Why does the WaPo make a disclaimer for the democracy Israel’s numbers but not the terrorist organization Hamas’s?  

In “Hamas attack civilians intentionally, Human Rights Watch says“ (7/17/24), The Washington Post continued its bias against Israel in a “systematic” way.

The Post claims that “38,700 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, according to the Gaza Health Ministry” and that “the Israel Defense forces on Tuesday claimed to have killed or apprehended 14,000 militants and to have killed half of Hamas’s military leaders since the start of the war.”  However, only after the Israeli figures does the Post add, “The figures could not be independently confirmed.”

There was no such disclaimer after the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry figure.  It seems that only democracies need to have their claims “independently confirmed,” whereas internationally recognized terrorist organizations have the full trust of The Washington Post for their claims.  It says a lot about the integrity, not to mention motivations, of The Washington Post.

This requires a correction.

The reality of the story behind the numbers is that they show that Israel is fighting one of the most humane urban wars in history, even with Hamas military tunnels underneath most if not all civilian structures in Gaza.  Hamas shoots from behind, below, and beside their civilians ensuring a maximal casualty count to aid in their war of global pressure on Israel.  War experts applaud Israel for some of the lowest civilian to combatant casualty counts since these figures have been recorded.  But it didn’t dissuade the Post from its full-throated support of Hamas.

To the paper’s credit, after months of prodding, the Post finally is admitting that the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry’s count “does not distinguish between civilians and combatants,” which would seemingly cast doubt on any semblance of accuracy.  But it still feels the need to add the claim that “the majority of the dead are women and children.”  Of course, that additional claim can’t be “independently confirmed,” but that doesn’t hold The Washington Post back from propagating it, since it coincides with its anti-Israel agenda.  This claim obviously requires a correction as well.

Dr. Michael Berenhaus is a freelance activist who works to combat anti-Israel bias in the media.  He has been widely published in news sources such as The Economist, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

Image: Daniel X. O'Neil via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.