THE TIMES PRINTS A PHOTO GALLERY OF CHILDREN KILLED IN GAZA:
HOW TO UNDERSTAND THIS OUTRAGEOUS EDITORIAL DECISION

by Efrem Sigel
 
Between 2014 and 2020, U.S. drone and missile strikes and ground operations took the lives of between 910 and 2,200 civilians, including as many as 454 children. These estimates, compiled by the Bureau of Independent Journalism, are especially noteworthy given the New York Times’ outrageous decision (May 28) to print a gallery of photos of 64 children killed in the recent war in Gaza, under the headline, “They Were Only Children.” 
 
Yes, the Times has occasionally covered civilian deaths from American drone strikes, and no, it has never devoted 42 square inches of its front page to photos of children who perished in these actions. Unlike the American strikes, few of which occurred during ongoing hostilities, the actions of the Israeli Defense Forces were taken in the course of a raging battle initiated by Hamas, which fired 4,300 rockets aimed at killing as many children and adults in Israel as possible.

Hamas alone bears the responsibility for the tragic and utterly preventable deaths of children in Gaza, some of them victims of Hamas’ own rockets. No one disputes that Hamas deliberately embedded its command centers, tunnels, munitions, rocket launchers and fighters under civilian dwellings, while aiming its own rockets at civilians living in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Sderot and elsewhere. 
 
Yet rather than credit the Israeli military’s explanations for why it targeted specific buildings, the Times contents itself with the vague acknowledgement that Hamas’ tunnels run “underneath civilian neighborhoods.” And in describing the trauma of children growing up in Gaza under threat of violence, it has the gall to attribute much of that trauma to “four major Israeli offensives” without explaining that each was a defensive operation in response to Hamas attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians. (As for how many children were actually killed by Hamas rockets, the Times acknowledged that two “may have been killed” in this way — ignoring a detailed accounting of deaths compiled by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Information Center in Israel, which reveals that the deaths of at least eight children were the result of rockets fired by Hamas or other groups that landed in Gaza.)

Neither is there a mention by the Times of how Israel warns civilians in advance of a strike — is there another army in the world that does this? Nor has the paper seen fit to print similar photo galleries of dozens or hundreds of children killed in, among others, a Taliban bombing of a girls’ school in Afghanistan, killings and kidnappings of school children in Nigeria, or the aftermath of a siege in Beslan, Russia in which 250 students and parents died.

How strange, and yet strangely predictable, that only the military actions of the Jewish State of Israel, in justified self-defense, merit such an inflammatory — and yes, reprehensible — front-page display. Children’s lives are precious, and there is no excuse for using the tragic death of any child, Palestinian or Israeli, as grist for an article that reads more like Hamas propaganda than even-handed journalism. In the aftermath of the latest Gaza war, the Times’ coverage of worldwide attacks on Jews ought by rights to have included a wrenching look at the indefensible editorial decisions made in its own newsroom.
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 Efrem Sigel is the author of two published novels, scores of short stories and the recently published memoir, “Juror Number 2: The Story of a Murder, the Agony of a Neighborhood” https://www.thewriterspress.com/