Mick Hartley

The most important point to note when dealing with news from Gaza is that Hamas are not a reliable source. Sometimes they make it up, and always they celebrate pictures of Palestinian suffering. They place rocket launchers next to schools and hospitals, and gleefully share pictures of any damage from Israeli air-strikes – which are dutifully displayed across western media. This is well known, but somehow seems to have been forgotten in the current rush for newsworthy material. And any journalists reporting from Gaza can only deal with Hamas: there's no other authority, and any attempt to probe deeper will just get you thrown out.

The Gaza hospital disgrace, with Hamas claiming that Israel had bombed the Al-Ahli hospital killing hundreds when in fact a stray missile from Islamic Jihad from within Gaza had hit the car park, is the clearest case to date,. It was widely reported as fact by western media, including the BBC.

In the Times on Sunday we had this report from Louise Callaghan – I don’t know if I can ever wipe this from my brain: at the Gaza church bombed by Israel:

A list in his hand, Rami marked off his friends and neighbours as they were pulled from the rubble of the church building: a tick for the living, a cross for the dead. Children, crushed in the rubble, a woman dressed in a nightgown — friends from church, relatives, all of them part of Gaza’s Christian community.

In fact, as the article goes on to point out, Israel had not bombed the church, but had targeted a nearby Hamas command centre, and a wall of the church assembly hall had collapsed. Yes, a tragedy…but alas such tragedies happen when Hamas deliberately places its command centres in crowded civilian areas.

And so it goes.

This is today's Times front page:

Dominated by a photo, "The aftermath of an airstrike on the Ridwan area of Gaza City".

This a day after the IDF press conference showing some of the footage taken by the Hamas killers as they butchered Jews. Those images would be too graphic to be shown, so instead we get this more photogenic suffering. Staged? Posed? I couldn't possibly say – and of course there's no denying that the people of Gaza are indeed suffering.

Still…