Today the Times published another in its continuing reporting efforts to demonize Israel, encourage anti-Semitism, support the unconscionable Biden -Harris pressure on Israel to agree to a ruinous cease-fire, and to validate Palestinian terrorism. The Ethics Alarms commentary on this piece is essentially identical to what appeared in its predecessor, As the NYT Enables Terrorism and Anti-Israel Hate With “Think of the Children!” Porn…which stated in that the Times report…
“…can evoke no possible response from typical semi-attentive and easily manipulated readers than “Think of the children! The Jews are monsters! Cease fire now! The Gazans have suffered enough! Justice for Palestine!”
And this is exactly the end result that Hamas sought when it launched its cease-fire shattering surprise terror attack on Israeli civilians, including infants, on October 7.”
Again, just like in the previous “Think of the Children!” piece, the Times never mentions terror, terrorism or terrorist, not once. Isn’t that incredible? But worse than incredible, isn’t it damning? The reason Israel is waging war against Hamas, and Hamas is Gaza, is barely mentioned. “The Israeli military says it takes precautions to limit harm to civilians in its devastating campaign in Gaza to eradicate Hamas over the group’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which left about 1,200 people dead and roughly 250 taken hostage,” is as far as the Times goes. Note the emotional manipulation and innuendo. Israel “says” it tries to limit harm, but its campaign is “devastating,” and only 1200 Jews were killed in the “attack on Israel” (a terrorist attack by Hamas on civilians, woman and children).
And here is the Times’ description of the cruel “disproportionate” hell Israel has wreaked on Gaza’s children:
“The war in Gaza is taking children from parents and parents from children, undoing the natural order of things, rupturing the basic unit of Gazan life. It is making so many orphans in such chaos that no agency or aid group can count them.”
Undoing the natural order of things! Monsters!
The Times, as before, is engaging in pro-terrorist propaganda. Hamas began the war, and every death, wound and orphan is Hamas’s responsibility. It can end the war today or tomorrow, and could have ended the war in October. Hamas could surrender. It will not, in part, because it is relying on America’s anti-Israel Left and another Democratic administration to inflict a cease-fire on the region so Hamas can launch more [terror!] attacks on Israel.
“Using a statistical method drawn from analyzing other wars, United Nations experts estimate that at least 19,000 children are now surviving apart from their parents, whether with relatives, with other caretakers or on their own,” writes the Times. Of course, an earlier murderous government that set out to exterminate Jews didn’t create that many orphans because it murdered the children too.
The only responsible and ethical way to frame these stories is to emphasize the Gazans’ complicity in Hamas attacks by putting the terrorist organization in power, the absolute necessity of eliminating Hamas for the safety of Israel’s population, and the fact that the war and the inevitable consequences of war are and have been entirely within the power of Hamas, the aggressors, to stop.
Instead, the New York Times gives us “Think of the Children!”
Disgusting.
Ethics Alarms 
I’m puzzled as to why “think of the children” is necessarily pro-Hamas. We can all agree the children are not at fault. We can think of the harm done to them, as its own moral horror, without denying Hamas’s responsibility, especially given the ridiculous monstrosity that passes for elections in Palestine. And we can see this sort of human collateral damage as a strategy likely to create another generation of terrorists, while being clear-eyed about the start of the war.
Denying the bloody actualities of war is not some kind of resistance to a pernicious ideology. It should be the centerpiece of any military policy consideration. Families of Israel hostages were featured prominently at the DNC convention. The American right seems to prefer the stance that even thinking about the human damage of war is kowtowing to some liberal agenda.
I don’t see what’s puzzling.
It’s a deliberately out-of-context rationalization to create undeserved sympathy for the Palestinian cause by focusing attention on the collateral damage arising from a war Hamas started. Hamas uses its citizens as human shields. This is beyond dispute (though again, the Times language creates the false impression that it is a matter of legitimate disagreement.)Hamas wants Israel to be seen as a monster, so it creates an ethics zugzwang situation for its blood enemy: let Hamas escape to murder another day, or build sympathy for the Palestinian plight—which became the Palestinians’ own fault the minute they turned down the opportunity to have the “two-state solution” in 1948—because wars kill civilians, children, create orphans, destroy buildings—you know, war..
“Think of the children” is part of the endlessly foolish, ethically bonkers, destructive pacifist delusion (See: “Imagine”) that is thousands of years old. Weaponizing it, AGAIN, results in the destructive idiocy of half-measure warfare, which leads to debacles like the U.S. involvement like Vietnam.
