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The Media Has One Standard for Israel, and a Different Standard for Every Other Country
The law of armed conflict has many detractors, from war criminals like Yahya Sinwar and Vladmir Putin to CNN journalists intent on eroding the law’s meaning and purpose. Case in point for the latter is CNN’s recent article, “At least 30 killed in Israeli strike on two Gaza school shelters: Palestinian Civil Defense,” by Kareem Khadder, Ibrahim Dahman, Eyad Kourdi, and AnneClaire Stapleton.
The article focuses on an Israeli strike which, according to the IDF, targeted Hamas terrorists inside the Hassan Salame and Nasser schools in Gaza City.
CNN cites a Palestinian official in the terrorist-run territory for the claim that the strike left “at least 30 people dead.” The figure was not independently verified by CNN, and the network has consistently omitted from its reporting how Hamas, the ruling terrorist organization, uses rules and intimidation to control what Gazans can and cannot say to the media.
According to an unnamed “local journalist” cited by CNN, the buildings “housed hundreds of displaced people, primarily women and children.” CNN’s reliance on an anonymous source is concerning, given numerous “local journalists” in Gaza have been identified as terrorist operatives. Moreover, the network has a history of describing an official Palestinian Authority propagandist as a “local journalist,” and even employing him to feature on CNN’s own bylines.
Meet Hassan Eslaiah, a freelance journalist for @CNN, @Reuters, @AP in this video he’s on a motorbike, with a grenade in his hand, on his way to the Massacre of innocents in Israel.
pic.twitter.com/OyUyDaSYxd
— CG Idit Shamir (@ShamirIdit) November 9, 2023
These omissions already work to benefit Hamas by amplifying the terrorist organization’s propaganda while leaving the audience in the dark about the reasons to doubt the credibility of the claims.
But it’s when the article talks about “warnings” that the authors work hardest, knowingly or not, to run cover for Hamas’ war crimes.
The authors repeatedly raise the issue of “whether civilians were warned of the strike in advance.” They again quote a Gazan official in the Hamas-administered territory to the effect that “If a warning had been given, the number of deaths would have been lower.”
To understand the deceptive game the journalists are playing, a brief explanation is necessary of what “warnings” are in the law of armed conflict. They are just one form of “precautions,” measures taken by armed forces to abide by the requirement that “[a]ll feasible precautions must be taken to avoid, and in any event to minimize, incidental loss of civilian life…” There are numerous forms of precautions that may be taken to abide by this obligation, such as: selecting a particular type of munition; striking during a particular time of day; striking from a certain angle; or surveilling an area to determine civilian presence.
The key word, however, is “feasible,” and, as the US Department of Defense Law of War Manual explains, “what precautions are feasible depends greatly on the context.” It “does not ‘require everything that is capable of being done,’ because such a requirement would prove an impossible standard to meet in practice.”
If, for example, a precaution would create “a risk of failing to accomplish the mission” or would “[surrender] the element of surprise,” it may not be considered feasible and consequently may properly be passed over for alternative forms of precautions. That Israel has used “warnings” as a form of precautions to an extent unseen in any other militaries is, as numerous experts on the law of armed conflict have acknowledged, a practice that far exceeds the actual legal obligations.
Which brings us back to the CNN article.
By harping on the issue of warnings, CNN implies to its audience that the IDF has some sort of obligation to issue a warning in this case. But as explained, the obligation to take precautions is context dependent. As the article itself acknowledges, the IDF said it was targeting not just the building, but the terrorists operating inside. One need not ponder long to understand that issuing a warning ahead of said strike would both ruin the element of surprise and create “a risk of failing to accomplish the mission” of eliminating the terrorists before they can flee and continue waging war from a new hiding spot.
Moreover, the authors know, but hide from readers, that the IDF took other forms of precautions in relation to this strike.
The article partially quotes an August 4 IDF statement about the strike but omits the following line from it: “Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, surveillance, and additional intelligence.”
In other words, the IDF took precautions in relation to this strike, but instead of acknowledging this, the authors hold Israel to a unique standard that is not reflective of the law.
