Israel on Sunday released from prison Israa Jaabees, a 38-year-old West Bank woman who was convicted for an attempted suicide car bombing in 2015. On the same day, Hamas released Abigail Eden, a 3-year-old Israeli girl whom the terrorist group abducted on Oct. 7 after murdering her parents in front of her.
Mainstream news outlets in many ways treated the release of prisoners like Jaabees and hostages like Abigail as equivalent. It's part of a tendency by the media to obfuscate the huge moral distinctions between Israel and its enemies.
Under a weeklong truce that appears to have ended as of Friday, Israel released 240 women and teenage prisoners. Most of those let go in the initial days of the truce were held for violent offenses, including 10 for attempted murder, 13 for inflicting serious bodily harm, 19 for placing a bomb or throwing an incendiary device, and 7 for shooting at people, according to an American Jewish Committee review of Israeli records. In addition to Jaabees, the released prisoners included the likes of Misoun Mussa, 28, who was convicted for stabbing a female Israeli soldier in Jerusalem in 2015.
Hamas, as part of the deal and separate negotiations, released 81 of the more than 200 Israeli hostages who were taken to the Gaza Strip during the terrorists' Oct. 7 massacre in the Jewish state. Other released hostages include 3-year-old twins Ema and Yuly Cunio, 9-year-old soccer fan Ohad Munder, and 85-year-old Holocaust survivor and great-grandmother Yaffa Adar.
International headlines often conflated the released Israeli hostages with the released Palestinian prisoners—referring to an "Israel-Hamas prisoner swap," "swaps of captives," or worse.
Editors still on Thanksgiving holiday? Here is the latest in a series of unprofessional editorial decisions by @washingtonpost - today’s front-page headline, equating #Israeli hostages and #Palestinian security prisoners as 'captives" pic.twitter.com/A7Oxn5atOc
— Robert Satloff (@robsatloff) November 26, 2023
Seriously, @AP?
- These were terrorist offenders, not innocent "minors and women."
- This was not a like-for-like "wartime prisoner swap." There's no moral equivalence between Israeli hostages and Palestinian terror offenders.https://t.co/UEGM0UxrXg pic.twitter.com/AAnLE0VV0m— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) November 26, 2023
I think you can tell a lot about how Reuters (and other media) think about the Israeli hostages from how they describe them not as hostages but "prisoners," no different from the Palestinians accused of attempted murder and other crimes they're being swapped for. pic.twitter.com/CTfsMe467A
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) November 29, 2023
At the same time, news outlets in many cases covered the Palestinian prisoners and their families with at least as much sympathy as the Israeli hostages.
The New York Times reported on the triumphant homecoming of two West Bank cousins who were released from Israeli prison on Sunday. Only 14 paragraphs into the report did the Times note that one of the cousins, Anwar Atta, 18, had faced charges for throwing an "incendiary device" at Israeli soldiers. It took 27 paragraphs to reveal the same information about the other cousin, Mourad Atta, 17.
CNN last week highlighted the emotional reunion of an East Jerusalem mother with her daughter, 33-year-old Malak Salam, whom Israel released from prison after she served seven years of a nine-year-sentence for trying to stab an Israeli police officer. CNN's "chief international investigative correspondent" Nima Elbagir outright rejected Israel's characterization of the released prisoners as terrorists and described Salam as only "accused of attempting stabbing."
https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1728540123216986133
Days earlier, CNN aired a segment about another East Jerusalem mother's self-described "nightmare" as she waited for Israel to release her "so innocent" "child" from prison. At no point did CNN mention that the daughter, Marah Bkeer, 24, was convicted for trying to stab an Israeli police officer in 2015.
https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/1727894366486688246
The Times portrayed Jaabees, the attempted suicide bomber, as the unfortunate victim of her car exploding, even though she had detonated a gas canister in an effort to kill an Israeli police officer who stopped her en route to a planned attack on civilians.
https://twitter.com/AmsterdamLost/status/1728808986453880871
The media were also there for the public celebrations of prisoner releases in the West Bank. Somehow the reporters managed to miss the prisoners, their families, and the crowds advocating for Hamas and the killing of more Israelis.
The media just saw a party.
Israel’s justice ministry published a list of roughly 300 Palestinian prisoners who could be released. In the West Bank, euphoric crowds gathered where the women and teenagers were brought for the handover.
Follow live updates on the Israel-Gaza war: https://t.co/zSCewkApYt pic.twitter.com/4cUbuEafXC
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) November 24, 2023
Hundreds of people gathered late Friday outside the Ofer prison in the West Bank city of Ramallah, waiting for the first group of Palestinian prisoners and detainees to be released, gripped by a sense of anticipation, hope and relief https://t.co/EnXPHEGQTt
— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) November 25, 2023
MSNBC's @drnoriega reports on the reaction in the West Bank as Israel releases 39 Palestinian prisoners, all women and minors. pic.twitter.com/wFJbLTSQKA
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) November 24, 2023
On the other hand, the Times recently asked the mother of a 23-year-old American-Israeli hostage to answer for the suffering of Palestinians: "I wonder, as a mother, how you see the civilian casualties in Gaza. Is that upsetting to you?" and, "Do you see there being context here that is important to understand?"
"What would you want Hamas to understand about you as a Jewish person, as an Israeli in this moment?" the Times also asked Rachel Goldberg, whose son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, was maimed and abducted by Hamas terrorists at a music festival on Oct. 7. "What do you want them to understand about who you are?"