Legacy media justifies Iranian war crimes with careless reporting

“Israel says Iranian missile struck town housing nuclear facility,” was AFP’s radioactive headline.

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The Washington Post also chimed in about “Dimona, which is home to a sensitive nuclear facility.”

“An Iranian missile wounded dozens in Dimona, a city believed to house Israel’s nuclear weapons program,” a New York Times subheadline likewise claimed. In a correction subsequently prompted by media watchdog CAMERA, the Gray Lady backtracked that Dimona is not home to the Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center, which lies some 9 miles to the southeast.

Like the ballistic missile that slammed into the heart of the desert neighborhood, the media falsehood casting the residential city of Dimona as housing a legitimate nuclear target hit home squarely.

In the U.S.-Israeli war against the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Israeli homefront has played an extraordinarily outsize role.

Iran has often and openly spoken of its desire to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth as “just the beginning” of its global “revolution without borders.” The regime’s launch of hundreds of ballistic missiles at Israeli communities from north to south is an indication of what the West should expect with respect to the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s aspiration for the “Islamic epoch.”

Of the more than 400 ballistic missiles fired at Israel, approximately half were cluster munitions, imprecise weapons that disperse tens of bombs over a wide span of 5 miles. As of March 22, at least two dozen of these missiles have hit populated areas.

Under international law, attacks must comply with the principle of distinction, meaning they can be directed only at legitimate military targets. It’s difficult to identify a justified military use of cluster munitions that drop bombs across miles of densely populated civilian areas.

Every single one of the fatalities killed by Iranian missiles on the Israeli side was a civilian, caught on the neighborhood streets, in the synagogue, or at home.

When checking in on one another, Israelis invariably inquire: “Do you have a mamad at home?” referring to an in-house reinforced room which protects against missiles. The lucky ones — less than half the population with homes built following the Gulf War in the early 1990s — have the comfort of sheltering at home. Everyone else must run at all hours of the day and night — with children and dogs in tow — to shared shelters in their buildings, if they have any, or to public shelters scattered throughout neighborhoods and cities, some better equipped than others. Residents of municipalities with few public shelters have inadequate refuge.

Mundane daily life outings for errands, exercise, or any other purpose become carefully choreographed security operations, strategically arranged around accessibility to shelters. Various apps, including one called “Miklat [Shelter] Run,” enable planning of exercise routes while setting the desired distance from any given shelter, forcing everyone to contemplate: How much risk will I accept today when out for the morning stroll or run?

As I write these words, my home in central Israel has faced particularly heavy fire; before my first cup of morning coffee, I entered the shelter three times — I’ve since lost track. Shrapnel has rained down on the neighborhood, including a school yard, a park, and the swimming pool of a popular local gym.

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In the month since the war started, Iran has launched 115 missiles toward my hometown. Even the dogs are well-trained, running for the shelter at the first sound of the siren.

But, sadly, not everyone is able to reach safety. For example, on March 18, an Iranian cluster bomb slammed into the home of Yaron and Ilana Moshe in central Israel, killing the elderly couple in their living room. Yaron was disabled, preventing the couple from sheltering in time.

The imperialistic Iranian regime justified the murder of the elderly couple sitting at home as a legitimate response to Israel’s killing of Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, the right-hand man of Khamenei. Larijani ran the deadly 2026 domestic oppression in which the regime murdered thousands of Iranians.

The misidentification of Dimona as “home” to the nuclear site serves the Islamic Republic’s effort to rebrand one of its countless war crimes as a justified military aim.

“After the US and Israel attacked the Bushehr power plant and Natanz nuclear facilities, Iran conducted a missile attack on Dimona, where the main nuclear plant of the Zionist regime is located,” fabricated Mehr News Agency, a regime-run propaganda outlet. Israel has denied involvement in the U.S. strikes against the Iranian nuclear facilities.

While Dimona is not home to any Israeli nuclear facility, it is home to 40,000 people, including a sizable Indian community and a Hebrew Israelite contingent, along with the many descendants of the original core population of Jews from both North Africa and Eastern Europe. The hometown of Israeli Eurovision contestant Eddie Butler, a member of the black Hebrew community, Dimona boasts a touch of stardom. Israeli-Arab media personality Lucy Aharish also hails from Dimona.

In recent years, the town has attracted investors and entrepreneurs. “From a sleepy town, it has transformed into a vibrant metropolis,” Forbes Israel wrote about Dimona, home to a country club, sports complex, and a thriving cultural life, including Dimona Theater and beer and wine festivals.

While Iran’s strike did not hit buildings housing any nuclear infrastructure, it did hit a building housing an after-school program for underprivileged children.

Iranian-backed terrorist groups — the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas — have also repeatedly targeted Israeli civilians in their homes.

In January 2025, as Hamas released Israeli hostages as part of a ceasefire, CBS falsely characterized Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where Hamas terrorists brutally kidnapped Israeli women Emily Damari and Emily Steinbrecher from their homes on Oct. 7, 2023, as “a settlement.”

The kibbutz is located well within internationally recognized Israeli territory. It is nowhere near the disputed West Bank, where settlements are located.

Mirroring Iran’s effort to paint the civilian town of Dimona as a legitimate military target, anti-Israel Arabic language discourse also frequently delegitimizes internationally recognized Israeli territory as “settlements,” signaling that the place — i.e., Israel itself — is supposedly a violation of international law which should be obliterated.

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In a gross inversion of reality, that rhetoric ignores the fact that Iranian-backed terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah have mastered the art of embedding their military infrastructure in civilian areas, exposing their populations to counterattacks while depriving their civilians of shelters. All too often, Western journalists overlook Hamas’s cynical sheltering in tunnels underneath unprotected Palestinian homes.

Home is where the heart is, but in Israel, it’s also where the war is. Iran and its terrorist proxies, in their doomed effort to eliminate the Jewish state, deliberately target the Israeli homefront, an inalienable fact notwithstanding regime propaganda and shoddy news reporting.

Tamar Sternthal is director of the Media Research and Analysis Department at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis and director of the organization’s Israel office. She lives in central Israel.