The Front Line in People’s Minds       

With a toxic welter of journalistic laziness, media outlets’ pro-Palestinian bias, and Israel’s limitations in both traditional and social media, it was only a matter of time before slaughtered Jewish babies would be replaced by cries of proportionality and Israeli aggression

With reporting by Sandy Eller

IT took ten days for the media to overcome its uncharacteristic bout of sympathy for dead Jews.

In the aftermath of Hamas’s Simchas Torah pogrom, a stunned world rallied around Israel’s right to self-defense, and the sheer horror of the assault temporarily checked left-leaning media organizations’ anti-Israel animus.

But from the moment jets started pounding Gaza’s terrorists in retaliation, the clock began ticking: it was only a question of time before the slaughtered Jewish babies would disappear from the headlines to be replaced by the familiar narrative of Israeli aggression.

Few expected such a quick triumph for Hamas propaganda, though. Hundreds of Israeli victims had yet to be identified, and the press corps was still touring the blasted kibbutzim where defenseless civilians had been massacred, when at 6:59 p.m. last Tuesday night, an explosion rocked the parking lot of the Al-Ahli hospital in the northern Gaza Strip.