Living in an Upside-Down World

The Associated Press recently came out with a haunting photo essay about the human toll of the October 7 massacres on Israeli victims and their families. Titled “Survivors of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel struggle to recover,” it includes heartrending interviews with survivors who hid for hours, listening to neighbors cry for help as they were kidnapped from their homes, tortured in front of family members, and butchered in their beds. The piece tells the harrowing stories of their “slow, painful path to recovery.”

Just kidding. What the AP actually produced is a “report on the human toll of Israel’s exploding-pagers attack targeting Hezbollah.” The photographs and accompanying stories depict Hezbollah terrorists and those close to them who were injured after picking up one of the exploding pagers used exclusively by Hezbollah terrorists. The title of the piece, (I kid you not) is “Survivors of Israel’s pager attack on Hezbollah struggle to recover.”

If you didn’t know better, reading the stories of people the AP calls “survivors,” and what the AP describes as “a slow, painful path to recovery,” you’d think those profiled were innocent victims of a vicious terrorist attack. But all those profiled are “Hezbollah officials or fighters” (AKA terrorists — but the AP refuses to use that term) and their family members.

Hezbollah, an internationally designated terrorist organization, perpetrated decades of gruesome and horrific terrorist attacks on innocent civilians — including launching roughly 10,000 rockets at residential areas in the North of Israel after October 7, requiring approximately 80,000 Israelis to flee their homes.

On July 27, 2023, after about 75% of displaced Northerners returned, a rocket fired by Hezbollah from Lebanon landed on a soccer field in Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights, killing 12 young Druze Israelis and injuring dozens more.

These minor details about the nature of Hezbollah, which would provide important context regarding who was injured by exploding Hezbollah pagers, are absent in the AP piece.

Instead, quoting a Hezbollah “representative,” the AP wants us to view the pager operation not as a decisive win against a brutal terrorist organization, but a tragedy. “None of those injured has fully recovered,” we’re told, without a hint of irony.

Among the terrorists we meet are 35-year-old Mustafa Choeib, who, in a photo accompanying his story, “shares a tender moment with his daughter” (yes, that was the caption), and Mahdi Sheri, a 23-year-old terrorist who “can no longer play football” (so sad) and “realizes it’s impossible now to find a role alongside Hezbollah fighters” (such a shame). In other words, he’s unfit for terrorism duty.

The AP lets us know that Hezbollah is so benevolent it is “helping him find a new job.” Gosh. Such altruism.

We also meet 21-year-old Sarah Jaffal who “picked up the device belonging to a family member.” Which family member? We’re never told. Jaffal is not merely wise beyond her years but verges on angelic. “The driven, inquisitive woman” as the AP describes her, “leans on her faith to summon patience.”

“God only burdens us with what we can bear,” she says. “I forget my wounds when I see another wounded.” Hezbollah produces such saintly family members of terrorists.

The photograph that accompanies her story is of Jaffal holding her iPhone. In the case, we see a photo of the deceased Hezbollah terrorist leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Nasrallah, who was eliminated in a targeted Israeli air strike, was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans as well as untold others.

A portrait of Nasrallah hangs on the wall above 26-year-old Zeinab Mestrah in the photo accompanying her story. We’re not told to which terrorist-family-member the exploding pager she picked up belonged. But five days after the pager explosions, she was flown to Iran for medical treatment. So we can guess that he must have been fairly high up in the terrorist hierarchy.

Finally, the AP introduces us to 12-year-old Hussein Dheini, who picked up his terrorist-father’s Hezbollah pager. In the accompanying image, he is pictured being comforted by his mother. Sadly, we’re told, he “can’t go swimming with his father” (the terrorist) anymore. “The boy,” as the AP refers to him, creating a sense of harmlessness and innocence, was “a member of Hezbollah scouts,” which the AP calls “the group’s youth movement.”

