Framing Israel

Have you ever noticed when CNN, MSNBC and the rest of the mainstream media characterize the Hamas-Israel War; they frame it in the following way. First, they concede that Hamas attacked Israel and killed Israeli Jews. Then, using casualty numbers supplied by Hamas and their supporters, like UNWRA, Al Jazeera and the rest of their accomplices, they claim Israel responded to the border attacks killing 20,000 innocent Gazan civilians, as they roll a video showing young children sifting through piles of rubble. In the event the media’s viewers do not already harbor antisemitic feelings, it continues to inflame their audience by airing real and staged videos of bloodied Gazans in hospitals.

Of course there is rarely context attached to the media’s decidedly anti-Israel account. No mention of the hundreds of miles of terror tunnels burrowed beneath the ground lining Israel’s border. No mention of military assets illegally hidden in schools, hospitals, and mosques. No mention of the suicide bombers blowing up cafes, theaters, and other public spaces. No mention of the thousands of fire balloons floated over the Gaza border igniting fields and communities along the border. No mention of the tens of thousands of rockets launched at Israel’s civilian population centers like Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ashdod, and Ashkelon. Finally, no mention that Israel has repeatedly offered a cessation of all hostilities for the return of the hostages and Hamas vacating Gaza.

Now I can’t fault the mainstream media for not showing images of beheaded Israeli children, raped women, their mutilated bodies paraded in the public square to cheering throngs of Gazans. Nor can I blame the media for not showing Gazans and Palestinian Arabs in Judea and Samaria handing out sweets to cheering crowds as news filters down to them of Israeli deaths. And finally, nor can I fault the media for not displaying pictures of the charred bodies of entire families burned alive by Hamas’ horde of murderous thugs. Projecting such atrocities in plain view would not fit the mainstream’s narrative of framing the Gazans as the innocent victims of the evil Israelis, rather than condemning Hamas, a gang of miscreants who initiated the war, bringing death and destruction to innocent Israelis and Gazans.

What they do show are the well-funded and organized antisemitic, pro-Hamas campus mobs protesting Israel’s right to defend itself against a barbaric enemy, thus amplifying and justifying the genocidal aims and atrocities committed by Hamas. Hamas purposefully perpetrates atrocities as a strategic tactic to terrorize and demoralize Israel’s population into submission, with the hopes they abandon their ancestral homeland.

I opened this piece asking a rhetorical question, “Have you ever noticed…?” Of course you have. But too many people would rather deny what is too painful to admit, recognize, and publicly condemn; therein lies the problem. When the ideological underpinnings ingrained in our educational system, the media, and seats of power, are antithetical to Israel’s welfare and existence, it is no wonder people have become Hamas’ willing enablers. I can only wonder how those in academia, the media, and seats of power, who frame Hamas as the victim and Israel as the aggressor, lost their objectivity, integrity, and moral bearings.