Points to Ponder No. 12

The Middle East is in turmoil and unless one really studies the players and events in the various conflicts it all becomes a blur. Although Sunni Moslems are killing Shia Moslems certain factions ally with Shia Moslems to kill other Sunni Moslems. Some Moslems are members of the Moslem Brotherhood, which wants to establish Sharia law wherever Moslems live. Others have joined IS, also known as ISIS. Re-establishing the Caliphate, stretching from the Arabian Peninsula to Spain, is the battle cry as they slaughter Syrians and Iraqis alike.

Moslems killing Moslems was rather like ‘dog bites postman’ – not really worth a headline no matter how gory or how many were dying. The thousands of rockets fired into Israeli towns from the Gaza Strip were also never newsworthy. The Boko Haram abduction of three hundred Christian girls in Nigeria was eclipsed when the Israelis decided that enough was enough and, after numerous warnings, attacked the Gaza Strip.   

Now that was newsworthy. And to make sure it stayed newsworthy photos and video clips were falsified, casualty numbers were exaggerated, the fact that Hamas was using civilians as human shields and had their headquarters and rocket launching sites in hospitals, UNRWA schools and mosques was deliberately withheld by reporters covering the events.

There can be no doubt that media was responsible for shaping public opinion against Israel and it is perpetuating this hatred of Israel by not admitting to its falsifications, its omissions and its bias. It is incumbent on fair-minded people to take up the cudgels and expose the untrustworthiness of the media by forwarding this clip to the open-minded public. A Hamas Government spokesperson admits: “We Deported Foreign Journalists for Filming Missile Launches”.

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Clifford D. May, president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, urges journalists to report more accurately from the Gaza Strip—or to acknowledge the obstacles to doing so.

I cannot but ponder as to whether this shoddy reporting was driven by overt or covert anti-Semitism.

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It is usually the exception that proves the rule so here are two instances showing how reporting and commentaries could have been less biased. The first is from New Zealand, from an unnamed Maori woman

The second is from a Canadian TV broadcast which gives some context to the unfolding events.

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The shocking events in Iraq and Syria, the massacres of Christians and Yazidis, were at first also eclipsed by “Israeli genocide against the Palestinians” until it became clear that the real genocide was one being perpetrated by Moslems, Moslems with the same interpretation of Islam, the same political  ideology, as Hamas. The Jews in those two countries had long since been persecuted and expelled, while the world stood by, silent.

I ponder why the world is unwilling to recognize that the aim of Hamas is the genocide of the Jews, first in Israel and then in the world. Actually, the PA and Fatah also regularly teach that the ultimate Palestinian goal is the destruction of Israel.  The official PA TV taught in three different episodes of its children’s program Best Home that all of Israel will be replaced by “Palestine”:

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But not all is darkness and despair!!! There are rays of light in parts of the Arab world, in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and in Egypt where fear of the power of the Moslem Brotherhood and its Hamas ally is greater than their hate of Israel. A Kuwaiti Cleric, Othman Al-Khamis, has criticized Hamas telling them to “show some regard for the lives of Muslims”.  By breaking the latest ceasefire agreement Hamas has once again shown that the lives of are expendable.

As a counterbalance, a Kuwaiti Muslim Brotherhood leader demands: “Every Muslim mother must nurse her children on hatred of the sons of Zion… so a new generation…will erase them from the face of the earth”

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I know that many of my readers are far too busy to follow all the links in this posting so I warn you in advance. This last link which is to a debate on the statement “Islam is a religion of peace” is over an hour long but is extremely interesting.  What makes it even more so is that the results of both the ‘before’ and ‘after’ votes are shown.