Sunday, November 26, 2006

Anti-Semitism In Print

I'm a little confused. The story on CNN involves a rocket attack on Israel only moments after another ceasefire was announced. Can you guess what the headline is- "Ceasefire Broken" or some clever wordplay along those lines? Well, no, in fact it's almost the exact opposite-

13,000 Palestinian Security Forces Maintain Ceasefire

Come again? You see, the 11 rockets launched after the ceasefire was brokered were claimed by Hamas and Islamic Jihad. You know, the kinder, gentler, more "moderate" Hamas everyone has come to know since they were elected into government. So, Hamas can fire rockets and still claim to be holding a ceasefire? Unbelievably Olmert has announced that Israel will take no action- hey, ceasefires need time to "take".

Hamas government spokesman Ghazi Hamad insisted that all Palestinian factions are "100 percent" behind the cease-fire.

"All of them now, without exception, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad and Fatah and other factions, they decided to respect the agreement and also to be committed 100 percent to this agreement," Hamad told CNN.

And those rockets, well, apparently they were fired just before the ceasefire took effect so, in the eyes of Hamas nothing untoward happened. Which is odd, and apparently fine with CNN, despite the fact that a few paragraphs before this we learned-

Hamas' militant wing and the Islamic Jihad militant group claimed responsibility for firing several rockets into Israel after the cease-fire took effect at 6 a.m.

So, which is it? CNN doesn't seem to care that either they got their facts wrong or Hamas are lying through their teeth- and the fact that the elected leaders of Hamas are involved in firing rockets randomly at towns in Israel is no big deal either. I guess, depending on how you want to view it, you could either define this as state-sponsored terrorism or an act of war.

And yet, the Western media doesn't seem to be too perturbed. I suppose they save that for when Israel retaliates to these acts of aggression aimed at civilian targets. Funny, isn't it, that the press which got so worked up about innocent civilians being targeted by Israeli forces during the Lebanon conflict, should be so unconcerned about other civilians being targeted now. As far as I can tell there are only two differences- Hamas and their ilk are using crude, unguided rockets aimed at towns instead of military targets (positioned in the middle of civilian areas on purpose), and the targets now are Jewish.

Could it possibly be that there's some anti-Semitism at work here? Because I can't think of any other explanation for why a story like this would be reported in this manner.

1 comment:

Pastorius said...

Neither can I, JayMac.

By the way, earlier today, USA Today had an article up entitled,

Gaza ceasefire takes hold, attacks continue.

Shortly thereafter, USA Today must have realized how absurd the headline was because they changed it.

Here's how it stands now:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-11-25-militants-israel_x.htm?csp=34