Jari Mäkäräinen criticized Yle for what he perceived as giving Timo R. Stewart, whom he describes as a Hamas activist, an unchallenged platform to present his book. According to Mäkäräinen, the article adopted Stewart's view regarding the destruction of Gaza, genocide, and Finland's responsibility due to trade with Israel, without hearing the opposing side. Mäkäräinen emphasized that, in his opinion, genocide does not equate to heavy war. He wrote that the International Court of Justice had not ruled on the case against Israel and that interim measures were not a judgment. In his view, civilian casualties can occur in urban warfare where Hamas places rockets, command centers, and tunnels among civilians without the intent of destroying the group. He compared this to the battles of Mosul, Raqqa, and Fallujah, claiming that Stewart began using the term genocide after Israel succeeded in its war against Hamas. According to Mäkäräinen, the Yle article also lacked the starting point of the war: the attack on October 7, in which he claims over 1,200 people died, and which involved rapes and kidnappings. He wrote that Hamas aims for the end of Israel instead of a Palestinian state. He criticized the figures presented by the Palestinian Ministry of Health in the article—over 21,600 by December 2023 and over 1,400 after ceasefires—and claimed that the ministry was subordinate to Hamas and that its figures did not differentiate between fighters and civilians. In his view, the article also lacked Israel's perspective that a significant portion of the dead were fighters. Regarding the two-state model, Mäkäräinen wrote that its failure was not solely due to Israel. He claimed that Hamas had rejected the model multiple times and that the Palestinian Authority had turned down offers, such as at Camp David in 2000 and Annapolis in 2008. He added that according to polls, the majority of both Palestinians and Israelis had abandoned the model. He described the cessation of support for UNRWA as a reaction to an organization that, according to him, had ample evidence of connections between its facilities and personnel to Hamas. Mäkäräinen believed that Yle, as a publicly funded media, should not advertise a single essayist as an expert. According to him, the article could have included opposing researchers, Israel's official stance, or addressed Hamas's responsibility for hostages and the use of civilians as shields. He concluded by asking why this had not been done. https://t.co/sHriNitmMo #Gaza #Israel #Hamas (translated)
