The Los Angeles Times leads Thursday with a story entitled: “Gaza’s dilemma: Deadly war or suffocating Israeli embargo.” According to the story, Palestinians in Gaza are left with no choice but to wage war, because if they do not fire rockets at Israeli civilians, they must accept an Israeli [sic] “embargo.” The article omits the obvious point that if Hamas would stop trying to kill Israelis, neither the embargo nor the war itself would be necessary.
The authors, Alexandra Zavis and Batsheva Sobelman, accept that Hamas started the war–and even suggest that most Palestinians in Gaza support it, though there is nothing beyond anecdotal evidence to prove that claim. They also describe Hamas’s smuggling tunnels to Egypt–which have been used to import deadly weapons–in positive terms, lamenting their supposed closure: “Residents are left to struggle just to get by.”
Nowhere–not once–in the entire article do Zavis or Sobelman note the terror tunnels that Hamas has spent the past several years building to attack Israel, diverting humanitarian aid and building materials for that purpose. Nowhere do they mention the fact that Hamas is using Palestinians as human shields, or that Israel has offered many ceasefires, or that the rockets fired from Gaza are intended to kill as many Israeli civilians as possible.
The article presents “war” or “embargo” as a false choice for Palestinians, utterly ignoring the fact that Gazans could choose peace instead of either of those options. The authors faithfully report the skepticism of Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal towards a ceasefire, as if he is a reliable source and his reservations are justified.
In sum, the article is nothing short of pro-terror propaganda, in other words, presented to readers as front-page news.
Image: Newseum