Times of Israel, on West Bank, 25 October 2026

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IDF troops seal homes of 2 gunmen who killed 2 soldiers near Hebron

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IDF troops seal homes of 2 gunmen who killed 2 soldiers near Hebron

Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent

IDF troops sealed the homes of the two Palestinian gunmen who carried out Friday’s deadly shooting attack against soldiers at a checkpoint in the West Bank city of Hebron.

The military says that overnight, troops operating in Hebron sealed the homes of Mohammad and Firas Jaaba, who killed Staff Sgt. Ron Yonatan Roytman and Sgt. Yuval Shai Svilem and wounded three other troops in the shooting attack.

As a matter of policy, Israel demolishes the homes of Palestinians accused of carrying out deadly terror attacks. Sealing the homes of attackers is often a replacement or stopgap for demolishing them. In general, the demolition process takes several months, as the High Court must address appeals by the family, and security forces often wait for an optimal time to enter Palestinian cities or neighborhoods for the operation.

The IDF says the temporary sealing of the homes was approved by Central Command chief Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, and that the military “intends to continue to advance the process of demolishing their homes.”

Meanwhile, during the ongoing operations in Hebron.

Left out here: Leaves out what changes the picture

The article calls what is happening in Hebron "the ongoing operations". It never says that Israeli occupation forces had closed Hebron and Halhul, barring entry and exit for a city of about 250,000 people, or that troops took over Palestinian homes as barracks after forcing residents out. Without this, a reader takes the operations to be targeted arrests rather than a closure of a whole city.

How we know

The Times of Israel Community.

Read the original article on timesofisrael.com (opens in a new tab)
What we found (3)

The Times of Israel reports the sealing of the attackers' family homes almost entirely through statements from Israeli occupation forces, and Palestinians in Hebron appear only as suspects and targets of the operation. In S5 it drops the soldiers who shot the two men from the sentence, and it reduces a closure of Hebron and Halhul to "ongoing operations". These are minor gaps; the core facts of the attack and the sealing are reported with attribution.

  1. Hides who did it

    Minor

    “Both gunmen were shot dead.”

    Why this matters
    The words "were shot dead" give the killing of the two men with no actor in the sentence.
    The impression it gives
    A reader is left to infer who killed the two men rather than being told.
    The context
    Other reports of the same event say Israeli soldiers of the Ari Battalion killed both men. The article could have named them as easily as it names the army elsewhere.

    How we know

    Show it in the article

  2. One side gets the space

    Minor

    “the army says that troops apprehended 12 suspects overnight, seized “illegal vehicles,” and captured several weapons”

    Why this matters
    The Times of Israel ends on the army's account of the night's raids. No Palestinian in Hebron, and no relative of the families whose homes were sealed, is heard anywhere in the piece.
    The impression it gives
    A reader sees the sealing and the raids only as the army describes them, as a measured process against suspects.
    The context
    Every source in the article is the Israeli military. The families who lived in the sealed homes, and the residents of a city under closure, get no voice.

    How we know

    • Elsewhere in the article“The IDF says the temporary sealing of the homes was approved”
    • Elsewhere in the article“The military says that overnight”

    Show it in the article

  3. Leaves out what changes the picture

    Minor

    What is missing

    The article calls what is happening in Hebron "the ongoing operations". It never says that Israeli occupation forces had closed Hebron and Halhul, barring entry and exit for a city of about 250,000 people, or that troops took over Palestinian homes as barracks after forcing residents out. Without this, a reader takes the operations to be targeted arrests rather than a closure of a whole city.

    How we know

    Show where it belongs

What it gets right

  • “the homes of Palestinians accused of carrying out deadly terror attacks”

    The article describes the demolition policy as applying to people accused, rather than stating guilt in its own voice.

  • “seized “illegal vehicles,””

    The army's label is kept in quotation marks and attributed to the army. It is not adopted as the outlet's own description.

How other outlets reported it

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