Double Jeopardy for $1,000: Members of this occupation set up the deaths of thousands of Gaza residents. The surprisingly correct question: Who are journalists? The basis for that audacious claim: a terrific article published in The Atlantic not this year but ten years ago, in November 2014.
Thatâs when Matti Friedman, formerly a reporter and editor in the Jerusalem bureau of the Associated Press, wrote this: âHamasâs strategy is to provoke a response from Israel by attacking from behind the cover of Palestinian civilians, thus drawing Israeli strikes that kill those civilians, and then to have the casualties filmed by one of the worldâs largest press contingents, with the understanding that the resulting outrage abroad will blunt Israelâs response. This is a ruthless strategy, and an effective one. It is predicated on the cooperation of journalists.â
Friedman described in 2014 how the Hamas effort that year âincluded rocket barrages across Israel and was deliberately fought from behind Palestinian civilians, many of whom died as a result. Dulled by years of the âIsrael storyâ and inured to its routine omissions, confused about the role they are meant to play, and co-opted by Hamas, reporters described this war as an Israeli onslaught against innocent people.â
That propaganda success and others laid out on a bloody platter the Hamas strategy for 2023-2024: Send soldiers into Israel to murder and rape, then let the Israelis retaliate and take the blame as Hamas militants hide beneath houses and hospitals. Friedman wrote in 2014, âThe lasting importance of this summerâs war, I believe, doesnât lie in the war itself. It lies instead in the way the war has been described and responded to abroad.â Since last October thousands of victims have learned the lasting importance in not just words, but blood. ###
In other words, Israel took the bait and now it is working out as planned. Journalists should report what is happening and many of them gave up their lives in Gaza to do it.
âFor the victim, terror is about what it is. For the terrorist, it is about what happens next.â
Terrorism is a lever. It moves, first the victim, and then the victimâs victims. And, as noted in this post (and elsewhere), it can move the attention of the world, too.
First, though, it moves the victim to retaliate, and to prioritize the prosecution of that retaliation. It drives the victim mad with the need to survive. It does that by the bestial means it employs. Next, it createsâby leveraging the actions of its victimâa mirror, in the the need to survive felt by the victimâs victims.
Along the way it prompts the renewed attention of humanity to the terroristsâ cause, because humanity canât–if it is going to retain its humanityâignore victims. It simply canât.
There is no point complaining about this. Suffering however maneuvered is still suffering, and humanity–if it is going to retain its humanityâcanât not attend to it.
The taskâas hard as it isâis to factor that equation into your response. Donât blame people for being humaneâeven if their humanity is being leveraged.