Media Painted Israel as Aggressor in Coverage of Hezbollah Commander Targeting

On Tuesday, July 30, an Israeli airstrike in Beirut eliminated Hezbollah’s most senior military commander, who was responsible for the rocket attack that had killed 12 Israeli children and teenagers in the Golan Heights last weekend.

Fuad Shukr was also the adviser to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and the United States says he played a central role in the 1983 bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 US military personnel.

Despite this, some international media headlines omitted the fact he was targeted, and painted Israel’s strike as an all-out attack on the pastoral suburbs of the Lebanese capital.

Here’s a collection of some of the worst headlines we could find, followed by accurate ones:

Israel targeted senior Hezbollah operative Fouad Shukr, the man behind the deaths of 12 children in Majdal Shams and many other attacks. Yet, some media focused on Israel bombing a “Beirut suburb” instead of him and his crimes.

Here’s a breakdown: pic.twitter.com/c3FHHRQ7tu

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) July 30, 2024

Israeli “Attack” on Suburbia

The intelligence-based targeting of Shukr took place in the Dahiya suburb of Beirut, which is a Hezbollah stronghold.

Yet Reuters‘ headline made it look like Israel had deliberately attacked housewives on their way to a spa:

Please tell @Reuters that Israel’s strike was on the Hezbollah mass murderer who killed 12 children in Saturday’s soccer field slaughter and not on Teaneck, New Jersey. pic.twitter.com/oVgMtkPqdJ

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) July 31, 2024

NBC News did the same, while at least mentioning it was a retaliatory strike:

For the Independent, it was a completely unsolicited air strike on Beirut:

And the AP, like the three examples above, omitted the essence of the story — the targeting of a top Hezbollah commander with blood on his hands:

Context and Target

So what would be a better headline?

One that mentions the following elements:

• The target of the strike: a top Hezbollah commander.
• The reason for the strike: in retaliation for a lethal terror attack.
• The location of the strike: Beirut or its suburb– as a geographical locator, not as the essence of the story.

CNN did exactly that:

ABC News did not mention the soccer field massacre in their headline, but at least led with the IDF announcement on Shukr:

And Axios properly reported on the target of the strike:

The conclusion, however, isn’t positive.

As the bad examples above show, respectable media outlets twisted what should have been a straightforward story.

And the question is: why is it so hard to accurately report what happened, where it happened, and why it happened?

If the media won’t tell that story because accurate reporting paints Israel as fighting against evil, then the media is serving terrorists and murderers, and not telling the truth about evil.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

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