18-Nov-12: Fell short? Not just the Hamas rockets but the ethics of the journalists covering them

Israelis take cover in a pipe used as a bomb shelter, after a rocket was launched from the Gaza Strip on Thursday, November 15 in Kiryat Malachi, Israel [Image Source: CNN]

Wars are complicated and messy. So, sometimes, we form our views about them, and about the parties fighting them, from simpler things. Things like photographs.

On Friday, the Egyptian prime minister came visiting Gaza. He was not there long - an hour or two. Long enough for the insiders of the Hamas regime to arrange (engineer?) some photo opportunities, one of which ignited a firestorm of sympathy, attention and invective against the Israeli actions in this war, and literally, physically brought the Moslem Brotherhood politician to tears [see "Stop the carnage: Egypt PM weeps for Palestinian boy killed in airstrike and calls for truce"]. You can see the photo of the dead child in many places on the web. It's a tragic image, and one we prefer not to place on this page because it's a child there that is dead, and there ought to be a limit to how much an image like that gets exploited. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

CNN published a video clip yesterday (Saturday) featuring the child and the tragic back-story. It's here.

Small boy caught in Mideast crossfire          
CNN | Added on November 16, 2012
CNN's Sara Sidner reports from Gaza on how a small child became a symbol of civilian casualties.

The experts at CNN have it right; the child's death is a symbol, but of something else: the malevolence of the terrorists who routinely use deaths on their own side to advance their political and theological campaign. Watch the video and see the articles that envelope the photo that has been published in dozens of places. You are left in no doubt that this horrible thing (it certainly is horrible) was Israel's doing, and that Israel seeks the deaths of Gazan children.

But is it?

In reality, as we pointed out last night, the rate at which terrorist rockets that are intended to hit Israeli civilian targets drop short and fall on top of Palestinian Arabs is incredibly high.

Even more incredible is the way the mainstream news media, surely aware of the facts, deem it unworthy of being reported. We commented on this earlier today ["18-Nov-12: Contemplating rockets"] and in the past

• 5-Nov-12: Incoming missile alert at 11:30 this morning
• 14-Oct-12: Early Sunday evening missile attacks
• 8-Sep-12: Familiar routine: rocket and mortar attacks during Sabbath
• 5-Jul-12: The terrorists of Gaza routinely mis-fire, dropping rockets on their Arab neighbors's heads. When do you hear about those self-inflicted injuries?
• 22-Jun-12: Killing little children, then turning them into martyrs and blaming it on other people
• 2-May-12: Terrorists' rocket falls short, crashes near security fence
• 7-Aug-07: What disaster have these thugs wrought on their people

and numerous other times. Someone needs to note these things.

When those terrorist rockets fall short, as they do day after day, landing on the heads and rooves of ordinary Palestinian Arab Gazans, people suffer and are sometimes killed. But no one pays attention because it does not fit the conventional Israelis-are-strong-and-evil-while-Palestinians-are-weak-and-no-alternative narrative.

Now comes the estimable Elder of Ziyon and does what the mainstream media would have done if they had cared to look behind the conventional narrative. He joins the dots: "Dead child cradled by Egypt's PM was killed by Hamas!" No need for us to re-state his analysis since you can read it. It leads to the conclusion that the lifeless Gazan child, Mahmoud Sadalha, whose body was presented to the Egyptian prime minister as if it were the key to the city was almost certainly killed by one of those 'fell short' Palestinian Arab rockets.

The record shows that the people who put together the mainstream news find it embarrassing to be corrected in this way. Not surprising then that they don't make great efforts to draw attention to what they have done.

We - who one way and another pay the price for the demonization and hatred that follows from such manufactured lies - must.