The Western media never learns from previous Gaza wars.

A large percentage of Hamas rockets fall in Gaza, and many Gazans are killed because of them. I’ve documented this for years. I’ve also shown how Hamas’ own videos show rockets falling short.

When a family is killed in Gaza, it is very rare that it is an IDF mistake. Most of the time, it is because a terrorist operative is in the house — either because he is a member of the family, or using civilians as human shields. Other times, it is because of Hamas rockets falling short. Sometimes it is because the IDF targeted a legitimate target that had a cache of explosives, which caused far more collateral damage than expected.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad are hiding the names of most of those killed. While Hamas admitted that one of its senior leaders, Bassem Issa, was killed in an Israeli attack, it won’t mention the names of the other people with him at the time, who were also killed. They do this to make it look like a larger percentage of the dead are civilians — and they did it in previous wars, too.

Additionally, the Gaza Health Ministry and the “human rights” NGOs in Gaza (Palestinian Centre for Human Rights — PCHR, and Al Mezan) downplay any mention of terrorist casualties, and often call terrorists “civilians” when they report the circumstances of those who have died.

(Amnesty International’s obscenely dishonest “Gaza Platform” with statistics from the 2014 war relied on PCHR’s initial reports, and as a result, lists more “civilians” dead than even the UN does. They know they are lying; I’ve let them know enough times, and they refuse to correct it.)

Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch is back to what he has done so many times before — tweeting against Israel incessantly, often with lies, and only reluctantly saying anything bad about Hamas once in a while.

The media still has no idea what “proportionality” means in the context of international law. They make scorecards of how many have been killed on both sides, implying that if only more Jews would be killed, then they can all be happy.

They also don’t mention the reason for Jews being alive is that Israel has invested billions of dollars and years of effort into missile defense programs — not because Hamas isn’t trying to kill more Jews.

Then again, the media is also part of the problem. Hamas has almost complete control over the media in Gaza. Citizens who speak freely to media know that they will be punished. Everyone sticks to the Hamas-approved script. International reporters know that they will be kicked out if they say anything not to Hamas’ liking. Yet the media hardly ever mentions this, giving a false impression that their reporting is objective.

The media will also ignore most of Hamas’ war crimes — using ambulances or “press” credentials to transport weapons, using Gazans as human shields, using mosques as weapons depots, shooting from schools, etc.

People don’t learn.

Then again, most people don’t want to learn.

The opinions presented by Algemeiner bloggers are solely theirs and do not represent those of The Algemeiner, its publishers or editors. If you would like to share your views with a blog post on The Algemeiner, please be in touch through our Contact page.