Western Media Turns Israeli Attack That Maimed Children and Healthcare Workers into Sleek Techno-Spy Thriller
When victims are Israeli and American, it’s solemnity and humanization. When they are Arab, pundits and reporters turn into giddy war gamers.
On Tuesday and again on Wednesday, Israel launched a series of attacks on electronic equipment ranging from pagers to walkie talkies to electric power panels, killing 37 people and maiming and blinding more than 3,000, including hospital workers, small shop owners, and teachers, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry. Israel all but took credit, and US officials have refused to condemn the attack, despite the use of boobytraps being a clear violation of international humanitarian law.
But, reading much of Western media, one would hardly know the attacks maimed, killed, and deeply traumatized a whole population. The attacks were largely covered as a slick spy thriller demonstrating Israel’s “audacious” “eye-catching” “spy thriller” “masterstroke of sabotage” that was like something out of “a bizarre James Bond movie.”
The worst offender was the New York Times, which could hardly contain how impressed they were that Israel pulled off the clever new mode of attack.
In their “News Analysis” vertical—where The Times’ ostensibly straight reporters get to drop the pretense of neutrality and editorialize more liberally—Patrick Kingsley was duly impressed by the innovative new way Israel managed to shred human flesh and sow terror. In his September 18 report, “Israel’s Pager Attack Was a Tactical Success Without a Strategic Goal, Analysts Say,” the Times Jerusalem bureau chief quoted Israeli national security “analysts,” including a “former senior officer in the Mossad,” “a fellow at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, an Israel-based research organization,” and “a former head of Israel’s military intelligence directorate” to offer effuse praise about how innovative and effective this new “tactic” was. Kingsley referred to the attack as an “an eye-catching demonstration of Israel’s technological prowess” before moving on to vaguely hand-wring about how it lacked “strategic” follow up, whatever this means. One “ex” Israeli official actually framed it as a gesture of peace, designed to compel a “cease-fire”:
It may have hoped that the attack’s brazenness and sophistication would ultimately make Hezbollah more amenable to a cease-fire in the coming weeks, if not immediately. “The goal of the operation, if Israel was behind it, as Hezbollah claims, may have been to show Hezbollah that it will pay a very high price if it continues its attacks on Israel instead of reaching an agreement,” said Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israel’s military intelligence directorate.
You see, maiming thousands of people and spreading horror and terror in Lebanon is actually a gesture of beneficence and de-escalation! Needless to say, in his analysis about the killing and maiming of thousands of Lebanese people, Kingsley didn’t find it necessary to interview any Lebanese people.
A follow-up “news analysis” by Kingsley the next day engaged in similar process concerns, praising Israel’s “military might” and “dexterity,” but pondering a lack of “long-term strategy.”
Kingley’s pseudo-criticism that the attack had “no clear strategic effect” smuggles in a deeply ideological—and contestable—assumption that the killing and maiming of the Lebanese population, Hezbollah or otherwise, is not itself the strategy. It is simply assumed that there is some high-minded, greater end that justifies the horrific means—an assumption not afforded to Official Enemies who are assumed to be ontologically sadistic and evil, killing and maiming, unlike Israel, for its own sake. Reporter as War Gamer is a genre of writing that permits Western reporters to play the role of “analyst,” simply gaming out how best to defeat The Bad Guys, all operating under the assumption that Israel is only motivated by peace, security and de-escalation. That Israel could seek to kill and maim for its own sake, because they view sowing terror as intrinsically valuable, is simply not entertained as an option.
Another New York Times piece detailing the sleek spy nature of the attack, “How Israel Built a Modern-Day Trojan Horse: Exploding Pagers,” from reporters Sheera Frenkel, Ronen Bergman, and Hwaida Saad gives a play by play detailing how Israel pulled off its caper, with only a brief throw-away line about the human cost. The piece mentions that “four of the dead were children,” but introduces a new euphemism for killing civilians, telling readers that “noncombatants were also drawn into the fray.” A sterile, agency-free way of saying half those killed by the attack were healthcare workers and children.
