Watch
now on YouTube: https://youtu.be/oy12eyLUlog
Editors Note: Yesterday's webinar is essential
viewing to understand the perceptions of the war in Gaza outside
Israel. David Adesnik explains in-depth how the collective mindset of
international organizations and media outlets fell victim to
narratives broadcast by Hamas.
Since the October 7 mass terror attack by Hamas, the Israeli
military has been faced with one of the most difficult challenges in
its history: to destroy the ability of this group to carry out
terrorist attacks from Gaza, while keeping civilian casualties to a
minimum, notwithstanding the fact that Hamas uses places including
schools, hospitals, mosques, and even United Nations property to
shield its military operations from attack.
Israel has labored mightily to protect civilians, agreeing to steps
including ceasefires to deliver food and medical supplies, and to
permit civilians to evacuate areas before conducting counterterror
operations. But Israel's efforts to protect civilians are frequently
given short shrift by major American media outlets, elected officials,
diplomats, and "human rights" advocates, David Adesnik of the
Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) told a Jewish Policy
Center webinar on Wednesday.
Some of the problem stems from an reliance on data from
Hamas-controlled sources of information including Gaza's Ministry of
Health. Until April, the Ministry presented its casualty data as the
authoritative source of information on the subject. Last month,
however, it admitted that its records for many of the war's fatalities
included "incomplete" data, and it has continued to revise the data
without explaining why.
Sometimes, they simply lie.
Major media outlets and U.N. agencies have repeatedly quoted data
from the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry, and in this year's State of
the Union Address, President Joe Biden presented as fact (without
citing a source), the Ministry's claim of 30,000 Palestinian deaths.
Back in December, he declared that Israel had carried out
"indiscriminate bombing."
But such claims are based on badly flawed data, Adesnik said. Its
assertions that 70 percent of the dead are women and children appear
to suggest a lack of discrimination on Israel's part. But a closer
look raises serious questions: A third or more of the records,
consisting overwhelmingly of women and children, have incomplete data.
And thousands more records that the Ministry has labeled complete "are
actually missing data," he added.
Hamas' Gaza Health Ministry is not a reliable source of
information. Instead, seeks to draw attention away from Hamas' use of
civilians as human shields while "assigning Israel the blame."
Media outlets and governments - including the US government -
appear to have taken the bait.