zondag 2 juli 2006

De Pro Israel Lobby 14

Brendan, een bezoeker van deze weblog wees met op de volgende website:

'What is Media Lens?
Media Lens is our response to the unwillingness, or inability, of the mainstream media to tell the truth about the real causes and extent of many of the problems facing us, such as human rights abuses, poverty, pollution and climate change.

GUEST MEDIA ALERT: KIDNAPPED BY ISRAEL
The British Media And The Invasion Of Gaza
By Jonathan Cook
Few readers of a British newspaper would have noticed the story. In the Observer of 25 June, it merited a mere paragraph hidden in the "World in brief" section, revealing that the previous day a team of Israeli commandos had entered the Gaza Strip to "detain" two Palestinians Israel claims are members of Hamas. The significance of the mission was alluded to in a final phrase describing this as "the first arrest raid in the territory since Israel pulled out of the area a year ago". More precisely, it was the first time the Israeli army had re-entered the Gaza Strip, directly violating Palestinian control of the territory, since it supposedly left in August last year.

As the Observer landed on doorsteps around the UK, however, another daring mission was being launched in Gaza that would attract far more attention from the British media - and prompt far more concern. Shortly before dawn, armed Palestinians slipped past Israeli military defences to launch an attack on an army post close by Gaza called Kerem Shalom. They sneaked through a half-mile underground tunnel dug under an Israeli-built electronic fence that surrounds the Strip and threw grenades at a tank, killing two soldiers inside. Seizing another, wounded soldier the gunmen then disappeared back into Gaza. Whereas the Israeli "arrest raid" had passed with barely a murmur, the Palestinian attack a day later received very different coverage. The BBC's correspondent in Gaza, Alan Johnstone, started the ball rolling later the same day in broadcasts in which he referred to the Palestinian attack as "a major escalation in cross-border tensions". (BBC World news, 10am GMT, 25 June 2006)Johnstone did not explain why the Palestinian attack on an Israeli army post was an escalation, while the Israeli raid into Gaza the previous day was not. Both were similar actions: violations of a neighbour's territory.The Palestinians could justify attacking the military post because the Israeli army has been using it and other fortified positions to fire hundreds of shells into Gaza that have contributed to some 30 civilian deaths over the preceding weeks. Israel could justify launching its mission into Gaza because it blames the two men it seized for being behind some of the hundreds of home-made Qassam rockets that have been fired out of Gaza, mostly ineffectually, but occasionally harming Israeli civilians in the border town of Sderot.'

So why was the Palestinian attack, and not the earlier Israeli raid, an escalation? The clue came in the same report from Johnstone, in which he warned that Israel would feel compelled to launch "retaliations" for the attack, implying that a re-invasion of the Gaza Strip was all but inevitable. So, in fact, the "escalation" and "retaliation" were one and the same thing. Although Johnstone kept repeating that the Palestinian attack had created an escalation, what he actually meant was that Israel was choosing to escalate its response. Both sides could continue their rocket fire, but only Israel was in a position to reinvade with tanks and ground forces.' Lees verder: http://www.medialens.org/alerts/index.php

Geen opmerkingen:

Peter Flik en Chuck Berry-Promised Land

mijn unieke collega Peter Flik, die de vrijzinnig protestantse radio omroep de VPRO maakte is niet meer. ik koester duizenden herinneringen ...