The network also omits that the law of armed conflict, including precautions, imposes obligations on both parties to a conflict. Hamas has an obligation not to embed its military infrastructure and personnel in civilian areas for the purpose of engaging in human shielding. Yet, while CNN reached out to the IDF about “whether civilians were warned of the strike in advance,” there is no indication CNN ever reached out to Hamas — or any other Palestinian terrorist organizations — to ask why their infrastructure and fighters are repeatedly being found inside of schools, hospitals, mosques, and other civilian sites, including the Hassan Salame and Nasser schools.
Footage published by the IDF shows Hamas operatives opening fire at troops from an UNRWA school in northern Gaza’s Beit Hanoun, and a strike in response. pic.twitter.com/eNpNsTsJJ4
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) December 9, 2023
The effect of the article’s misleading focus on warnings, without tangling with the context, is to place the onus on Israel when Hamas is clearly the one violating the law. Through its selective and misinformed coverage, these CNN journalists impart on Hamas a cynical and dangerous lesson: when Palestinian terrorists violate the laws of armed conflict, Israel’s reputation will suffer.
In effect, CNN’s coverage portrays three separate standards in the law of armed conflict: a unique, higher standard applied to the Jewish state; the standard applied to the rest of the world; and no standard to Palestinian terrorists who seek to wipe the Jewish State from the face of the earth.
David M. Litman is a Research Analyst at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), where a version of this article first appeared.
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Pro-Palestine Demonstrators Blast Sanders as ‘Genocide Denier’
US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks to the media following a meeting with US President Joe Biden at the White House in Washington, US, July 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) has been targeted by left-wing protesters over his supposedly insufficient support for Gaza.
Pro-Palestine activists crashed one of Sanders’s “The Fighting Oligarchy” rallies in Bakersfield, California last week to grill the senator about his position on the Israel-Hamas war. During Sanders’s speech, activists associated with United Liberation Front for Palestine (ULFP) berated Sanders for his reluctance in accusing Israel of committing so-called “genocide” against the civilians of Gaza.
“Are you going to call it a genocide, when it’s a genocide?” the activist bellowed.
“And you defend Israel when Palestinians are being killed every single day and all you do is criticize Netanyahu! Israel does not have a right to exist or fight while Palestinians are dying,” she continued.
Other protesters then interrupted Sanders’s speech, condemning the progressive lawmaker as a “liberal Zionist,” accusing him of being “complicit with ICE,” and castigating him for voting in favor of the confirmation of Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“Bernie, why don’t you let your fans know that you’re a settler, that you occupy Palestinian land?” the activist said.
Sanders does not possess dual citizenship with Israel. However, rumors about Sanders, who is Jewish, possessing Israeli citizenship have circulated around the internet since his 2015 presidential campaign.
In recent weeks, anti-Israel protesters have grown increasingly critical of Sanders over his refusal to adopt more adversarial rhetoric against the Jewish state. Last week, Sanders incensed progressives after authorities removed an activist which unfurled a flag reading “free Palestine” during a tour stop in Idaho.
During that rally, Sanders said, “Israel, like any other country, has the right to defend itself from terrorism, but it does not have the right to wage all out war against the Palestinian people” and “not one more nickel to Netanyahu,” triggering more outrage among his leftist supporters.
Sanders, who is among the most vocal critics of the Israel-Hamas war in the federal government, spearheaded a number of failed efforts to implement a partial arms embargo on the Jewish state, citing supposed “indiscriminate bombing” in Gaza. However, progressive activists have grown increasingly vocal about their dissatisfaction with Sanders’s position on Israel, complaining that the senator has isolated his criticisms to Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and has refused to repudiate Israel’s existence.
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Harvard Sues Trump Administration Over Massive Cuts Amid Campus Antisemitism Crisis
US President Donald Trump, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick attend a cabinet meeting at the White House. Photo: Nathan Howard via Reuters Connect.
Harvard University filed suit against the Trump administration on Monday to request an injunction that would halt the government’s impounding of $2.26 billion of its federal grants and contracts and an additional $1 billion that, reportedly, will be confiscated in the coming days.
