The curious case of the missing D
Brent Bozell on the Media, Scandals and Party Affiliation...
Brent Bozell on the Media, Scandals and Party Affiliation...
As long as the world sees Israel as the primary mechanism of civilian casualties, and as long as many Gaza civilians continue to be more concerned with "resistance" than their lives, Hamas has no reason to change its way of war.Though White doesn't write it explicitly, the media has a responsibility to tell the whole story and not just the one that Hamas tells or allows them to. Oren Kessler says this explicitly in Reporters Have Finally Found Hamas. What Took So Long? that was published in The New Republic.
Let me be clear: I admire the bravery required of war correspondents, and I recognize the onerous conditions under which they work. I see no conspiracy behind the inability of many of them to adequately cover Hamas. Instead, I see a collective failure by much of the world’s press to give an accurate rendering of one party to the Gaza fighting, and to lay bare—whether explicitly or more subtly—the restrictions it enforces upon them in so doing.Take for example, As war with Israel shatters lives, more Gazans question Hamas decisions that appeared in The Washington Post. While there is important information in the report - that Hamas has been alienating the civilian population of Gaza - the report always reminds readers that Gazans resent Israel more. For example:
Now they tell us, after so much misleading coverage....
For those of you who haven’t been here long, the JournoList was an email list serve organized prior to the 2008 election by Ezra Klein, now one of the lead writers at The Washington Post, in which various young bucks (uh oh, is that a dog whistle) and doe in the emerging melding of blogging and journalism traded various strategies.
"Hamas has not taken very kindly to any reporting of its rockets being fired"...
Shoddy journalism and headline writing about the involvement of Hamas in the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens....
Out of #Gaza far from #Hamas retaliation: misfired rocket killed children yday in Shati. Witness: militants rushed and cleared debris
— gabrielebarbati (@gabrielebarbati) July 29, 2014
@IDFSpokesperson said truth in communique released yesterday about Shati camp massacre. It was not #Israel behind it
— gabrielebarbati (@gabrielebarbati) July 29, 2014
How many more of the civilian casualties have been cause by Hamas and Islamic rockets that fell short or misfired? Like Israel says happened at a U.N. school and shelter.
We likely never will know because Hamas is so fast to cover up the scene and intimidates reporters:
The Times of Israel confirmed several incidents in which journalists were questioned and threatened. These included cases involving photographers who had taken pictures of Hamas operatives in compromising circumstances — gunmen preparing to shoot rockets from within civilian structures, and/or fighting in civilian clothing — and who were then approached by Hamas men, bullied and had their equipment taken away.CAMERA discovered a Wall Street Journal reporter coming to the same conclusion as the Italian reporters, but then deleting the tweet:
They’re shooting grads and quassams, from hospitals, mosques and schools When they photograph their dead and dying Hamas just sits and drools Another photo op to take, take straight to CNN they paint Israel as the aggressor – and then it all begins again When someone comes to kill you In the middle of the night Don’t try to defend yourself Don’t use an ounce of might Just sit there quietly and try hard not to faint As the world calls out for – maximum restraintHimmelman like his father-in-law is a folk rocker from Minnesota. His defense of Israel and criticism of the world's hypocrisy echoes Dylan's 1980's release "Neighborhood Bully" which included this lyric:
The seventh soldier is Sgt. Oron Shaul, 21, from Poria. We are still working to identify his body.
— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) July 22, 2014
https://twitter.com/CiFWatch/status/491539100491866113
Hamas claims it captured IDF solider, but much more likely they have part of body, according to IDF officer I spoke to.
— Sheera Frenkel (@sheeraf) July 22, 2014
Of the 27 Israeli soldiers killed so far in Operation Protective Edge, 6 of them have been killed inside of Israel, not Gaza. In separate incidents soldiers were killed by terrorists emerging from terror tunnels:
Those goals hardly seem worth the bloodshed — nearly 50 people reportedly had been killed in Gaza by late Wednesday, including civilians — or the economic losses to both Palestinians and Israelis. In fact, neither side wanted war. Hamas had just agreed to back a united Palestinian government with the West Bank-based Fatah movement, while Israel quietly offered a truce before the escalation of hostilities on Sunday. As so often happens in the Middle East, acts by extremists forced these events: the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers allegedly by Hamas militants apparently acting on their own; the revenge murder of a Palestinian by Israeli thugs; the initial firing of rockets from Gaza by small militant groups challenging Hamas’s authority.First of all how is Hamas's participation in the unity government a sign that "it didn't want war?" In a similar vein former Washington Post blogger, Max Fisher, now at Vox.com, wrote earlier this month:
The call came to the cellphone of his brother’s wife, Salah Kaware said on Tuesday. Mr. Kaware lives in Khan Younis, in southeast Gaza, and the caller said that everyone in the house must leave in five minutes, because it was going to be bombed. A further warning came as they were leaving, he said in a telephone interview, when an Israeli drone apparently fired a flare at the roof of the three-story home. “Our neighbors came in to form a human shield,” he said, with some even going to the roof to try to prevent a bombing. Others were in the stairway when the house was bombed not long afterward.Israel warned the residents and people went into the building. The casualties here occurred because Gaza residents because people intentionally put themselves in danger. The New York Times then informs us:
The Israeli military said that targeted houses belonged to Hamas members involved in launching rockets or other military activity, and that they had been used as operations rooms.As the Washington Post also reported the story we have an indication that in this case, the Israeli military was 100% correct. After describing the warning call, the "knock on the roof," and the entry of neighbors into the building, the Post reports:
Ahmed Kawarea said he ran home when he heard about the first rocket. The second missile hit when he was in the stairwell on his way to the roof.
The two events exposed the extent to which parts of each side have dehumanized the other. After the kidnapping of the three Israeli teenagers last month, messages posted on social networks by Palestinians celebrated the capture of “three Shalits,” in reference to Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held captive by Hamas militants in Gaza, who was eventually released in exchange for 1,027 prisoners. A 17-year-old created the Facebook group calling for revenge for the kidnapping of the three Israelis, and an Israeli blogger, Ami Kaufman, pointed to a photograph submitted to the Facebook group by two smiling girls who held a sign reading, “Hating Arabs is not racism, it’s values!”This was a sentiment repeated in an editorial in today's New York Times, Four Horrific Killings:
The Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Council area was battered with ten rockets from Gaza. Residents of the communities in the Sha'ar Hanegev area were instructed to remain in fortified shelters. Three rockets hit the Eshkol Regional Council area , one of which started a brush fire, and an additional two rockets landed in open territory in the Ashkelon Coast Council region.In addition for the first time since 2012, a rocket hit Be'ersheva. Elder of Ziyon notes a number of attacks in and near Jerusalem and elsewhere over the weekend; including the torching of Joseph's Tomb in Nablus (Shechem)...
In Fisher’s view, Israel is pining to kill, longing to occupy, aching to inconvenience. Israel wants to waste millions of dollars tracking down Hamas terrorists; it craves the international backlash that will inevitably follow, and it just never feels quite whole until hundreds of its own citizens, and thousands of Palestinians, are put at risk. There’s nothing quite like persecuting the elderly Arab shopkeeper. Mission accomplished!The Free Beacon asks why GE is underwriting such anti-Israel propaganda and Twitchy put together the best critical tweets.
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