The weight of the corpses, the weight of the living

It's well known that, in journalism, the dead carry a variable weight. They occupy a certain number of square centimeters or minutes in the media depending on their proximity—geographical, but also emotional—to the reader. The management of these weights is delicate; the balance, cruel. The day after the ceasefire that Trump is trying to pass off as a peace plan, five Palestinian civilians were killed by two Israeli army drones. The news' news value is evident, as it sheds light on the fragility of the situation in Gaza, but most of the day's front pages didn't give it any space. Or they gave it a twist. "First violation of the ceasefire in Gaza," it read. The reason, without explaining who was breaking the agreement and with what lethal consequences. The subtitle was also magnificently elliptical: "There have already been at least nine dead and Israel will close the Rafah border crossing until Hamas hands over the bodies of the remaining dead hostages." Again, without specifying that the deceased were Palestinians. And, above all, without indicating that it is not that "there have been" nine dead, but that someone He killed them. Written like this, more importance is given to the corpses on the one hand than to those who were still alive on the other. It also went on to The Vanguard, which highlighted on the front page "The terrorist organization is delayed in the delivery of the deceased hostages" and did not include the victims of the day.

All this whileAbc It opened with "Hamas repression puts Gaza on the brink of civil war," which also avoided mentioning the Israeli army's repression in order to explain the deaths caused by the power struggle between the Palestinian organization and the Dughmush clan. Hamas will have to answer for its barbaric policies of terror, but the fulfillment of Trump's singular plan—with disturbing real estate ambitions—deserves a somewhat more rigorous assessment of the dead.