In the complaint, shared by interim university president Alan Garber, Harvard says the administration bypassed key procedural steps it must, by law, take before sequestering any federal funds. It also charges that the Trump administration does not aim, as it has publicly pledged, to combat campus antisemitism at Harvard but to impose “viewpoint-based conditions on Harvard’s funding.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the administration has proposed that Harvard reform in ways that conservatives have long argued will make higher education more meritocratic and less welcoming to anti-Zionists and far-left extremists. Its “demands,” contained in a letter the administration sent to Garber — who subsequently released it to the public — called for “viewpoint diversity in hiring and admissions,” the “discontinuation of [diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives],” and “reducing forms of governance bloat.” They also implore Harvard to begin “reforming programs with egregious records of antisemitism” and to recalibrate its approach to “student discipline.”
Harvard rejects the administration’s coupling of campus antisemitism with longstanding grievances regarding elite higher education’s “wokeness,” elitism, and overwhelming bias against conservative ideast. Republican lawmakers, for their part, have maintained that it is futile to address campus antisemitism while ignoring the context in which it emerged.
Speaking for the university, Harvard’s legal team — which includes attorneys with links to US President Donald Trump’s inner circle — denounced any larger reform effort as intrusive.
“The First Amendment does not permit the Government to ‘interfere with private actors’ speech to advance its own vision of ideological balance,” they wrote in the complaint, which names several members and agencies of the administration but not Trump as a defendant. “Nor may the government ‘rely on the ‘threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion … to achieve the suppression of disfavored speech.’ The government’s attempt to coerce and control Harvard disregards these fundamental First Amendment principles, which safeguard Harvard’s ‘academic freedom.’”
The complaint continued, arguing that the impounding of funds “flout not just the First Amendment, but also federal laws and regulations” and says that Harvard should have been investigated by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to determine whether it failed to stop and, later, prevent antisemitism in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act — a finding that would have warranted punitive measures. Rather, it charges, the Trump administration imposed a “sweeping freeze of funding” that, it contends, “has nothing at all to do with antisemitism and Title VI compliance.”
Garber followed up the complaint with an exaltation of limited government and the liberal values which further academia’s educational mission — values Harvard has been accused of failing to uphold for decades.
“We stand for the truth that colleges and universities across the country can embrace and honor their legal obligations and best fulfill their essential role in society without improper government intrusion,” Garber said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “That is how we achieve academic excellence, safeguard open inquiry and freedom of speech, and conduct pioneering research — and how we advance the boundless exploration that propels our nation and its people into a better future.”
For some, Harvard’s allegations against the Trump administration are hollow.
“Claiming that the entire institution is exempt from any oversight or intervention is extraordinary,” Alex Joffe, anthropologist and editor of BDS Monitor for Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, told The Algemeiner on Tuesday. “It would seem to claim, at least by extension, that the government cannot enforce laws regarding equal protection for individuals — namely students in minority groups — and other legal and regulatory frameworks because they jeopardize the institution’s academic freedom.”
He continued, “Moreover, the idea that cutting voluntary government funding is de facto denial of free speech also sounds exaggerated if not absurd. If an institution doesn’t want to be subjected to certain requirements in a relationship entered into voluntarily with the government, they shouldn’t take the money. Modifying a contract after the fact, however, might be another issue … At one level the Trump administration is simply doing what Obama and Biden did with far less controversy, issuing directives and threatening lawsuits and funding. But the substance of the proposed oversight, especially the intrusiveness with respect to curricular affairs, has obviously touched a nerve.”
Harvard’s fight with the federal government is backed by its immense wealth, and the school has been drawing on its vast financial resources to build a war chest for withstanding Trump’s budget cuts since March, when it issued over $450 million in bonds as “part of ongoing contingency planning for a range of financial circumstances.” Another $750 million in bonds was offered to investors in April, according to The Harvard Crimson, a sale that is being managed by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
A generous subsidy protects Harvard from paying exorbitant interest on the new debt, as investors can sell most bonds issued by educational institutions without being required to pay federal income tax.
Other universities have resorted to borrowing as well, issuing what was reportedly a record $12.4 billion municipal bonds, some of which are taxable, during the first quarter of 2025. Among those which chose to take on debt are Northwestern University, which was defunded to the tune of $790 million on April 8. It issued $500 million in bonds in March. Princeton University, recently dispossessed of $210 in federal grants, is preparing an offering of $320 million, according to Forbes.
