For the media, Israel is wrong even when it’s right
lunedì 12 ottobre 2015 English 0 commenti
Il Giornale, October 12, 2015 Even when it is blatantly obvious which side reason is on and the events speak for themselves, the international press, locked in a coercive automatism, with boring and listless repetitiveness, seeks and finds the way to be on the side of the Palestinians. In this case the situation is clear: driven by a lie obsessively repeated by the Palestinian media, namely that the Al Aqsa Mosque is on the verge of being desecrated, or destroyed, or occupied by the Israeli, the rekindling of Palestinian hate has made of Israel, and especially of Jerusalem, an inferno punctuated by terrorist attacks. In the streets, anyone you meet might be hiding a knife and may attack you and your children. Or you could be driving in your car and see another car coming head on at you at full speed so the passengers can target you with rocks.
Not to mention the screwdrivers, the Molotov cocktails, and the threat of suicide bombers: a woman, stopped at a check-point close to Maale Adumim, on the road to Jerusalem, made herself blow up at the cry of "Allah is great". She is now in hospital. Who knows what would have happened had she managed to reach a café in Jerusalem. From Gaza, the leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, is inviting the youth to join the terrorist action, and when in hundreds they rushed the border (and a few dozen managed to enter), when the army pushed them back a few dead bodies were left behind.
The censure is international, and no one explains the harm that hundreds of young Hamas warriors can inflict on the people of Israel, while rockets continue to be fired from Gaza. Just like when the police or a citizen stops an armed terrorist. Of course, people in danger have no time to assess the terrorist’s age or social status. They simply try to stop him from committing another murder.
The media lack the basic coordinates for understanding the situation. Israel is a terrified nation, under siege. The Palestinian social networks are bent on criminalising the Jews based on inadmissible stereotypes. The incitement to attack idealises the shahid and condemns the Jews to death. On the other side, the Israeli radio transmits a sorrowful debate, without hatred, with many people expressing even their comprehension of the problems of the Palestinians, concerned, in the interviews with politicians and the military, about rehabilitating the leadership and about bringing it to the negotiating table.
To be a journalist covering the Middle Eastern situation for many years means to be close to the “Palestinian cause”, and once again everything must tally. In the end, Israel must bear the blame for the bloodshed, the background must be the suffering inflicted by the "occupation" on the young terrorists while ignoring the responsibility of the Palestinian leadership. The occupation is the glib leitmotiv behind it all, even if Arafat first and then Abu Mazen have refused quite a number of proposals for solving the conflict and the “two states for two peoples” formula has been eroded by the certainty of achieving the demise of the State of Israel.
The manipulation is of an audacious kind. In the New York Times, the headline to an article on the assassination of Alexander Levlovich declared "Jewish Man Dies as Rocks Pelt His Car". In the same publication, "Palestinian Youths Clash With Israeli Police" but the reason why remains unclear – maybe the police was jumpy. The BBC writes "Palestinian Shot Dead After Jerusalem Attack (just any attack, editor’s note) Kills Two". A scandalous headline for the famous British news channel that in fact later had to change it. Two days later, and even in Italy many headlines failed to explain why “seven Palestinians” were killed, and once again the culprit of the clash was Israel. The threatened Mosques theory is reported without questioning, and empathy with the Palestinians’ “lack of hope” is expressed by blaming Israel for it.
No one seems to be attempting to find out the reason, for example, of Abu Mazen’s refusal to accept Netanyahu’s invitation to negotiate without preconditions, of the corruption of the leaders, of the unrestrained incitement to hate the Jews. Whatever differs from the conformist image of the bad guys against the people oppressed by the imperialism, an image that was created at the time of the Cold War, is pushed aside. We’re still at that point, while Islamism advances.