Eretz Israel is our unforgettable historic homeland...The Jews who will it shall achieve their State...And whatever we attempt there for our own benefit will redound mightily and beneficially to the good of all mankind. (Theodor Herzl, DerJudenstaat, 1896)

We offer peace and amity to all the neighbouring states and their peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and development of the Middle East.
(From Proclamation of the State of Israel, 5 Iyar 5708; 14 May 1948)

With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America, Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.... For the global jihad, Israel may be the first objective. But it will not be the last. (Friends of Israel Initiative)

Monday 14 March 2011

On the Murders of Babies – and Double Standards

Many people have noticed the underwhelming media reaction to the cold-blooded murders of the Fogel Family.  The BBC, for example, in a less than robust, and in some respects propagandistic report,  tagged Al Beeb's usual mantra about "settlements" onto the end:

"US-brokered peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians stalled last year over the issue of Israeli settlement building.

Palestinians have refused all direct contact with Israel until construction is frozen.
Nearly half a million Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel's 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
They are held to be illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this."
(Can't Al Beeb let go of the demonisation politics for one second?!)

In choosing the wording that the lives of two children of the family had been "spared" the report implied that the terrorists (of course, Al Beeb didn't use the T-word) had shown those two mercy when in fact the sole reason the children had escaped butchery was due to their own extraordinary luck in evading the terrorists.

One of the most incisive analyses of media reaction to the murders of the Fogel Family in much of the mainstream media comes from the always interesting Professor Phyllis Chesler.
'
She points out, inter alia:

‘From the beginning of the Second Intifada in 2000, they have killed at least 123 Israeli children http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/03/13/sleeping-in-samaria-on-shabbat/—on purpose, not accidentally. They have shot up teenagers while studying, have tried to kill children in nursery schools and child care centers. Palestinian terrorists have even killed children at Itamar. In 2002, Habash Hanani did so, and he is currently being glorified by the Palestinian Authority.
Palestinian terrorists are Baby Killers and yet Arab, Islamist, and liberal fascist propaganda have managed to convince the world that Israelis and Jews are Baby Killers—Israel, a country whose military never uses civilians as hostages and which, contrary to Big Lie myth, is exquisitely restrained when it comes to avoiding civilian casualties during urban battle.
Arab and Muslim terrorists are Baby Killers. They kill their own in order to kill the babies of their enemies. The Taliban in Pakistan specialize in grooming 5-10 year old orphan boys to blow themselves up. Muslims, Arabs, Islamist terrorists in general, and Palestinians and Iranians in particular, brainwash, exploit, mere children and teenagers as jihadists and as suicide killers.
Today, sickeningly, the western mainstream media, and some Jewish and Israeli anti-Zionists as well, are implicitly, essentially, blaming the settlers for their own murders! They are “settlers,” “radical settlers,” “living beyond the green line,” not human beings, not Jews, not Israelis, not even real victims. Real victims should not have been living there, their geographical presence comprises an (understandable) “provocation.” Similarly, women’s uncovered faces, infidel women especially, constitute a “provocation” too so that they have only themselves to blame when Allah-fearing Muslim men rape, gang-rape, and assault them.
Real victims are the Palestinian terrorists who are forced to murder babies in response to being “illegally,” and immorally Occupied.
....
Demonize settlers, isolate Israelis, insist that “Islamophobia,” not Islamic terrorism, is the problem, (do so in the American Congress), refuse to stop the wholesale slaughter of Muslims by Muslims (think Libya, think Darfur), instead, blame Israel because the Palestinians do not want a Palestinian state, lean on Israel to negotiate harder, give up even more, give up every city, including Jerusalem and then simply wait for the law-of-returning Palestinians to overcome the last “settlement” standing: Tel Aviv—do so, even as the entire Arab Muslim Middle East is exploding over non-Israel specific problems--and inevitably, the Palestinian fiends will be emboldened to act and will slaughter an innocent, peaceful Jewish family in their beds and of course, on the Jewish Sabbath.’
Read Phyllis Chesler's entire piece here: http://www.newsrealblog.com/2011/03/13/natural-disasters-palestinian-barbarism/
And see also Melanie Phillips's characteristically wise and wonderful piece: http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/6779100/armchair-barbarism.thtml

2 comments:

  1. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/142862

    ReplyDelete
  2. This blog by a UK Methodist minister is a deplorable example of its kind:
    Death and dishonour on the West Bank
    by Richard on March 14, 2011
    The brutal murder at the weekend of 5 members of the Fogel family, settlers living in the community of Itamar on the West Bank, is mind-numbing in its cruelty. Udi and Ruth Fogel and three of their children were attacked while they were asleep in an act of such savage cowardice it is hard to conceive. There can be no justification for violence of this kind. It serves no cause that might be called just.
    Their murders are being put to most cynical use. Photographs of the Fogels’ bloody bodies lying where they died have been released to the internet, provoking outrage and revulsion, as any such act should. Unfortunately, much of the reaction has gone beyond revulsion at the killings and has become an outpouring of hatred not merely towards the individuals who carried out this dreadful crime but also towards the community from which they are presumed to have come. Israeli Minister of Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Yuli Edelstein said on Sunday, “Only these ghastly images can show the world what and who the State of Israel has to deal with,” and many bloggers have been even more strident. This message is reprehensible and dishonouring to the Fogels, feeding as it does the racist lie of uniquely Arab savagery.
    Sadly, the bitter truth is that these deaths do not change anything. If the settlements were illegal before , they remain so now. And while this killing is shocking, it is not unique. It stands as one more link in a chain of violence and injustice which has been forged in this conflict for generations.
    How many more?
    Read more: http://theconnexion.net/wp/?p=9919#comments#ixzz1GboO5g2h

    ReplyDelete

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.