Independent’s revised headline on Israeli response to Gaza rocket attack still misleads

Yesterday (Oct. 11), we documented the latest example of the Independent framing a report on the ongoing wave of terror in a manner which imputes maximum malevolence to Israel.

The Indy story, by Caroline Mortimer, pertained to an Israeli attack on two Hamas weapons sites in northern Gaza on Sunday following two rocket attacks over the weekend. According to Gaza officials, a pregnant woman and her young daughter were killed when an explosion from one of the Hamas weapons sites caused the collapse of her home.

The original Indy headline bizarrely framed the proportionate Israeli attack on a terror weapons site as an act of Israeli “revenge” against a pregnant Palestinian woman and her baby.  However, following our post and a complaint to the journalist, the headline was revised.

Here’s a graphic showing how the headline looked before and after our post.

indy headline fail

Though we’re always glad when editors address problematic language following our complaints, and the word “retaliatory” is of course better than “revenge”, the headline still fails as it advances a false narrative suggesting that Israelis intentionally attacked a pregnant woman and her baby in “retaliation” for some other previous (unstated) attack.

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