Sometimes, words like bias or misleading framing just aren’t enough. What the Associated Press recently published crosses a moral line.
They ran a photo essay called “Portraits of survivors of Israel’s pager attack on Hezbollah last year.” Sounds neutral enough… until you see it.
The subjects aren’t innocent civilians. They are members of Hezbollah — a U.S.- and EU-designated terrorist organization. Men who used encrypted pagers to coordinate attacks on Israeli civilians. The AP doesn’t frame them as killers. They frame them as victims. Tragic figures. Faces to pity.
As Rachel O’Donoghue from HonestReporting.com writes, “It is repulsive propaganda. Nothing more, nothing less.”
The lighting is soft. The backgrounds are black, dramatic. Scars and stumps are highlighted as though these men are cancer survivors or wounded veterans. Missing from every frame? The story of why they were targeted in the first place.
When Truth Is Replaced with Theater
One Hezbollah operative laments that he can no longer work on the front line. Another detail tells us their children are afraid of them — as though that is the tragedy, not the terror they’ve unleashed.
O’Donoghue points out, “These were not bystanders caught in crossfire. These were operatives of an Iranian-backed terror group… engaged in covert operations… targeting civilians.”
Meanwhile, where are the artistic portraits of Hezbollah’s real victims, AP?
241 U.S. Marines and 58 French paratroopers murdered in the Beirut barracks bombing (1983).
114 people killed in the Israeli Embassy bombing (1992) and the AMIA Jewish Center bombing (1994) in Buenos Aires.
19 U.S. Air Force personnel murdered in the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia (1996).
Eight Israeli soldiers murdered in a cross-border raid, with two others taken hostage and later killed — the attack that triggered the 2006 Lebanon War, during which 43 Israeli civilians and 121 IDF soldiers were killed by Hezbollah rocket fire.
Dozens of Israeli civilians and security personnel killed in Hezbollah attacks during the 2023–2024 Israel–Hezbollah conflict, launched after the October 7 Hamas massacre.
Over 60,000 Israelis in the north displaced from their homes.
Twelve children murdered when a Hezbollah rocket struck a soccer field in Majdal Shams in July 2024.
These are the people whose stories deserve reverent lighting and solemn portraits. These are the faces the world needs to see — not the sanitized images of those who brought such destruction.
So we ask you, AP: Are you on the right side of history? More importantly, are you on the right side of God?
Standing Firm When the World Turns Upside Down
As women of faith, we’ve seen this before: “Humanize the perpetrator. Aestheticize the violence. Erase the victims. Call it balance,” O’Donoghue warns. But this isn’t balance. It’s complicity.
This is why we must keep our eyes open, our prayers steady, and our voices ready. When truth is distorted, deception spreads — and the cost is always borne by the innocent.
Lord, give us clear eyes to see truth from lies. Protect those who speak truth at great cost, and frustrate the plans of those who would use words and images to shield the guilty and erase the innocent.
