This was the opportunity Arafat sought. He immediately unleashed the rioting, stone-throwing and armed attacks allegedly as a ”spontaneous” uprising against Israel allegedly in response to Sharon’s provocation!
Most of the world media bought the propaganda that launched the second big lie of the current warfare: ”Sharon’s visit provokes Palestinian rebellion.” They didn’t even ask the fundamental question: Is this true?
The third big lie is that the current conflict arises from Palestinian frustration over the slowness of the alleged ”peace process.” What utter nonsense. The central, and conveniently ignored, fact is that the current warfare is merely the latest chapter in a war against the Jewish people. That war began in earnest 85 years ago, when in 1917, Britain and the League of Nations declared, with world approval, that a Jewish state would be established in Palestine.
The region’s Arabs have engaged in terrorist slaughter, riots and multi-Muslim state military invasion against the Jewish nation ever since. The only periodic lulls in this savage and often barbaric assault, specializing in seeking women, children and elderly victims, has occurred when the Arabs have been resoundingly defeated.
Then they sue for peace, issue poor-me hand-wringing pleas for international help, and use the lull in the battle to regroup, re-arm and plot their next assault.
Any reportage or commentary that is not clothed in this context is at best misleading, or ignorant and plain dishonest at worst. I offer a handful of examples extracted from the hundreds available:
Recently a nationally syndicated American columnist, Georgie Ann Geyer, wrote a column laced with pure fabrications, such as ”Prime Minister Sharon told his cabinet recently, ?Don’t worry about American objections to our actions, I control America.’ ”
When challenged, she admitted that the statement originated from an October 3, 2001 press release from the pro-Hamas American group, Islamic Association for Palestine. They claimed that it had originated with an official Israeli government radio broadcast. On checking, it turned out that no such broadcast had ever occurred. When confronted with this information, Geyer cowered ignobly behind the standard liar’s shield: her sources, she whined, ”were two anonymous Israeli individuals.” Naturally, she refused to identify them.
As we all know, pictures can tell a story much better than words. So when 100,000 supporters of Israel marched down Manhattan’s 5th Avenue to celebrate Israel’s 54th birthday this May, The New York Times’s photograph was of a placard ”End Israeli occupation.”
The same bias was repeated in the coverage of the huge Toronto rally in support of Israel where thousands of pro-Israel supporters marched. A few hundred anti-Israel protestors dogged the parade. But they got more media attention. An innocent bystander, a Toronto Jewish doctor, was standing on the street watching the parade and called out his support for Israel. Palestinian supporter thugs beat him, and broke his shoulder. This was not reported.
A great deal of the dishonesty arises from the failure to report and the failure to opine on many factors which must be considered in judging the Middle East war. Such as:
* Failure to report on the depths of Arafat’s corruption.
* Failure to report the truth of an incident in March 2001 when a Palestinian sniper looked through the crosshairs of his scope and murdered Shalhevet Pass, a 10-month-old Jewish baby in Hebron. Associated Press’ headline writers declared: ”Jewish toddler dies in West Bank.” AP made no mention of who perpetrated the murder, and gave no indication of the ghastly nature of the crime.
* Failure to report honestly an incident in February 2002. CNN reported ”Israeli police shot and killed a Palestinian in a gun battle Sunday near an army base in northern Israel and another Palestinian died nearby when a car exploded.” CNN failed to report that the two Palestinians were in the process of attempted double suicide bombings. They were strapped with explosive belts.
