Our Media Glass House researchers wish to draw the attention of readers of The Bug to the simple statement in the main image above.
It’s taken from the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) website and announces the killing by IDF gunfire a few days ago of three men later discovered to be Israeli hostages taken by Hamas in its terror attack on Israeli citizens on 7 October that started the current war in Gaza.
The IDF later advised that one of the men had been carrying a white flag. At the same time the IDF also acknowledged that carrying or waving a white flag is an internationally recognised symbol of surrender and that under the rules of war it is forbidden to shoot at someone doing so in an effort to surrender.
But it is one word in the IDF’s own statement that attracted our MGH researchers’ attention. That word is “mistakenly”. (below)
The incident was widely reported by media outlets including here in Australia and in many cases the word “mistakenly” was dutifully, lazily, or unconsciously included to describe the IDF’s actions.
Our MGH teams ask you to undertake a short exercise.
Read the line without using the word “mistakenly” while bearing in mind the trio was apparently waving a white flag.
It still broadly explains what happened, right?
So, you might ask, why did the word “mistakenly” appear at all?
Our MGH researchers suggest the answer is to shape public opinion from the get-go, long before any public or internal inquiry of any standard of credibility is held into the incident.
Now read the line again but this time substitute the word “automatically” for “mistakenly”.
It’s a whole other scenario, isn’t it? It sets off a whole different set of emotions and implications.
Any inquiry and the public’s future response to that version of events would already have a pretty firm view of culpability, our MGH teams suggest.
Now read the line again and substitute “three Hamas activists” for “3 Israeli hostages” and use either “mistakenly”, “automatically”, or no qualifier at all and again remember the white flag. Or how about substituting “three innocent civilian Palestinians”?
Our MGH researchers ask you to consider if those last two scenarios would have resulted in any IDF statement admitting to the incident and three deaths.
After all, the three innocent Israeli hostages were killed because they were thought to be Hamas operatives or Palestinian terrorists – while waving a white flag.
Mistakes happen to us all every day. They happen in wars sometimes every day, every hour, or even minute.
But our MGH researchers suggest the exercises above suggest that the real mistake was made by the three dead men for being innocent hostages and not realising the IDF would shot on sight anyone thought to be Hamas or innocent Palestinians, even with their white flag.
Public and international views of any conflict rely largely on media reporting of events from the battlefield.
That means words matter and, as our MGH researchers suggest, the current war in Gaza is a war of words as much as anything else.
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