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130 Media Studies

the United Nations says, more than 40 civilians, some of them children.
Have you committed a war crime? Deciding requires an investigation into
battlefield circumstances that cannot be carried out while the fi ghting rages,

Text not available in the electronic edition
and such judgments are especially difficult in urban guerrilla warfare, when

fighters like Hamas live among the civilian population and take shelter there.

While Israel is the focus of most criticism, legal experts agree that Hamas , a
radical Islamic group classified by the United States and Europe as terrorist,

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violates international law.
The account is a good example of how perspective and point of view work
to frame and limit events so that pre - interpretations take precedence to
fact. The reporter explicitly adopts the perspective of an Israeli soldier, thus
forcing the reader to identify with the Israeli Army and to assume as true
their positions regarding the conflict. The Palestinians are portrayed as

attackers (when in fact they are the victims of an invasion that is part of
an ongoing colonization effort), and careful reminders are dropped in to
qualify the actions in favor of the Israelis. The reader is reminded that the
Hamas defendants are categorized as a terrorist group and that international
law protects the Israeli Army from charges of criminal behavior of they are
defending themselves. It is reporting with a distinct edge in favor of Israel.
The reporting of the same event by non - American news sources was
quite different. Often, as I noted, events take on different meanings/ simply
through the different placement of a phrase or a piece of information. The
New York Times story of the school bombing privileges the Israeli account.
Before even mentioning the number killed, it notes that “ Israel said that a

preliminary investigation showed that mortar fire from the school com-
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pound prompted Israeli forces to return fire. ” This excuse takes prece-
dence even to the simple reporting of facts, a fairly obvious instance of
polemical pre - interpretation. In contrast, the Canadian Globe and Mail
reports the same events this way:

At least 40 Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli mortar shells yesterday
in a tragedy that could mark the beginning of the end of the current Israel -
Hamas fighting in Gaza. The people, residents of the Jabalya refugee camp

Text not available in the electronic edition
north of Gaza City, had sought refuge from the advance of Israeli forces
in a United Nations school for girls. Those forces, according to Israeli

military spokesmen, came under mortar fire, and returned with fire of their
own. Israeli tanks and troops blazed into towns across the Gaza Strip yes-
terday, striking Hamas targets as Arab states pressed for a UN Security
Council resolution for an immediate end to combat in the Gaza Strip and

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