Judging Israel

Driving back from a trip a couple of days ago, I was listening to one of NPR’s news programs, which began with a long tape of a reporter in Gaza telling us about what she was seeing, beginning in a neighborhood being attacked and ending in a hospital, and the stories she told were, of course, heartbreaking. Neither the reporter nor the hosts made any political comments but the placement of the story, its length, and the personal stories it told did.

A little later one of the hosts interviewed an Israeli defense analyst, a little more aggressively than NPR hosts are wont to do. the man’s analysis, the analysis he’d been invited on the show to give, sounded calculating and cold in comparison with the tragic stories we’d just heard. NPR offered no balancing story of life in Israel lived under the constant threat of missiles fired by Hamas. Israel’s success in creating the “iron dome” to protect its people ironically deprived reporters of the chance to tell heart-breaking stories, though it’s a question how many would had they the chance.

“Israel is willfully killing civilians” is the subtext of many of the news stories in the Western press and much of the enraged commentary we see on the web. That was the effective lesson of NPR’s reports the day I listened even though the show was formally objective (no side was overtly taken) and balanced (stories were offered covering both sides). When one side has the stories and the other the analysis, the one with the stories wins the hearts of the listeners.

This must stop. There are really only two explanations for Israel’s attack on Gaza: either Israel is defending itself against an enemy who places its weapons among civilians and is defending itself as humanely as possible, as the nation claims, or it is intentionally killing men, women, and children, destroying their homes and businesses, and taking out the hospitals that would treat them when they’re injured.

Is the second really plausible? Is Israel the kind of country to do that? Is it really a terrorist state? No. The charge against Israel, whether made explicitly or implicitly, is a slander against a nation that should have our sympathy for its struggle and admiration for its restraint in resistance.