Israel has no choice now but to wipe Hamas off the face of the Earth. Any effort to slow or prevent that validates terrorism and benefits Hamas. The time to “Think of the Children!” was before October 7, and the ones who should have been doing the thinking was Hamas. If the Times reflected any of this in its coverage, then TOTC would be justified. Instead, it implies that the Gaza children’s fate is Israel’s responsibility. It isn’t.
Because this kind of “Oh won’t someone PLEASE think of the children!” mindset/obfuscation/deflection/justification of Hamas and it’s crusade ignores and glosses over a simple fact – that Hamas (see Iran) will never cease hostilities, and it will never cease hostilities so long as Israel still exists.
Civilian casualties are simply a means to an end for them, and a powerful propaganda tool which has been very effectively deployed to tug at the heartstrings of a political faction whose entire ideology is fueled by appeals to emotion. Hamas knows this, and liberals/the left/progressives have taken it hook, line and sinker. Given how a long march through the institutions has been taking place within the Democratic Party, it is probably only a matter of time before the United States adopts an overtly hostile stance towards Israel, and begins to turn the screws on a ceasefire.
Hamas is/has been playing the long game.
Cue The Rolling Stones,
The idea of using the children as human shields is ridiculous from the get go. Hamas planned on doing that when they launched their attack. They also planned on these ridiculous news stories. I cannot imagine what would have happened had we had this kind of garbage after Pearl Harbor.
The fact of the matter is that Hamas knows now and knew from the get-go that they can’t and never could take on Israel. Israel is simply too powerful, and, as the IRA could tell you, although you can make life VERY annoying for an enemy who has things you don’t have, like armor, aircraft, and a navy, in the end you can’t win. You can only hope the other side doesn’t develop the spine to go after you full force and that you can then wear them down before they wear you down. Well, Hamas gambled that Israel wasn’t going to go after them full force and would withdraw after too many of its soldiers got shot in the back or blown up by bombs. They lost that gamble and have been getting badly thrashed for 10 months. Israel decided they’re not going to just take out a few buildings and declare victory. They are going to destroy Hamas in earnest. This isn’t going to “blow over” and the heat isn’t going to “cool down.” The only real defense they have left at this point is public sympathy, and the only way to get it is to misdirect people’s attention by showing injured children out of context, no different than feeding the reader a child’s account of the bombing of Hiroshima outside the context of World War II.
I’ve heard a ton of anti-Israel rhetoric over the past ten months: “Think of the children” is just the tip of the iceberg.” “Why you fight a war shouldn’t affect how you fight it,” was another such garbage statement. As if Israel should go into this war with one hand tied behind its back, after Hamas started it by murder and rape. The bottom line is that the left is only interested in people when it can advance its cause through them. Right now, the Democratic Party is playing a dangerous game of thread the needle. It needs to keep the Jewish vote on its side, while also placating the Muslim voters in Michigan, which is a must-win state. Right now, the media is also trying to play that game, but this is one plate it’s very hard to keep spinning.
but violence never settles anything…..
just look at it from their perspective
humans are inherently violent. Just ask Able or the first monkey that got brained by a rock, depending on your beliefs.
you should never go full John Lennon…
just look at it from their perspective
I’ve been meaning to add this to the rationalization list for a long time. Today I will.
There is nothing unethical about looking at something from someone else’s perspective. In fact, it is often a useful strategy to ascertain what one’s opponents and enemies are thinking.
This war is obviously of Hamas’s making. It is Israel’s to finish. Part of finishing it leads to the death of children. You can think of such children without budging from a moral stance on the war. And there’s nothing unethical about considering and criticizing a military and political strategy. It is perfectly reasonable, for instance, to regard America’s Japanese internment camps a bad strategy, without questioning Japan’s responsibility for Pearl Harbor and the conflicts which followed.
There is nothing unethical about looking at something from someone else’s perspective.
Wrong. You can think of as many examples where this is just rationalizing unequivocally wrongful conduct as I can, if you are honest. It was the “root causes” dodge after 9-11. I dn’t care why Hitler wanted to exterminate the Jews, and it doesn’t change the conduct. I don’t care why BLM still claims Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown were “murdered” on its web site—they are lies no matter what. I don’t care why the Democrats lied about Joe Biden’s mental state—it was still outrageous. The “other side’s perspective” is an ethical approach when there is legitimate ethical conflict or dilemma. Terrorism is not legitimate ethical conflict or dilemma. It doesn’t matter why Hamas perpetrated the October 7 attack. It was evil, it justifies Israel’s response, and after that (and, of course, decades of the same) caring about their perspective just enables more evil conduct.
