Brittany Bernstein of National Review Online highlights another example of media malfeasance.
After 246 days in Hamas captivity, four Israeli hostages finally returned home from Gaza on Saturday thanks to a “daring operation in the light of day,” as an IDF spokesman put it, by Israeli security forces.
Among the hostages rescued from central Nuseirat was Noa Argamani, whose kidnapping was captured on camera and shared widely online. A ten-second clip of the kidnapping showed Argamani screaming as she was taken away on the back of a motorcycle.
The hostages, who were kidnapped from a music festival in Israel during the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks and held hostage for eight months, were identified as Argamani, 26, Almog Meir Jan, 21, Andrei Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 40.
Just seven hostages have been rescued alive since the start of the Hamas–Israel War.
Israelis rejoiced at the news. Photos circulated online showed the hostages joyfully reuniting with their families. But the Washington Post struck a different tone in its coverage of the rescue: “More than 200 Palestinians killed in Israeli hostage raid in Gaza.”
That figure comes from two hospitals in the area, al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital and al-Awda Hospital — and the Post fails to mention that the two hospitals, like the Gaza Health Ministry, are under Hamas control.
Meanwhile, the IDF counted a much lower death toll. “We know about under 100 [Palestinian] casualties. I don’t know how many of them are terrorists,” IDF Spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told reporters.
As the Associated Press previously reported, the proportion of Palestinian women and children being killed in the Israel–Hamas war appears to have “declined sharply” — despite what the Gaza Health Ministry has reported.
The drop is “definitely due to a change in the way the IDF is acting right now,” Gabriel Epstein, a research assistant at the Washington Institute for Near East policy, told the AP.