“If Harvard is willing to mortgage it’s real estate or use it as collateral, it can borrow money for a very long time,” National Association of Scholars president Peter Wood told The Algemeiner on Tuesday. “But it could destroy itself that way.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Russia Ratifies Strategic Partnership With Iran, Strengthening Military Ties
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian attend a documents signing ceremony in Moscow, Russia, Jan. 17, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Evgenia Novozhenina/Pool
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday signed a law officially ratifying a 20-year strategic partnership agreement with Iran, further strengthening military ties between the two countries.
Signed off by Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in January, the Strategic Cooperation Treaty will boost collaboration between Moscow and Tehran in areas such as security services, military drills, warship port visits, and joint officer training.
According to Russian and Iranian officials, the treaty is a response to the increasing geopolitical pressure from the West. Iran’s growing ties with Russia come at a time when Tehran is facing mounting sanctions by the United States, particularly on its oil industry.
Iran’s Ambassador to Russia, Kazem Jalali, said the agreement “stands as one of the most significant achievements in Tehran-Moscow relations.”
“One of the most important commonalities between the two countries is the deep wounds inflicted by the West’s unrestrained unilateralism, which underscores the necessity for broader cooperation in the future,” Jalali told Iranian state media last week.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also praised the agreement, saying that Iran and Russia “are strategic partners and will continue to be so in pursuit of shared interests and for the good of the two nations and the world.”
“We are at the apex of collaboration with Russia in the history of our 500-year-old relationship,” Araghchi wrote in a post on X.
“This does not mean that the two countries recognize the legitimacy of the sanctions, but they have designed their economic cooperation in such a way that even in the presence of sanctions, they can achieve desirable results,” the top Iranian diplomat continued, apparently referring to US economic pressure on both countries.
The cooperation treaty was approved by the State Duma – the lower house of Russia’s parliament – earlier this month and passed by the Federation Council – Russia’s upper house of parliament – last week, with the presidential signature remaining as the final step.
Under the agreement, neither country will permit its territory to be used for actions that pose a threat to the other, nor will they provide assistance to any aggressor targeting either nation. However, this pact does not include a mutual defense clause of the kind included in a treaty between Russia and North Korea.
The agreement also enhances cooperation in arms control, counterterrorism, peaceful nuclear energy, and security coordination at both regional and global levels.
As Russia strengthens its growing partnership with the Iranian regime, Moscow’s diplomatic role in the ongoing US-Iran nuclear talks could be significant in facilitating a potential agreement between the two adversaries.
Indeed, Russia, an increasingly close partner of Iran, could play a crucial role in Tehran’s nuclear negotiations with the West, leveraging its position as a veto-wielding member of the UN Security Council and a signatory to a now-defunct 2015 nuclear deal that imposed limits on the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
Tehran and Washington are set to have a third round of nuclear talks in Oman this weekend.
After Saturday’s second round of nuclear negotiations in Rome, Araghchi announced that an expert-level track would begin in the coming days to finalize the details of a potential agreement.
“Relatively positive atmosphere in Rome has enabled progress on principles and objectives of a possible deal,” Araghchi wrote in a post on X. “For now, optimism may be warranted but only with a great deal of caution.”
According to a Guardian report, Russia could be considered a potential destination for Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium and a possible mediator in any future nuclear deal, particularly in the event of breaches to the agreement.
This option would allow Russia to “return the handed-over stockpile of highly enriched uranium to Tehran” if Washington were to violate the deal, ensuring that Iran would not be penalized for American non-compliance.
Some experts and lawmakers in the US have expressed concern that a deal could allow Iran to maintain a vast nuclear program while enjoying the benefits of sanctions relief. However, US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff recently said that Iran “must stop and eliminate its nuclear enrichment and weaponization program.” The comment came after Witkoff received criticism for suggesting the Islamic Republic would be allowed to maintain its nuclear program in a limited capacity.
Several Western countries have said Iran’s nuclear program is designed for the ultimate goal of building nuclear weapons. Tehran claims its nuclear activities are only for civilian energy purposes.
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