Letter response to this report: AP Exclusive: Israeli house strikes killed mostly civilians
Dear Ms. Carroll and Mr. Kent (AP Senior VP/Executive Editor and Deputy Managing Editor/Standards Editor respectively),
Upon reading this article, the first thing that hit me was the opening sentence, “The youngest to die was 4 days old.” Yes, this is tragic, and yes, it is something that should make any person pause, but how different is this than any other war? Have no pregnant women or infants been killed in Syria? Are such victims missing from the fighting in the Ukraine? Have no Israeli pregnant women or infants been killed in the long wars between Israel and the Arab world? That made me realize how the single greatest failing of this article is its lack of context. We are presented with a myriad of figures, so and so many airstrikes, so and so many houses hit, so and so many people killed or injured, but what does it all mean? The question that the article needs to ask is how this current conflict measures up compared to other conflicts. That does not happen at all. Why not?
In a passage supporting Palestinian Arab claims that Israel is responding with “disproportionate force” and “callous disregard” for civilians, Hanan Ashrawi says, if civilians are the majority of deaths, “you cannot call them collateral damage.” That is a powerful statement, but it has no bearing in reality. In every war, by any army in the world, there are more civilian than combatant deaths. According to the UN, the average is 3:1, meaning 3 civilian deaths to each 1 combatant death. The International Red Cross, which has reviewed a longer period of time, reports the ratio at 10:1. So, even if we were to use this article’s alleged result of 1,483 or 66% of the casualties being civilian, we are looking at a ratio of 2:1, or two civilian deaths for every combatant, which is substantially lower than in any other conflict. How does this then earn Israel the condemnation of “callous disregard” for civilians? Quite the contrary, it shows that Israel has the lowest ratio of civilian to combatant deaths, and is evidence supporting Israel’s statement that it is working to avoid civilian casualties in a heavily populated combat zone. Why does Israel have this distinct and far more stringent standard than every other army in the world, including Arab armies? That is clearly bias. What this means is that even without any challenge to the alleged figures, there is already a problem with the article.
The article notes that the AP examined 247 airstrikes out of some 5,000. Does that mean that 95% of the airstrikes did not hit civilians, or are clearly accidental if they did? Why is this not reported? Aside from local testimony, what evidence was used to determine whether or not militant operatives or equipment had been in the area? Was there any attempt or method to root out those who might be less than honest in their depiction of events? The article does not say. The article notes that the AP collected death certificates, this being a form of proof that Israel would accept. What forms of proof were collected to indicate civilian or combatant status? The article does not say
For the first time ever, two separate news crews witnessed and were able to film and broadcast militants building and then firing rocket launchers from within civilian areas. On several occasions, rockets were found in UN schools in Gaza. According to the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, Public Opinion Poll no. 53:
“A majority of 57% believes that launching rockets from populated areas in the Gaza Strip is justified and 39% say it is unjustified. Among Gazans, belief that it is justified to launch rockets from populated areas drops to 48% while increasing in the West Bank to 62%.”
So, not only is there evidence that this tactic is purposeful, but that it has been part of a larger public discussion within the Palestinian Arab world, with support for it being measured over time. Clearly there is substantial evidence that Hamas has been engaged in a policy of using civilian areas and structures as launching pads and weapons depots, despite those being clear violations of the rules of war. Not surprisingly, this article does not mention any of that at all.
More importantly, even within this study group, we are still looking at “just over 60%” of the casualties as being civilian, which is a 1.5:1 ratio, which is significantly lower than the overall casualty rate for the war. Again the article does give us any context to see how that percentage measures up to any other nation at war. The information is presented in a vacuum, as if it needs no context, and is automatically used to accuse Israel of having done wrong when it is actually suggesting that Israel has been avoiding civilian casualties.
The article does not mention the primary source for the statistics, attributing them only as “preliminary U.N. figures”, which means that they are most likely from Hamas, which does not provide identification of combatant status. The article does not state or comment on what further analysis or processing the U.N. is intending to do with the data. In fact, the article uses no language that might suggest that the numbers are open to challenge or revision at all. Instead, it notes “The number of civilian deaths has been a key issue…,” instead of saying the “alleged” or “claimed” number of civilian deaths. While the article does refer to the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center to verify that none of the combatants were women, it specifically ignores any other information that the Amit Center had compiled on the identities of the casualties. In a posting of December 1, 2014, the Amit Center declared the following:
“The findings of the ITIC’s examination so far (based on approximately 54% of the names of the dead) suggest that terrorist operatives constitute about 52% of the fatalities who have been identified, and non-involved civilians constitute approximately 48%. This ratio may vary in the future.”
Why is this not even mentioned at all?
