Whether writing about 1948 or 2024, some CNN journalists have a hard time acknowledging Palestinian and Arab aggression against Israel. In their October 19 article, “Gazans say Sinwar’s death will not change anything,” Abeer Salman, Mohammad Al Sawalhi, and Sana Noor Haq rewrite both history and current events. Instead of journalism, the reporters engage in denialism as they expunge the violent and criminal acts of Israel’s enemies from the record.
This denialism shows in two lies and two omissions.
Both lies are found in the same sentence:
Like Sinwar, at least 70% of residents in Gaza are refugees, or descendants of those uprooted by al-Nakba, or “the catastrophe,” according to Amnesty International, when about 700,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes during the creation of Israel in 1948.
The first lie is that “700,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled.” The second lie is that it happened “during the creation of Israel in 1948.”
The language implies that Palestinians were expelled simply because Israel was born. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Israel’s Declaration of Independence appealed to Arab inhabitants to stay and “participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation.”
The refugee situation wasn’t caused by Israel’s establishment. It was caused by the war launched by Palestinian Arabs and neighboring Arab armies against the Yishuv and then the newly established State of Israel from 1947-49. As historians from Efraim Karsh to Benny Morris write, most of those Palestinian Arabs who became refugees were not forcibly expelled, but rather fled of their own volition during the hostilities. According to Karsh: “The exceptions occurred in the heat of battle and were uniformly dictated by ad hoc military considerations.”[1]
Had Palestinian Arab leadership, and the surrounding Arab nations, accepted Israel’s existence, not a single Palestinian Arab would have become a refugee. Instead, they became refugees because of the hostilities launched by their own Arab brethren to destroy the Jewish state. The blatantly partisan, revisionist language employed by Salman, Al Sawalhi, and Noor Haq is both inaccurate and unbecoming of professional journalists. That CNN has refused to correct these lies reflects a continued degradation of professionalism.
On top of the two lies are the two omissions related to more recent events.
After quoting “Ministry of Health in Gaza” (i.e., Hamas) figures for the total number killed and wounded in Gaza, the authors quote the “Hamas-run Government Media Office” for the claim that “[a]round 70% of Palestinians killed by Israel’s strikes are women and children.” This is where the first omission lies.
As CNN trots out Hamas’s figures about “women and children,” it consistently ignores Israel’s figures regarding the number of combatants killed. In August, the IDF said it had “eliminated more than 17,000 terrorists” in Gaza. Whereas Hamas’s figures have been repeatedly and credibly debunked by researchers, Israel’s figures on combatants have historically proven accurate. For example, while Palestinian, United Nations, and “non-governmental” sources originally claimed only around 250 Palestinian combatants were killed during Operation Cast Lead in 2008-09, Israel’s figures (709 combatants) ended up being far more accurate, even according to Hamas officials.
Selective reporting of these figures misleads CNN’s audience. The full context portrays a deadly conflict, but one in which the IDF has achieved an extraordinarily low civilian-to-combatant ratio. But CNN’s reporting skips over data regarding combatant deaths, portraying a story only of high civilian casualties.
The second omission works to deny Palestinian responsibility for those civilian deaths. The journalists write: “For years, [Israel] has also said Hamas fighters use mosques, hospitals and other civilian buildings to hide from Israeli attacks and launch their own – claims that Hamas has repeatedly denied.”
It’s not just Israel, and Israel is not just “saying” Hamas is doing so; it has proved it. Video footage shows it. United Nations officials have admitted it. Foreign intelligence agencies have confirmed it. Gazans have said it. A freed Yazidi sex slave recently talked about it. Journalists have reported it, as have medical workers who worked in those hospitals.
1/ A non-exhaustive list of times when @UNRWA facilities have been used by #Hamas terrorists.
Most of the examples are within the last decade, but note this has been going on for many decades, and the @UN has done little about it other than mild condemnations when caught. https://t.co/mDI41RxCie
— David Litman (@dmlitman) October 22, 2023
In fact, even Hamas has admitted to the practice.
So why are these CNN journalists so hesitant to talk about it? Perhaps it’s because these three CNN journalists, with their own histories of slanted reporting, aren’t interested in reporting the truth. Perhaps they’re simply interested in advancing a partisan narrative.
[1] Efraim Karsh, Palestine Betrayed (Yale University Press, 2010), p.237.