It seems as if, just about every week, one of the MSM outlets has a story about an Israeli attack on the Palestinians. You know, the stories where you hear that this bomb builder, or that Hamas leader, was killed while driving in his car. Or perhaps you'll hear that Israeli soldiers roughed someone up at a border crossing — only to find buried in the article the fact that the someone was stylishly attired in a dynamite belt.
I don't read only the MSM, though. I also read Jewish news outlets. And what I notice there is that, not every week, but just about every day, there is a story about a rocket or missile being fired into Israel. What's different about these stories is that, almost without exception (and thank God), the results of those forays are minimal: the latest story records two people suffering from shock. Other stories I've seen discuss empty kindergarten classrooms being hit, lifestock getting killed, and fields being torn apart. In other words, the Israelis, targeting military targets, are successful; the Palestinians, targeting civilians, are less so.
Maybe it's unsurprising, therefore, that the Israelis, drawing blood as they do, make the headlines, while the Palestinians, plowing dirt and crumbling brick, don't. After all, if it bleeds, it leads, especially in the Middle East.
Given the relentless Palestinian attacks on Israel, however, it's more than a bit disingenuous for the MSM to profess surprise when, periodically, Israel competently takes out a military target. It's these carefully targeted objectives that keep the odds favoring Palestinian incompetence, rather than success, when they fire their rockets and missiles at civilian targets.
[By the way, I should say here that the press does periodically report on the fact that Israel is being beseiged by these rockets and missiles. This is a good and recent example from, of all places, the BBC. This is a collective story, though -- that is, one that looks back over weeks of stories that didn't make the news and collects them in one place. This differs from daily-run stories that really bang the message into readers' brains.]
Filed under: Israel, Media matters, Palestinians
The Price of Success
The Mainstream Morons have stated unequivocally, through their own biased reporting, that they stand tall along side the enemies of Israel and the United States.
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This is all part of the PR War, which Israel long ago lost. Why else is Israel alone singled out for divestment campaigns, while countries like Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, China, Russia, Egypt, Syria, etc., etc., are ignored?
Israel also has an interesting fifth column of socialists and what not. The Jews are not monolithic, nor are any human dynamic group. However, it is hard for me to believe that the American Scots-Irish Jacksonians would act the way that Israelis have, if some foreign country bordering the US started slaughtering the citizens on the border. public opinion in the US has always forced wars to be fought, starting with the Revolutionary War when Thomas Paine’s pamphlets spread the news and arguments fair and wide that now is the time for liberty and new destiny. Israel’s public opinion, after so much bloodshed, is the complete opposite, this pining and demanding for peace.
A stomach for war is not inherently productive, just look at Russia’s problems, but a stomach that tires of war too early is just as, if not more, destructive than the former. Either way, war destroys what you seek to protect, or your inability to defend yourself in war destroys what you seek to protect. Either way, acid or base, you’ll still get chem burns.