If the Times wanted its readers to gain a better understanding of what is actually going on in the Middle East, one could think of other statistics it could have given. It could have informed them that 80 percent of Israeli fatalities have been non-combatants, half of whom have been female; or that less than 5 percent of Palestinian fatalities have been female; or that a much higher proportion of Israeli casualties than Palestinian casualties have been older people. All these would be a good indication of which party is targeting the innocent.
But there is a further problem. The Times appears to have inflated the number of Palestinian dead. ”At least 2,100 Palestinians have been killed during the months of violence that began Sept. 29, 2000,” stated a caption on March 6. Yet the Reuters news agency — which even Palestinian Authority officials have admitted is sympathetic to their ”struggle” — provides a considerably lower figure. In a story on March 7, Reuters Gaza correspondent Nidal al-Mughrabi writes: ”At least 1,906 Palestinians and 720 Israelis have been killed since the Palestinian uprising for statehood began in September 2000.”
The Times has taken its statistics for its ”Death Toll” chart from the Palestinian Red Crescent, which it should know is a highly politicized and sometimes militant organization — Red Crescent ambulances have on more than one occasion been caught smuggling suicide bombers into Israel. At least one Red Crescent medic became a suicide bomber herself, killing or injuring over 150 Israeli civilians at a west Jerusalem shopping arcade last year. (For the record, according to a report in the liberal Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz on March 13, 2003: 441 of the Palestinian casualties have been suicide bombers, bomb makers, gunmen, or activists in Hamas and Islamic Jihad; 324 in Fatah and Tanzim; 329 in the Palestinian Authority security forces; 69 in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. In addition, 417 have belonged to other small, armed groups, or were individuals killed in the course of perpetrating acts of terrorism against Israel. And 365 innocent Palestinians — unconnected to terrorist or armed activity — have died, though some may have been killed as a result of being caught in Palestinian, not Israeli, crossfire.)
Pregnant Mothers
Less than 5 percent of Palestinian casualties have been female, and even fewer have been pregnant mothers. Yet when one is killed — as happened on March 2 — the Times takes care to let its readers know: in news reports on March 3 (page 6), March 4 (page 1), March 5 (page 3), and March 9. Readers would be forgiven for assuming that Israel killed pregnant mothers every day, but these stories all refer to the same unnamed woman. The Times also neglected to mention that the woman’s unfortunate death happened in the course of a successful military action to capture Mohammed Taha, co-founder of Hamas, who was hiding in the house next door.
The front-page report by James Bennet (”Israeli Raid Snares a Foe, but leaves Family Motherless,” March 4) refers to Taha only as ”a known militant.” Not until the twelfth paragraph, on an inside page, does Bennet mention that Taha is a leader of Hamas. (He is in fact the most senior one ever caught.) Other papers ran headlines such as ”Israel nabs Hamas founder in Gaza” (Daily News, March 4).
This was an accidental death in the course of a legitimate counter-terrorist action. But a number of pregnant Israeli mothers were killed deliberately. If their deaths were reported at all, the Times and other media have referred to them merely as ”Israelis” or as ”settlers.”