It can be unethical to agree with a virulent point of view. It is not unethical to think about it.
Writing and publishing a New York Times demonization of Israel using the “Think of the Children” fallacy isn’t “thinking about it.” It’s not unethical to think about anything.
What is writing if not a transcription of thought?
It’s communication. Communication of thoughts can be unethical and even illegal. As can, obviously acting on thoughts. I can think “All children should murder their parents.” It doesn’t hurt anyone. If I tell an impressionable child who regards me as an authority, “I think all children should murder their parents,” that’s unethical.
Jack, what you’re doing here is exactly what bugs me about the way LEFT-wingers typically try to control information. You’re not a left-winger, are you? It’s very typical for those on the far left to complain about non-approved if accurate communication specifically because they FEAR how other people will react. You don’t know that that’s how any given individual will react, and neither to do they in those other cases.
Now I’ve already conceded, although you erased the comment, that there are flaws in this NYT story, specifically that they must state (even if everyone knows it) that the instigating factor was terrorism on the part of the Gaza Palestinians’ disgusting governing authority. It doesn’t change the fact that these events are indeed happening in Gaza, unless you have information otherwise. Also I will remind you for the umpty-umpth time that Ethics Alarms would be far more successful if for crying out loud you would let OTHER people (who after all, as far as I can tell, agree with you on everything “political”) respond first to a dissenting commenter. Again, do you not want more readers or not? In fact, to the other commenters here, do YOU want more influence and attention to YOUR comments? You could get them with my advice to this blog.
And one more time: The New York Times has twice run LEAD STORIES CRITICIZING KAMALA HARRIS’s PURPORTED ‘PRICE GOUGING PROPOSAL.’ When are you going to mention that?
Jack, I reworked the original Time story to reflect a similar situation in the mid 20th century. All I did was change the name and the players. If the Times had written this way then the Brits, the French, the Poles the Chechs and others would be Goose stepping to the new bosses and Israel would not exist.
It is obvious to any rational thinker that when a nation faces existential peril from zealots, who believe they are the rightful heirs of the entire region and that no one except the devout believers of Mohammed may live peacefully there, that when they are attacked they must eliminate the immediate as well as the long term threat in order to minimize civilian losses. We did this twice in the Pacific and Europe when despots saw opportunities for empire building.
NYT rewrite:
The war in Europe had been waging for 3 years when 9-year-old Johann Schriker suffered an unimaginable loss. His mother, father, older brother and baby sister, along with dozens of other relatives, were all killed in an Allied airstrike on their home.
In the months that followed, Johann tried to be brave, his uncle, Gustov Schriker, recalled. He would comfort his younger brother Fredrik, who, like Johann, had survived the Oct. 22 strike that killed their family. But Fredrik, 7, was left badly injured with a broken back and a broken leg, and was in constant pain.
“He would always quiet his brother when he cried,” Mr. Schriker told The New York Times in a recent phone interview. “He would tell him: ‘Mama and Papa are in heaven. Mama and Papa would be sad if they knew we were crying because of them.’”
At night, when the unrelenting Allied airstrikes on Europe would start up again, Johann would wake up shaking and screaming himself, sometimes running to his uncle to seek comfort.
It was a short and terrifying existence for the young brothers that ended when another airstrike hit the family home where they were sheltering on Jan. 9, killing Johann, Fredrik, their 2-year-old cousin, Nadia, and three other relatives, according to two family members.
Their story epitomizes how the 40-month-old Allied war in Europe has taken an exceptional toll on children, who are caught in the middle of the conflict.
After Hitler’s Nazis-led attack on Europe, the Allied military launched the war with the stated aim of eradicating Hitler’s Nazis, unleashing one of the heaviest aerial bombardments the world has seen in this century on densely populated Europe.
The Allies have accused Hitler’s Nazis of taking advantage of Europe’s urban terrain to provide its fighters and weapons infrastructure with an extra layer of protection, running tunnels under neighborhoods, launching rockets near civilian homes and holding hostages in city centers.
Hitler denies these accusations and says its members are Germans themselves and live among the population. International law experts have said that The Allies have a responsibility to protect civilians, even if Hitler’s Nazis exploits them the way The Allies says it does. The Allied military says it takes “all feasible precautions” to mitigate harm to civilians.
The children of Europe have suffered in myriad ways. Of the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed in the war, an estimated 15,000 were under 18, according to European health officials. The United Nations estimates that at least 19,000 more children have been orphaned. And nearly one million children have been displaced, according to UNICEF, the U.N. children’s agency.
