Infantilizing Iran: The Soroka Hospital Incident

When news outlets like the Washington Post and the BBC covered Iran’s attack on Soroka Hospital on Thursday, they legitimized the Iranian regime’s retroactive justification for their war crime: that they were actually targeting IDF technological and intelligence bases “about a mile from the hospital”. 

We all know what very likely happened: when the Iranian regime hit a target they either were or weren’t directly aiming at, they decided to do some PR damage control for the benefit of the international community. What does the IDF do when they’re forced to operate in or around a hospital in Gaza? They justify their actions by the legitimate military targets that are adjacent to said hospital. So, the Iranian regime obviously concluded, we’ll just do the same thing – and make up the targets if we have to.

In the online discourse about this subject, a lot has been written by Jewish and pro-Israel advocates, while frustratingly little has been written about it anyone outside of this bubble. The hot takes I have seen so far all touch on a few obvious aspects – Iran’s obvious lie, the AI materials floating around to justify said lie, and the fact that this hospital attack cannot be compared to Israeli operations on Gazan hospitals because of the reasoning behind each action (Israel: eliminate Hamas targets; Iran: kill Jews).

But I want to imagine, just for a minute, what it would be like if we collectively gave the Iranian regime the benefit of the doubt. In our imagination, Iran really was aiming to strike legitimate military targets in proximity to a hospital. 

Why, then, is no objective news organization – the same ones legitimizing this thought exercise – asking why Iran didn’t give Israeli civilians a warning to evacuate the hospital? 

Israel set the international standard for by warning Gazan civilians for weeks to evacuate from dangerous zones, even in some cases actually facilitating the evacuations. Is it too much to ask that serious journalists would question Iran on why they couldn’t bother to do the same?

Minute of imagination over. Look, you don’t have to tell me why Iran doesn’t act the same way Israel does. Of course, Israel tries to prevent civilian casualties while striking military targets while Iran’s entire goal is to kill civilians. You and I both know that. 

But if the international reporters are going to give Iran’s sorry excuses air time, it shouldn’t be too much to ask that they ask the obvious followup questions – the equivalent of which that they never hesitate to ask of the IDF. Which military bases were you targeting exactly, and why specifically were they targets? Isn’t shooting a missile at a hospital a war crime? If you were aiming at a military target, why didn’t you give a warning for Israeli civilians to evacuate the hospital nearby?

Failure to ask these questions is failure to report on this war accurately. It should not be on the reader to see a claim like “Iran says they were targeting…” and instinctively know that it’s a lie. It’s the media’s responsibility to push back on both sides’ claims until they get facts that make sense, and if they lack the ability to do that, then they shouldn’t put those claims in their articles to begin with. 

Otherwise, they are simply infantilizing Iran by giving them a space to lie with impunity. The Iranian regime will learn that they have the green light to make anything up for the press with no risk of questioning. And these lies will only further incite Iranian hatred for the State of Israel and anti-Semites’ hatred for Jews around the world.

Just like we cannot allow Iran to build a nuclear weapon, we cannot allow the international press to infantilize the Iranian regime.