LETTER: False narrative under the guise of facts

There’s something dreadfully ironic about the title of Neil Horne’s recent anti-Israel screed, which uses facts to create a completely false narrative (“Israel apologist ignores facts”, September 17).

For example, his assertion that the actual death toll in Gaza is closer to 200,000 than Hamas’ own estimate of about 40,000 (with no differentiation between Hamas terrorists and civilians) is indeed based on a study published in the highly respected Lancet medical journal, but it overlooks the fact that this non-peer reviewed, unsubstantiated study has been criticised for its obvious bias and for conflating the uniqueness of the Israel-Hamas war with radically different conflicts elsewhere.

And then there’s the idea that Iran’s missile attack in April was somehow a valid retaliation for Israel’s alleged killing of seven members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in Syria, and that the vast majority of the missiles were just smoke screens for a pair of perfectly aimed supersonic warheads aimed only at legitimate military targets. Quite what his basis is for the latter I’m not sure, but Horne conveniently fails to mention that Israeli civilians have been consistently attacked by the Islamic Republic of Iran for the past year via its well-documented proxies: Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.

My “favourite” of Horne’s mad claims though, is that the 12 Druze children who were murdered by Hezbollah in the north weren’t Israelis at all because they live in the Golan, which is Syrian territory that is occupied by Israel. Whatever you might think of the latter point, what exactly is his overall point here? The implications are staggering. 

And then there are the other familiar anti-Israel canards in his letter that barely deserve responses any more. Does he mention even once that Hamas are elected officials in Gaza who waged war with a militarily superior country, only to then use Gazan civilians as human shields? Anything about how Hamas is so deeply embedded in civilian infrastructure that they use schools, mosques and hospitals as military bases? Does he ever hold Hamas responsible, even for a second, for the suffering inflicted on “their” people?  

Of course not. Like the ANC and its ludicrous case against Israel, to people like Horne everything Hamas (and Iran) does is excusable and everything Israel does is a crime against humanity. But yes, let’s talk about “bias”. 

Ilan Preskovsky
Via email

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