Media use of “targeted killing” whitewashes Israeli attacks
Mourners for Baha Abu al-Ata and his wife, Asma Abu al-Ata
Michael F Brown writes in the Electronic Intifada:
The “pinpoint” strike or “targeted killing” is back. Mainstream media simply can’t resist such terms even when the wording is clearly misleading.
The New York Times described Baha Abu al-Ata, who was killed in an Israeli air strike early Tuesday, as a senior commander of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Adopting the language of the Israeli army, The Times wrote that “Targeted strikes against militant leaders have led to war before, and Israel has sworn them off in the past.”
But this was no “targeted” strike. In the third paragraph, the newspaper of record notes that Asma Abu al-Ata, the commander’s wife, was also killed in the attack on their home in the Shujaiyeh neighborhood of Gaza City. Not until the 24th paragraph is it noted that one of Abu al-Ata’s young sons was injured as well.
An AP article picked up by ABC News refers to “a rare resumption of pinpointed targeting.” A separate AP article run by The New York Times avoids agency to the point of absurdity, stating: “Baha Abu al-Ata and his wife died as they slept in their home in eastern Gaza.”
Another AP article is particularly egregious in its misrepresentation of the history of what it calls “targeted killings.” It reports that in July 2002, “Hamas’s second-in-command military leader Salah Shehadeh is killed by a one-ton bomb dropped on an apartment building.” That is true as far as it goes. But the full reality is far grimmer. According to The New York Times, at least 11 people were killed in the Israeli attack, including several children, and more than 100 people were thought to have been wounded. That’s what happens when a bomb of that size is dropped into a crowded residential area – not a “targeted killing.”
CNN’s Oren Liebermann in a clip promoted by the network did not bother to mention the killing of Asma Abu al-Ata or any injury suffered by a child in the family. The CNN anchor who introduced Liebermann did mention “Gaza militants firing dozens of rockets toward Israel, one just barely missing several cars” on a road in Israel. Palestinian civilian casualties, however, did not merit a mention.