The Hezbollah scouts is a terrorist training program for children — the Hezbollah equivalent of the Hitler Youth.

In a normal world, a father either encouraging his child to become a terrorist or putting his child in harm’s way because of his own terrorist activities would be presented as child abuse. In upside-down world, however, a father did both, and a major news organization obscures his responsibility. Terrorists and budding terrorists are referred to as “survivors,” who, we’re told with no caveats, “blame Israel for their wounds.”

In a normal world, a father either encouraging his child to become a terrorist or putting his child in harm’s way because of his own terrorist activities would be presented as child abuse.

And in an upside-down world, the AP uncritically tells us that despite the operation being among the most precisely targeted attack on terrorists in the history of warfare (the other one being the Israeli operation using exploding Hezbollah walkie-talkies), “human rights and United Nations reports” call the pager operation “indiscriminate.”

The inversion couldn’t be more complete.

The AP acknowledges that “the pagers were exclusively sold to Hezbollah members” (in other words, terrorists) and that, according to the Mossad, “tests were conducted to ensure that only the person holding the pager would be harmed.” Even Hezbollah admits that “most of those wounded and killed were [Hezbollah] fighters or personnel” (i.e. terrorists).

Which makes the whole operation definitionally the opposite of indiscriminate (“done at random or without careful judgment”).

While we’re at it, in a normal world, when a bombing campaign demolishes 75% of buildings (many of which are booby-trapped, contain weapons, or provide access to terror-tunnels) and at the same time protects 97% of the population, that, too, is the opposite of “indiscriminate.”

It’s becoming increasingly clear that antisemites and the antisemitic-adjacent are either incapable of accurately defining words or have decided (like Ireland, Amnesty International, and others), that when reality is inconsistent with accurate definitions of their preferred, morally freighted words, the solution is to redefine the words.

In upside-down world, therefore, precision strikes are “indiscriminate.” In upside-down world, successfully providing humanitarian aid (as of this writing, more than 100 million meals) directly to those in need, rather than allowing Hamas terrorists to steal it, violates international humanitarian law — because it disadvantages Hamas and therefore works to Israel’s military advantage. (No joke, this is the reasoning.)

In upside-down world, exactly when a hostage deal seems possible and ending Hamas’s reign of terror is almost conceivable, a cabal of countries committed to maintaining a permanent state of existential threat against Israel declare their intention to recognize a Palestinian State, eliminating any incentive for Hamas to release the hostages.

And in upside-down world, while Hamas terrorists deliberately starve Israeli hostages, even publishing videos that make clear how emaciated and weak they are, the media ignores both the GHF success and the hostages’ plight. Instead, once again, they publish fraudulent stories on their front pages, with photos provided once again by Hamas, depicting what we’re once again meant to believe are formerly healthy, starving children, but who, once again, in actuality were born with severe medical conditions.

Despite what one must assume are their best efforts, no mainstream news outlet has put on its front page a single true story of a formerly healthy, starving Palestinian. In a normal world, the media would recognize what this means.

This is not to say that there is no hunger or other humanitarian issues in Gaza. It’s only to say that all the evidence points to a very different story than the one the media wants to report: The only truly starving people in Gaza — and certainly the only people being deliberately starved — are Israeli hostages.

But in an upside-down world, the truth, whether in Lebanon or in Gaza, is a story too inconvenient to tell.

Now, what about those poor victims of the Israeli attack on Hezbollah’s Walkie-Talkies?

A social psychologist with a clinical background, Dr. Paresky, an Associate at Harvard University, serves as Senior Advisor to the Open Therapy Institute and Advisor to the Mindful Education Lab at New York University. In addition to The Jewish Journal, her work appears in Psychology Today, The Guardian, Politico, Sapir, The New York Times, and elsewhere. She has taught at Johns Hopkins, the University of Chicago, and the United States Air Force Academy, and writes the Habits of a Free Mind newsletter. Follow her on Twitter at @PamelaParesky