OPINION:
The Washington Times runs an almost daily story about Israel, Gaza or Lebanon from the Associated Press. It should consider changing wire services.
Wednesday’s story, “Netanyahu signals war escalation in Gaza Strip” (Page 1) focuses on the decision of the Israeli government to change military tactics in Gaza. It completely fails to mention of the precipitating factor: the reprehensible videos Hamas released last week of starving — literally starving —Israeli hostages in tunnels, digging their own graves.
Most of the story focused on unsubstantiated tales and statistics from the Hamas-run “health ministry.”
So AP ignores a universally recognized war crime by Hamas and runs with material provided by Hamas. AP is a voice for terrorists in the region.
It also recently released a story headlined “Survivors of Israel’s pager attack on Hezbollah struggle to recover.” Israel conducted precise strikes on individual terrorists; these terrorists’ subsequent medical trauma — and the trauma of the family members they exposed to danger by being terrorists — should be of far less concern than, say, the recovery of the dozens injured in a Hezbollah attack on a group of Israeli Druze children playing soccer. The latter was an attack in which 12 children were murdered. It was the impetus (unmentioned in the article, of course) for the pager response.
The Washington Times is a source of good information on many areas of interest. But using AP material for coverage of Middle Eastern terrorists and their activities is misleading at best.
SHOSHANA BRYEN
Senior director
Jewish Policy Center
Washington
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