Following an Israeli Air Force strike against a building in the village of Qana, Israel is once again subject to some severe criticism in the international media. TV viewers and newspaper readers have been confronted with highly emotive and disturbing images of bodies being pulled from the rubble.

Undoubtedly, the loss of life is extremely tragic and the vast majority of Israelis deeply regrets this incident. However, while some media wishes to portray Israel as a malevolent force that deliberately murders civilians, some wider context needs to be added to the coverage of the Qana story:

• Some 150 rockets have been fired at Israeli cities from Qana over the past three weeks. This IDF map traces how these rockets have been launched in 30 salvos at Haifa and other locations, including Nahariya, Ma'alot and Kiryat Shmona. To date, 18 Israeli civilians have been killed and hundreds wounded as a result of this rocket fire.

• Hezbollah has been deliberately hiding behind and operating from within civilian areas in the knowledge that Israel does not deliberately target civilians. Thus, when an incident such as Qana occurs, Hezbollah is presented with a propaganda coup, as is currently the case. Indeed, Australia's Herald Sun published damning photos "showing that Hezbollah is waging war amid suburbia. The images...show Hezbollah using high-density residential areas as launch pads for rockets and heavy-calibre weapons. Dressed in civilian clothing so they can quickly disappear, the militants carrying automatic assault rifles and ride in on trucks mounted with cannon."

As the Washington Times points out:

One photograph depicts a fighter with an AK-47 rifle guarding "no-go" zones after an Israeli attack, and another with a group of men and youths preparing to fire an anti-aircraft gun in an apartment block, with sheets hanging out to dry on a balcony. Another shows the remnants of a Hezbollah Katyusha rocket in the middle of a residential block destroyed in an Israeli airstrike. An Australian was standing just down the street when the block was obliterated. "Hezbollah came in to launch their rockets, then within minutes the area was blasted by Israeli jets," he said. "Until the Hezbollah fighters arrived, it had not been touched by the Israelis. Then, it was totally devastated...It was carnage. Two innocent people died in that incident, but it was so lucky it was not more."

• While Israeli civilians in northern towns and cities have between 15 seconds and one minute to find cover after an air raid siren is sounded, Lebanese civilians have been forewarned of IDF operations, in some cases, by days. The residents of Qana were warned 48 hours in advance of potential IAF air strikes.

DOUBLE STANDARDS

The Qana incident is likely to be a defining incident in this current conflict, aided by a media that lacks context and prefers to judge Israel by different standards to other nations involved in military actions. It is, for example, interesting to examine the record of NATO forces that bombed the Serb military in Kosovo in the late-1990s. In the face of an estimated 500 civilian deaths, NATO admits that: "Strikes were also complicated by the cynical Serb use of civilian homes and buildings to hide weapons and vehicles, the intermixing of military vehicles with civilian convoys and, sometimes, the use of human shields. In this way, NATO's concern to avoid civilian casualties was exploited by the Serbs."

EMERGING DOUBTS?

In past incidents such as the Mohammed Al-Dura affair, the "Jenin Massacre" and the Gaza Beach deaths, Israel has been castigated by the international media only for new evidence to emerge that has changed the nature of the story. While it is still too early to draw any conclusions before the results of any official investigation are known, there are a number of questions and inconsistencies regarding Qana:

• The Red Cross has published that 28 corpses were evacuated from Qana, 19 of which were children. These figures clash with the Lebanese report that 57 people were killed.
• Why is there an unexplained 7-8 hour gap between the time of the air strike and the building collapse? Initially the IDF speculated that Hezbollah explosives in the building were behind the explosion that caused the collapse. Another possibility is that the rickety building remained standing for a few hours, but eventually collapsed. "It could be that inside the building, things that could eventually cause an explosion were being housed, things that we could not blow up in the attack, and maybe remained there, IDF Brigadier General Eshel said. "I'm saying this very carefully, because at this time I don't have a clue as to what the explanation could be for this gap," he added.

For more on how web blogs are re-examining the initial assumptions behind Qana, see this YNet article, or head to HonestReporting's Backspin blog for the latest news as more details (or questions) regarding Qana come to light.   

HonestReporting does not wish to minimize or cheapen the deaths of innocent civilians. We do, however, call for the media and the court of international opinion to treat Israel fairly and to view this terrible incident within the wider context of Israel's fight to protect its own citizens from the continuing threat of Hezbollah's rockets. Hezbollah, which hides behind women and children as they fire these rockets, is directly responsible for the situation now occuring within Southern Lebanon.

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