Media regards claims of murderous monsters as legitimate

A Washington vigil for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war. Picture: AFP

Many moons ago when I was a baby journalist working at a radio station in Perth, decades before I swapped the newsroom for the boardroom, I reported on some polling about a matter I can no longer recall.

I dutifully interviewed the person from the polling company and rounded it out by asking who had funded the research. The response to my question was volcanic. I wish I could claim credit for having had insight beyond my years but, in truth, it just seemed a sensible question to ask. Who paid for it? Is there a money trail of sorts that may delegitimise the findings?

I was barely 20, fresh out of university. But in that moment I learned an important lesson about legitimacy, about the veracity of information, how it can be corrupt­ed by the perception of influ­ence as much as actual interference. I learned about the importance of source information, fullness of disclosure and legitimacy.

And now, in relation to the war on Israel, about how the bar seems to have been brought staggeringly low. What I mean is, each time I hear or read the Hamas health ministry or Gaza health ministry being cited as a credible source, I experience something of a mental gag response.

It’s not just that they’re quoted but, rather, the air of legitimacy they’ve been afforded. Why, after what Hamas’s terrorists did, how they did it, the glee, unabashed pride and joy with which they murdered, mutilated, raped and kidnapped, has the group been afforded the privilege of legitimacy? How have the words of a globally declared terrorist organisation been afforded the weight of trust and credibility given by many left-leaning news organisations?

It’s as if October 7 never happened. As if there aren’t still 240 innocent hostages being held and, let’s be brutally truthful here, more than likely terribly abused in the dark bowels of Gaza. On what planet do we afford legitimacy to these monsters? I’m old enough to remember that negotiation is a privilege terrorists don’t deserve.

US President Joe Biden has gone on the record as saying he has no confidence in the casualty figures being released by the Hamas-controlled Gaza ministry of health. Why would anyone? I don’t know about you but I’d tend to not believe the organisation that celebrated the rape and mutilation of women and children. I’d tend to not give legitimacy or credibility to the terror organisation that openly and proudly said Jews and Christians the world over needed to be wiped out. If Hamas said the sky was blue, I’d be inclined to believe it was overcast.

It is to the immense shame of many in the media that when Hamas told the world the Israelis had bombed al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, those claims were simply and instantly repeated. No questions, no caveats and, it would appear, no effort to verify. As has now been confirmed, the blast came from a failed rocket launch by the Palestinians and it landed in car park. Still, too many continue PR for Hamas, lending legitimacy to a group of savages that deserves none. The West, it seems, has many a useful idiot.

By contrast, the only functioning democracy in the region must go to extraordinary lengths to prove the truth of what it says. The Israeli government, at every turn, is met with suspicion and a greater burden of proof. It’s as if the massacre of October 7 has already become dim in people’s minds.

What we give weight to; what we amplify; the information we choose to put our trust in – these things matter, and not just for our country’s leaders, not just for the media, but for all of us.

Italian Jewish writer Primo Levi survived Auschwitz. He described that as feeling the weight of history upon him, as if he were carrying stones rather than memories, referring to the burden of stewarding the truth of the Holocaust for future generations.

There is a burden of truth on all of us. There is a weight of responsibly to not give legitimacy to those who do not deserve it. Every time Hamas issues a statement, tries to bend a narrative or make a claim, there should be a moment of pause to remind ourselves that these people took turns raping women, some who were dying as they were raped, some who were shot while they were raped, some after. They committed the worst acts of femicide in recent times.

Yes, they murdered men too, but the way they killed those women and young girls, the sexual nature of how their victims were raped, brutalised, paraded in public and murdered like animals in full view, haunts me.

Every time a claim is made by a Hamas mouthpiece, there must be a moment of pause to say these are the people who mutilate children in front their parents. These are the people who say Jews and Christians shouldn’t exist. These are the people who build and run military bases under hospitals and schools, a truth that was strongly condemned this week by the EU.

And every time someone tells you (as someone tried to tell me this week) that while what Hamas did was bad, it’s complicated, remind them why it’s not.

It’s not just in this dirty, necessary war that we see false legitimacy given to those undeserving. It happened during the Covid pandemic; people who were consistently and wildly inaccurate were frequently platformed and amplified against common sense and reason. It happens in the area of climate. In 2006, a former US vice-president warned the planet would be toast by 2016. No proof. Just ideology.

This stuff is now great fodder for stand-up comics and satirists, but this war? This is existential. It is no laughing matter.

Members of the “ceasefire now” brigade don’t understand what they are suggesting. They don’t know this enemy. It’s as if they believe that if the West asks nicely, Hamas will stop. There is no legitimacy to calls for a ceasefire. There can be no option but a victory in this war against terror.