants to noncombatant casualties in the history of modern warfare. Experts on warfare like former British Army Col. Richard Kemp and John Spencer, chairman of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, have effectively refuted the charges of disproportionate killing on the part of Israel.  

It is important to keep in mind that despite their denials, reporters, hospital employees, teachers and staffers from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees turned out to be Hamas operatives and that even a “doctor” and his family and along with other “innocent Gazans” who held Israeli hostages as captives in their homes. 

While it is unfortunate and tragic when innocent lives are lost, at the end of the day, the responsibility for the situation in the Gaza Strip lies more with the terrorists who hide and take shelter as they embed themselves among civilians than upon the Israel Defense Forces, which remains, despite the Times’ attempt to smear its reputation, an army and fighting force we can be proud of, not only for its effectiveness in fighting a terror entity that doesn’t wear a uniform and hides in tunnels and among civilians but for its morality and decency.