In February, IDF special forces managed to raid a site in Gaza and free two hostages being held by Hamas — Luis Har and Fernando Marman. When NPR’s Daniel Estrin interviewed Har, a 71-year-old accountant, instead of sympathetically sharing in Har’s relief, he seemed peeved that Har did not criticize the IDF’s use of airstrikes as a diversion, while the special forces staged their raid, because of the casualties that resulted from those airstrikes. More on Luis Har and his NPR interview can be found here: “NPR berates a senior citizen former hostage,” Elder of Ziyon, March 29, 2024:
NPR’s Daniel Estrin interviewed former Israeli hostage Luis Har, a 71-year-old accountant, about his 129 days of captivity in Gaza. He was freed in February by an Israeli special forces raid.
Part of the article:
During the rescue raid, the Israeli military said it carried out large-scale airstrikes as a diversion to provide cover to the special forces. Palestinian men, women and children were killed – more than 70, according to Gaza health officials. I asked Luis Har about it.
Har: I don’t know. It’s not my business. The military can answer you. I see that most of the people there are Hamas. They don’t intend to pet us and to love us, and I have no mercy toward them at the moment.
Yes, an NPR journalist is asking a former hostage whether he thinks it is fair that he is free now because of the supposed death toll.
Har is now getting help from a psychologist, NPR reports.
Essentially, Estrin berated a senior citizen to make him feel guilty that his freedom is at the expense of women and children. And he got his answer – this soulless Jew doesn’t give a damn.
There is no independent evidence that any women and children were killed in Rafah that day.
The reports that women and children were among the killed in the air raids comes from the health ministry which comes from Hamas.
In providing its always exaggerated reports on casualties to the Ministry of Health (a Hamas mouthpiece), Hamas does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. It wants the world to believe that those killed and wounded are mostly “women and children.” Even if we were to accept those Hamas-generated figures — currently 32,000 people in Gaza are said to have been killed in the war,we would have to subtract from that number the 15,000 Hamas combatants that the IDF knows it has killed, which gives us a figure of 17,000 civilians killed. How many of these were women and children?
UN-OCHA [Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs] describes major airstrikes and always includes women and children when they are known or reported. Their descriptions from February 12 in Rafah at the time of the rescue in early morning – 8 different strikes in different areas of Rafah – do not mention any women and children among the 55 they counted…
The day after they report women and children killed in airstrikes, and the days before they do as well. It is actually unusual for so many airstrikes in a row not to mention women and children (or journalists or health workers) as being killed in UN-OCHA’s reporting. This indicates that OCHA’s original reports from the scenes did not include anyone but adult males, and Hamas added the women and children afterwards when reporters asked them….
If women and children had been killed on February 12, as a result of the diversionary airstrikes called in by the IDF to cover its raid to free the two hostages, wouldn’t the reports from UN-OCHA have reported them? But none of the attacks that day, as initially reported, included any mention of women and children casualties. Only later were those reports amended by Hamas so that “women and children” were added to the lists of casualties for that day.
Why did Daniel Estrin want Luis Har to comment on the deaths of those Gazans hit by the diversionary airstrikes? For all Har knew, these were mostly Hamas combatants. Estrin did not provide him with a breakdown of the casualties — how many men, how many women, how many children were killed or wounded. In any case, Har had endured in captivity quite enough of the brutality not just of Hamas, but of ordinary Gazans who were delighted by the atrocities carried out on October 7, and some of whom even took part in the attack that day alongside Hamas fighters, to not be in any mood to express sadness for those killed.
Estrin wanted to make sure that his audience knew that in freeing Har and Marman, the IDF had caused the deaths of “70 women and children” in diversionary airstrikes. But in the original postings by UN-OCHO of IDF attacks and Gazan casualties on February 12, there was no mention of “women and children.” He also wanted NPR listeners to know how heartless Luis Har was not to mourn the loss of life in Gaza that day. How many of us, enduring what Luis Har endured for 129 days, and what he had seen his fellow captives suffer, and what he had seen Hamas do on October 7, would have responded differently than he did? I wouldn’t. What about you?
WPM says
Many be the NPR reporter can volunteer to drive an unescorted truck full of food into the Gaza to provide relief to the people there .If they do not kidnaped him or beat him to death ,he could interview them.
SC says
@ WPM Or better still just swap him for one of the hostages and let him report live while being tortured.
SC says
NPR funding needs to end next january.
WPM says
Yes we can only hope some of this madness of this demented puppet’s administration currently living in the Whitehouse and some of his other democratic left woke idiots in the congress and Senate lose their elections. Why with the internet, cable TV and hundreds of podcasters is NPR even a “thing” funded by taxpayers in 2024?Should have went the way of the telegraph and bugger whip many years ago.
Gene Currivan says
The real question becomes why has not all of ‘Gaza’ been leveled? The German people were reviled at Nazi atrocities…. The muslims in Gaza? Dancing in the streets….
And Fk Joe Biden wants to bring hundreds of thousands here…. We need to give Israel full support in their complete destruction of Hamas and ALL THAT SUPPORTS THEM. If millions die, THEY HAVE BROUGHT IT ON THEMSELVES….
On a related point… We need to take the United States back and excise the cancer poisoning it.
somehistory says
Clearly, the man had nothing to do with who and how many were killed.
Many times, when someone is being rescued, some of the rescuers are killed in the effort. The one rescued likely feels bad under those circumstances.
However, this supposed ‘reporter,’ who by his questioning and lies, wants to appear as if he wouldn’t want to be rescued from a similar situation because he has such great feelings of compassion for others. However, he had none for the man who was rescued after so many days of torture.
hamas lies. And not only does hamas lie, but they deliberately put persons….citizens over whom they have control and are supposed to care for and govern…in harms way so they can count the bodies and blame them on Israel.
The npr ‘reporter’ is a jerk and a shill.
John says
We need to de-fund NPR…it is paid for by our taxes!
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Standing in the way of that are Democrats, determined to burn not just our money but dig us further into endless debt
࿗Infidel࿘ says
I understand that a lot of the hostages & dead in the October 7th attacks were actually on the left of the Israeli political spectrum. That notwithstanding, I wonder why would any of them give government channels like NPR the time of day? When it’s obvious that the fringe left Western media like BBC, PBS, NPR, CBC, et al are all co-opted by the anti-Semitic left!
James Lincoln says
NPR: government-funded media.
If you tune in, consider the source.
Becca R says
I listened to this article on NPR after reading about it here. The reporter, a Jew, Daniel Elstrin, is the NPR rep in the Middle East. He is based in Israel. It is unfortunate that he paid lip service to the propaganda figures of dead given by the disreputable HAMAS Health Ministry. He should have focused on Mr Har’s ordeal and left it at that. Mr Har was a veritable victim/witness to the egregious cruelty and said they all seemed to be HAMAS. Mia Schem said the same. Mr. Elstrin’s question concerning how Mr Har felt about the purported death toll of Gazans was out of line and insensitive. I thought Mr. Har’s answer was appropriate. I do not agree with his idea that Israel should negotiate with HAMAS to facilitate release of hostages. It is naive and not doable. Israel must win the war decisively. Only a show of might will get the hostages or their remains back.
To the average NPR listener, the reporter was a good and caring soul, following the sainted Blinken who famously said Israel’s number one obligation is to the Gazan “civilians.” The freed hostage was just another Jewish ingrate. Insofar that Mr. Elstrin represented NPR, a paragon of the Left, he was respected. by the listener. However, once the jihadist mob was let loose the suck up reporter too would be beheaded for being a Jew.