Last updated 6/18/09



Wednesday, January 7, 2009

What's with the slant?

I just can't tell if it's all politically motivated or if it's something that some people are eating/drinking/breathing. I understand that certain nationalities/ethnicities relate to other countries differently, but I can't understand any rational (keyword) support for Hamas. To make this clear, it is a tragedy that Palestinian innocents are dying, but it is not Israel's fault.
If Mexico were constantly firing rockets into Texas, even despite ceasefire agreements, how long do you think we would wait before retaliating? The fact is, we wouldn't care if the rest of the world denounced us for fighting back. If Mexico were firing missiles at us from Tijuana, for example, and we killed some civilians by firing back, we would ask what the hell the Mexican military was doing with missiles in a non-military zone or what civilians were doing in/near a military base.
In my mind there is little doubt that Hamas is using its civilian population as a shield to hide behind.

Even Palestians know this:

Two summarize the above two bits of reporting, two Palestian witnesses contacted the Associated Press and told them that soldiers were firing mortars from near a school.
A grieving Palestinian mother who lost her daughter cried out for HAMAS, not Israel, to be exterminated by God.

How is it, then, that we have demonstrators decrying Israel? Even now, as third parties are trying to set up 3-hour ceasefires in order to deliver food and humanitarian aid to the embattled civilians in Gaza, peace is failing. Why? Because Hamas fires at Israel and Israel retaliates. But would you just sit there while being fired upon? 

Meanwhile the UN and the EU are worthless, as usual.

About the school mentioned above, from which Hamas soldiers were firing mortars:

"We are 99.9 percent certain that there were no militants. There were no militant activities in the school or in the school compound," said Gunness of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency."

What? There are reported witnesses! Someone is pushing an agenda, and it stinks.


Edit:


Another example of what I perceive to be an unfair bias, from CNN.com:

"But minutes after the three-hour truce was set to begin at 1 p.m., Israeli forces fired at militants in the Hamas-ruled Palestinian territory.

The strikes came after militants targeted Israeli forces "almost immediately," Israeli Defense Ministry spokesman Peter Lerner said."

Note how the construction of these sentences implies that Israel broke the creasefire. Three hours into it, "Isreali forces fired at militants in the Hamas-ruled...territory." THEN the article says that Hamas struck first. Here's how I would have worded the same idea:

"Only minutes after the three-hour truce was set to begin, Israel responded to an attack made by Palestinian militants."

I think the qualification of self-defense is a crucial point that many media (and government) sources are failing to make.  If we agree not to fight and you hit me, YOU broke the agreement, not I when I hit you back.

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