PBS‘s NewsHour‘s Gwen Ifill (9/15/09), quizzing Richard Goldstone on his U.N. fact-finding mission that found that both Israel and Palestinian fighters had committed war crimes in the Gaza conflict:
The term “even-handed” is the problem that Israel has with the conclusions in the report. Your criticism of Israel seems so much harsher than that of the Palestinians. Why is that?
CBS News (9/9/09), summarizing a report by Israel’s leading human rights group:
Well over half of nearly 1,400 Palestinians killed in Israel’s Gaza war were civilians, including 252 children younger than 16, a leading Israeli human rights groups said Wednesday, challenging Israel’s claim that most of the dead were militants…. The Israeli rights group B’Tselem on Wednesday published figures it said were compiled in months of research, including visits to families of victims. It said 1,387 Gazans were killed, including 773 civilians and 330 combatants. Thirteen Israelis also died, including four civilians.
So why would the U.N. be more interested in the war crimes that killed nearly 200 times as many people? Thanks to Ifill and the NewsHour for challenging this strange moral reasoning.
I must be missing something. Why does Ifill deserve credit for asking this question? Someone who blindly accepts Israel’s view of the conflict would ask the same question, wouldn’t he?
Possibly your writing about this event is not clear. Did Ifill quote CBS News in answering her own question or are you bringing this information forward? I do not see the connection. Please try to be more clear in the future.
I didn’t see this particular NewsHour, so I don’t know how Goldstone responded, but could it be that Ifil was giving him the opportunity to expound on just how lopsided the civilian death toll was?
Good to catch this! One small correction: the factor is approximately 100 (1,387/13).
The praise for Ifill is ironic; perhaps that could have been clearer.
The ratio refers to the civilian death toll–773 vs. 4.
Gaza was nothing less than a one sided massacre reminiscent of Wounded Knee. Of the few IDF troops killed, four were killed by from friendly fire. Gaza was nothing but a huge 21st century version of an Indian reservation, and that’s what the Israelites meant it to be when they withdrew from it.
Gwen does an excellent job in following the more “objective” news reporting in NewsHour as opposed to network news (read: “entertainment”) shows. But let’s not lose sight of the trend of most Americans to be more skeptical of the one sided Israeli reporting and statements by their politicians. Americans, on the whole, are becoming more open minded regarding this conflict. If Gwen had asked the question 30 years ago then I might say she did something very “brave” and “out of the usual”.
Did you even read what was posted? You make no sense.
I believe the NewsHour tries hard to avoid Infotainment as well as present sharply differing opinions between two oncamera “experts”; Mainstream journalism is failing to present the “truth” to the public more acutely with each passing year; FAIR provides an invaluable service in pointing out this disturbing trend.
An Indian reservation? No genocide, open genocide sanctioned by the international jewish community who could if their were so willing, end the holaucrime. Where is their voice? Where is their memory?
I no longer watch television. I simply couldn’t be bothered with buying a converter box. My TV would only connect with PBS, and so I only watched my PBS channel. I was increasingly disenchanted with the News Hour and particularly irritated with Gwen Ifill, who I found rather weak compared to other journalists on the News Hour past and present. Worse she seems particularly biased toward conventional thought and views. Centrism is not objective; it is a bias.
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Could you please repost this blog. I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. Also, I agree Gwen Ifill isn’t brave, she follows the centrist view and sometimes more right of that.