“Europe remains the most dangerous place in the world for children,” said Jonathan Crickx, a spokesman for UNICEF.
Most children are living in overcrowded homes where multiple families shelter together, or in ramshackle tents that can feel like ovens in the summer heat, lacking both running water and sanitation. Thousands are severely malnourished and at risk of dying of hunger.
The United Nations called on Friday for a weeklong cease-fire in Germany to allow vaccinations to prevent an outbreak of polio, saying many children were at risk. The same day, the first case of polio in the enclave in many years was confirmed by the Germany health ministry.
It has been a constant struggle just to survive in Germany, and children have had to help out.
When he visited the territory a few months ago, Mr. Crickx said, he rarely saw children playing or laughing. Instead, he mostly saw them helping their families: carrying jugs of water from filling stations, trying to find food, and helping to move their few belongings when the family was displaced.
Mr. Crickx said he had seen a boy on the street who appeared to be no older than about 5, pushing a wheelchair with two jerrycans, which he had filled with water, resting on the seat. The handles of the wheelchair were higher than the top of the boy’s head and he could barely see where he was going.
“There is no childhood in Europe,” Louise Wateridge, a spokeswoman for the main U.N. agency that aids Palestinians, UNRWA, wrote on social media last month. “Malnourished, exhausted. Sleeping in rubble or under plastic sheeting. Same clothing for 40 months. Education has been replaced by fear & loss. Loss of life, home & stability,” she added.
Throughout the war, parents have gone to extraordinary lengths to try to protect their children.
They scrawl their children’s names directly onto their skin to identify them if they are lost, orphaned or killed. At morgues, burial shrouds are cut into smaller pieces to wrap the youngest victims. Sometimes, children’s bodies are wrapped in the same shroud as their parents, laid to rest on the chest of their mother or father.
Some parents quietly say that if their child is killed, they hope they will at least die in one piece and have someone to bury them.
In the first weeks of the conflict, families began planning for the worst. Johann’s father told his relatives that if any of them were killed, those who survived must protect and educate the children, Mr. Schriker said.
Not long after that, on Oct. 22, an Allied airstrike destroyed two buildings where Johann’s extended family was living in the town of Hamburg, in central Europe, according to relatives and local journalists.
Johann and Fredrik were the only ones in their immediate family to survive. Nadia, their 2-year-old cousin, was the sole survivor of that first strike from her own immediate family.
Just after the October strike, in the courtyard of the morgue where dozens of shrouded bodies were laid out on the ground, Johann, barefoot and crying, kissed the faces of his parents and siblings a final, sorrowful farewell.
A total of 68 members of Johann’s extended family were killed that day as they slept in their beds, according to accounts at the time from three of the boy’s relatives. They were laid to rest together, side by side, in a mass grave.
For nearly a month after their parents were killed, Johann and Fredrik stayed with their uncle, Mr. Schriker, in another family building in Hamburg. Johann, Fredrik and Nadia would occasionally venture out to play in the rubble-lined street.
“They are kids and would try to hold on to their childhood,” Mr. Schriker said. “They would play outside at certain points of calm. But then airstrikes would often send them back screaming,” he added.
“He would come quickly and hide near me,” Mr. Schriker said of Johann.
Then, on Jan. 9, Johann’s all-too-short life came to an end. About 2 a.m., as the family slept, an Allied airstrike hit the home where they were sheltering, according to Mr. Schriker and another relative, Christina Probst, 36. Johann, Fredrik and Nadia were killed, along with two uncles and their grandfather.
The body of the grandfather, who had recently returned to live with them, was found in the street. He had survived long enough to stagger out of the bombed building, cradling Nadia’s body in his arms, said Ms. Probst, who was in Austria at the time and heard the details from relatives in Europe later.
The Times learned of Johann’s death months afterward.
When asked about the strikes on the Probst family homes in October and January, the Allied military did not provide a reason. Regarding the October attack, the military said only that it could not address questions about a strike on this family. After the January strike, The Times gave the military the date, time and street location. But the military said The Times “did not provide the Allies. with enough information in order to properly look into the alleged strike,” and asked for the coordinates to pinpoint the location of the building that was hit.
Mr. Schriker said that his extended family was not associated with any of the Nazi party that the Allies says it has been targeting in the war in Europe.
“They had nothing to do with anything,” he said.
Like other members of their family — and so many other Europeans since — the three children, their grandfather and the two uncles were buried together in an unmarked grave.
missed one Germans for Palestinians substitution
got it…