A search of the New York Times archive shows that the publication has never once referred to Israeli civilians as “noncombatants” after they were killed by enemy attacks. The general idea is to militarize the entire Shia population of Lebanon. One Washington Post article by Susannah George and Suzan Haidamous used a framing designed to turn the whole of Beirut society into combatants: “Toll of Lebanon device attacks reveals Hezbollah’s ‘society in arms’” the headline cried out. The piece would explicitly state that everyone who was maimed or killed by the pager and walkie talkie attack was, by definition, “Hezbollah”:
Most of the 37 people killed are believed to have been fighters, based on death notices posted by the group. Two were children, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry. Among the dead and the more than 3,000 injured, many blinded or maimed, were hospital workers, a shopkeeper, a car mechanic and a teacher — people who were not full-time militants but were connected to Hezbollah in other ways.
How Washington Post editors know that none of the exploded boobytrapped devices entered into any other distribution streams not “connected to Hezbollah” is unclear. Obviously, Hezbollah doubles as a civilian political party (as the article vaguely mentions), so the line is blurry. But the idea that 100 percent of the people maimed or killed were secretly doing Hezbollah double duty (or their parents were) is an extremely bold claim that the Post never explains.
The entire framing ("a society at arms") is, of course, designed to militarize the whole of Lebanese society in the minds of the reader. One is curious if George and Haidamous think—or could find any experts to claim—that Israel is a "society at arms"? Or what it means to be “connected to Hezbollah” in a society where Hezbollah is the dominant political party.
It’s unclear how this is even a meaningful statement. The point is to give readers the general impression that everyone Israel killed with boobytrapped devices is de facto part of a terrorist group and more or less had it coming.
Even when humanizing Lebanese civilians, as Euan Ward of the New York Times somewhat haphazardly attempted to do, the Times can’t help but obscure the human toll. When detailing the attack, Ward referred to “two days of attacks on Hezbollah-owned devices.” But were they all “Hezbollah-owned devices”? The Times, like the Post, has no way of knowing this. It’s just an assumption. Was it 90 percent? 60 percent? Do they think the civilian wing of Hezbollah (which, again, is a political party in Lebanon with 40 of the country’s 128 seats in parliament) are legitimate combatants? These outlets don’t seem particularly interested in figuring this out, much less explaining these nuances to their readers.
Other media outlets played up the spy thriller angle. BBC’s International News editor Jermey Brown referred to the attack as “the sort of spectacular coup you would read about in a thriller.” Axios’s Colin Demarest praised the attack’s “spy-thriller-style backdoors and execution.” One CBC headline breathlessly stated that the “pager explosions in Lebanon 'out of James Bond,' expert says.” “This feels like something out of a spy thriller,” said NBC’s Raf Sanchez. Washington Post’s David Ignatius told readers it was a “masterstroke of Israeli sabotage” and was like something out of “a bizarre James Bond movie.” ABC News tweeted out, “In a real-life plot rivaling any spy thriller.”
One may look at all the giddy spy talk and think: well, these commentators and reporters aren’t commenting on the morality of the attacks, only noting their originality and elaborate nature. But this type of detached, glib, war-gaming tone—and constant reinforcing of the idea that the whole of Lebanese society is more or less one large militant training camp—would never be used to report on an attack that killed and maimed thousands of Israelis or Americans, civilian or military. The tone would be somber and solemn. It would focus on the human stakes, not the spy-thriller caper aspect, or its “strategic” value or lack thereof. It would not be full of pop culture references and “how did they do it” play-by-play explainers. It would be respectful, humanizing, and focused on the wide-scale suffering. But alas, Arab victims are afforded no such tone. They are seen as broadly suspect: at best, throwaway line-worthy collateral damage, at worst, “connected” to terrorists and thus Bad Guys worthy of blinding and shredded limbs.