Searching for the truth in Gaza

A front page story in the WaPo describes the tragedy of the Samuni family from Gaza:

At least 29 members of the Samuni family died over the next two weeks [in January] — including Almaz’s mother and two brothers. Sixteen or more were killed Jan. 5 when at least two Israeli shells smashed Wael al-Samuni’s crowded house. At least six others wounded in that attack died more slowly, over more than three days when the Israeli army kept emergency vehicles from entering the neighborhood, according to another teenager who had been stranded and later rescued from the house.

Jonathan Finer, the correspondent who filed this story, describes the effort he made to capture reliable information:

This account of the Zaytoun attack and its aftermath was taken primarily from interviews with a dozen members of the Samuni family who survived the assault, as well as statements and patient logs from Gaza City’s Shifa and al-Quds hospitals. The information largely parallels an earlier account given by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which concluded that by thwarting rescue efforts for four days Israel had “failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law.”

And yet I wonder. With Gaza dominated by Hamas, is it safe for anybody to tell the truth, or any safer than it would be in other violent dictatorships? If your name is printed in the WaPo, is it safe to tell their correspondent what really happened? Even if everything you tell the WaPo is true, might you remain silent on one or two critical points — such as the presence of Hamas fighters among civilian casualties?

The danger of such blanket skepticism is that it provides almost no way to distinguish fiction from truth. If you let it, this kind of suspicion allows you to believe only what you want and nothing more. Yet I am concerned that it really isn’t possible to tell fact from fiction in Gaza, because there are no reliable sources when it comes to controversial issues like civilian casualties.