On Thursday, The Washington Post’s blog ran a list that names children who were killed in recent Israeli airstrikes on Gaza.
The blog post, written by Ishaan Tharoor, list the names and the causes of death of 83 people including 21 children who were killed in the recent bombing. However, Tharoor's source may not be all that credible.
The names were first published in a virulently anti-Israeli newspaper called Al-akhbar. The editor of which, Nour Samaha, makes not even the slightest effort to hide her ideological bent and anti-Israel agenda.
Why Tharoor and the Post thought it was necessary to list the names of dead children on their web site is unknown as it has little to do with the political causes of the recent conflict between Hamas and Israel.
However, the use of children as human shields is a favored tactic of Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups. The groups often use the pictures of the dead in order to garner sympathy from the rest of the world and make it appear as though Israel is intentionally targeting children.
Interestingly enough, a book on this very subject entitled: Making David Into Goliath: How The World Turned Against Israel recently found its way to my desk and goes in depth as to how the tactics used by pro-Palestinian media have been used over the years to turn most of the world against Israel by furnishing an “..unending supply of grist for the mills of Israel’s detractors and enemies.”
The tactic is typical of Islamic media. However, such blatant promotion of the pro-Palestinian media’s methods is rare in this country, even for left-leaning newspapers and websites.
But perhaps Tharoor didn’t know any better and unwittingly became a part of the anti-Israel propaganda machine that so much Middle Eastern media has become.