In two articles in the NY Times, Ms. Jodi Rudoren discussed potential problems in regards to identifying the combatants among the dead.
In the article In Gaza, Epithets are fired and Euphemisms Give Shelter (July 20, 2014), she notes that Hamas has instructed the people of Gaza in how to speak of the war.
A “Dos and Don’ts” YouTube video produced by Hamas … shed some light on the Palestinian strategy. Don’t post footage of rockets being launched from cities, it warned, lest Israel use it to justify strikes on populated areas. Don’t publish close-ups of masked gunmen, or your page can be shut down for inciting violence. Do start with “in response to the cruel Israeli assault,” it advised. “No harm in publishing the pictures of casualties.”
Clearly the intent of this directive is to hide what is happening, particularly the use of civilians as human shields, to promote a sense of victimhood and to build an emotional response in the social media by posting pictures of dead or injured people. Most importantly, the video instructs the people of Gaza that whenever talking about the dead, “always add ‘an innocent citizen.’ ” Clearly we are not going to see who is a combatant without a struggle.
In the second article, Civilian or Not? New Fight in Tallying the Dead From the Gaza Conflict (August 5, 2014), Ms. Rudoren notes that
“The Times analysis, looking at 1,431 names, shows that the population most likely to be militants, men ages 20 to 29, is also the most overrepresented in the death toll: They are 9 percent of Gaza’s 1.7 million residents, but 34 percent of those killed whose ages were provided.”
Furthermore
“At the same time, women and children under 15, the least likely to be legitimate targets, were the most underrepresented, making up 71 percent of the population and 33 percent of the known-age casualties.”
What this means is that there is evidence to support the claim that this is not random firing without regard for civilian life, that there has been a clear attempt to prevent casualties among the civilians, as well as that there is evidence that Hamas is not providing all the information necessary to discern the truth.
A very important point from this second article comes in a brief discussion with Al Mezlan, a Gazan based human rights organization. As the spokesman for the group, Samir Zaqout discusses their attempts to identify the combatants among the dead, he notes, “Surviving children might deny that their father was a fighter, but a medical worker might say he arrived at the emergency room with a weapon in hand.” In other words, people are following Hamas’ initial directive to deny the combatant status of any casualty. What is not said, but needs to be inferred, is that there is no other form of identification for a combatant except if he is witnessed with a “weapon in hand.” This means that Hamas and Hamas affiliated combatants do not wear uniforms or any other form of combatant insignia, in violation of the rules of war. By dressing as civilians even while actively engaged in combat, they are purposefully endangering civilians who may be near or in the combat zone. This is something which was not only ignored in Ms. Rudoren’s article, but has not been picked up in any article. It is also worth noting that Mr. Akram, who used to work for the NY Times as their source in Gaza, is a contributing reporter on this article, and was possibly for the first one as well.
Following Operation Cast Lead, in 2008 and 2009, Hamas announced that only some 50 of nearly 1,300 combatants were combatants, which is less than 5%, for a civilian to combatant ratio of 19:1 (estimates range from the UN count of just over 1,400 to Israel’s claim of 1,166, Al Mezlan reported 1,268). Al Mezlan was willing to admit to a higher number than Hamas, and claimed that 85% had been civilians and 15% combatants, for a ratio just under 6:1. Needless to say, Israel was universally condemned for this perceived indifference to civilian life. It was only after Israel had painstakingly researched the social media and organizational charts for every militant organization and every casualty that it was able to prove that its original estimate of over 700 combatants as casualties was correct. In a November 2010 interview in London, Fathi Hamad, the Hamas Interior Minister, acknowledged that around 700 militants from Hamas and affiliated factions were killed in the war. Unfortunately this admission of Hamas’ blatant use of misinformation to malign Israel did not make for good press, and it has remained relatively unnoticed.
In the current war, we have started out with evidence that Hamas has clearly intended to repeat its performance from the last war. It continues to violate the rules of war by: shielding its combatants in civilian clothing; storing and firing weapons from within civilian areas; and by primarily attacking civilian areas in Israel. As the BBC has noted, pictures of injured or dead people from other wars are recycled and used to promote negative opinions of Israel. Nonetheless, the mainstream media continues to report from the conflict as if there is no reason to doubt what Hamas claims. It is significant to note how the three reporters here have avoided providing any context by which to understand their reported ‘facts’ and ‘findings.’ It is important to note that they do not reference any source, such as the Amit Center, which might have provided data that would have challenged their findings. It is important to note that one of the three reporters has even worked on articles discussing problems in certifying the combatant/civilian status of the casualties in Gaza, and yet did not mention any of what was found in an article he contributed to in the AP Exclusive article discussed here. The reporting in this article is so one-sided and biased as to be propaganda. There is no excuse for this.
