The Jerusalem Post · Lebanon · 1 Oct 2026

Passive voice hides who attacked, the headline editorialises, and the legal stakes go unmentioned.

/ 10 · article score

scored on 5 of 12 measures · thin coverage

The double standard

The article names Hezbollah as the agent that restarted hostilities and attributes the displacement to that decision, while the Israeli military's role in killing children, destroying schools and disrupting water systems is rendered agentless throughout, denying readers an actor for the harm done to Lebanese children.

How it builds, in Hezbollah agency vs. agentless Israeli harm

Named actor: Hezbollah caused displacement
Hezbollah's decision to restart hostilities with Israel on March 2 in response to the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran led to 1.2 million people being displaced at the height of the conflict
Full named agency attributed to Hezbollah
No actor named: who killed the children?
the last six months of war have seen an average of seven children killed or wounded per day
Agentless passive: no actor named for child deaths
No actor named: who destroyed the schools?
436 schools were damaged over the course of the war, and 37 were completely destroyed
Agentless passive: no actor named for school destruction
No actor named: who disrupted water systems?
more than 700,000 people, including 238,000 children, were affected by disruptions to water systems
Agentless passive: no actor named for infrastructure harm

The same decision, both sides

Whether an actor is named as the cause of mass harm

Hezbollah is named as the agent whose decision caused 1.2 million displacements.

Hezbollah's decision to restart hostilities with Israel on March 2 in response to the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran led to 1.2 million people being displaced

The Israeli military, whose strikes killed children and destroyed schools, is never named as an actor; all harm is rendered in the agentless passive.

the last six months of war have seen an average of seven children killed or wounded per day

Whether an actor is named for the destruction of civilian infrastructure

Hezbollah is named as the party that initiated the sequence of events leading to displacement and deprivation.

Hezbollah's decision to restart hostilities with Israel on March 2

The destruction of 436 schools and 37 completely destroyed schools is reported with no named actor.

436 schools were damaged over the course of the war, and 37 were completely destroyed

What a reader is left with. A reader is left understanding that Hezbollah bears identifiable responsibility for the conflict's consequences while the Israeli military, whose operations produced the child casualties, school destruction and water disruptions documented by UNICEF, remains invisible as an agent throughout the article.

File a complaint

This article can be challenged with The Jerusalem Post's editorial-standards team.

Amend the headline to include a finite verb and, where editorially supportable, name the party or parties whose conduct is the proximate cause of the displacement and deprivation described. A faithful example consistent with the article's own reporting might read: "UNICEF warns seven children are killed or wounded daily in Lebanon as Hezbollah-restarted conflict drives displacement and economic collapse."
Revise the sentence "the last six months of war have seen an average of seven children killed or wounded per day" to name the party or parties identified elsewhere in the article as responsible for restarting hostilities, so that the casualty statistic and the attribution of agency appear in the same sentence.

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Aggressor framingHeadline analysis

UNICEF warns of severe child deprivation in Lebanon as displacement, economic tolls mount

The economic toll of the war and displacement from southern Lebanon have left 22% of Lebanese children going to bed hungry, while 20% have been out of school for a year, according to a new UNICEF rapid assessment published on Wednesday.Hezbollah's decision to restart hostilities with Israel on March 2 in response to the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran led to 1.2 million people being displaced at the height of the conflict, with around 340,000 still unable to return to their homes, according to UN figures. One third of those yet to return to the comfort of their own homes are children.According to UNICEF, the last six months of war have seen an average of seven children killed or wounded per day, while an estimated 12% of injured children now live with a disability as a result.Having fled their communities and jobs for safety, 71% of families were found to be struggling to meet their children's health needs, triple the figure from six months ago. Nearly four in 10 households (38%) said they did not have access to the medicines their children needed, while 31% said their children had not received the health care they needed, mostly due to the cost of treatment.Around 6% of surveyed households also reported that their children had become sick or injured due to the war, and 34% of those children did not receive the care they needed. A recent assessment also estimated that more than 700,000 people, including 238,000 children, were affected by disruptions to water systems, increasing the risk of preventable infectious diseases spreading.Children go to bed hungry, child labor rates increaseMore than 4 in five households (82%) said they were also struggling to afford more basic necessities compared to three months ago, and 22% said that their children went to bed hungry in the two weeks prior to the survey. More than half, 55%, said they were unable to provide their children with three meals a day, and only 10% of households with children under age 5 said they were able to provide a sufficiently varied diet;Additionally, 14% of families said that at least one of their children had been forced to take up a job, a figure that stood at only 6% in January 2025.Beyond the immediate deprivation, UNICEF warned that the impact on academic infrastructure was likely to carry long-term consequences. At the height of the conflict, 433 public education institutions, around a third of Lebanon's public-school network, were repurposed as shelters, leading to around 100,000 children potentially losing access to their classrooms. Additionally, 436 schools were damaged over the course of the war, and 37 were completely destroyed.Learning institutions lacking, families can't meet needsStemming from a lack of institutions available for learning, 76% of families said they had more trouble meeting their children's educational needs compared to three months ago, 46% said they had had to reduce expenses related to education, and 17% said they had to stop their children's education altogether.One in five households reported that their children did not attend school last year at all, and of those who did attend, 29% were said to have been unable to learn fully, often because of difficulty focusing and emotional distress.“Without urgent and sustained action, an entire generation of children and young people risks carrying the scars of this crisis into adulthood,” UNICEF Lebanon Representative Marcoluigi Corsi said.

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