Patterico's Pontifications

7/27/2014

Propaganda War: Skewed Coverage Of Israel

Filed under: General — Dana @ 11:59 am



[guest post by Dana]

While the world watches an ugly explosion of violent and profane anti-semitism in Europe as protesters reject Israel’s right to exist defend itself, Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer took CNN to task for what the news agency conveniently left out of their story covering a recent bombing that killed 16 Palestinians:

Earlier today, Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated that Israel will continue with its mission to defend itself and destroy the “terror tunnels” on the Gaza Strip:

“Israel is not obliged and is not going to let a terrorist organization determine when it’s convenient for them to fire at our cities, at our people, and when it’s not,” Netanyahu said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” “We’ll take the necessary action to protect our people including, by the way, continuing to dismantle tunnels. That’s our policy.”

“We tell the civilians ‘Leave.’ Hamas tells them to stay. It wants to pile up these civilian casualties,” Netanyahu said. “Therefore it should be blamed and not Israel. That’s a simple truth and moral clarity that should not be lost.”

Clearly, both sides understand that the more civilian casualties shown on news reports across the world – without essential context and relevant information – the more Hamas wins the propaganda war. And one might even be tempted to think the West is helping in this, given that our own president instructed Israel to: Put yourself in their shoes – look at the world through their eyes, and further, our secretary of state believes Israel needs to: try to understand what life looks like from the Palestinian point of view. Why? Because Israel would then be sympathetic and understanding of their neighbors’ efforts to wipe them off the face of the earth?

What next? A legitimizing of Hamas by the West?

–Dana

UPDATE: It would appear that while Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has plans to introduce “standalone” legislation to provide funding for Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system, the Democrats, never ones to let a crisis opportunity go to waste, want to tie the bill to illegal immigration:

The Kentucky Republican’s bill would meet a supplemental funding request from the Pentagon for $225 million for the program. Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., included the funding in her much broader supplemental that would primarily address the crisis of unaccompanied migrant children entering the United States from Central America — but Republicans are balking at that $3.6 billion bill.

“Republicans are united in support of our ally Israel. We have legislation that would allow Congress to meet the Secretary’s request. And we hope our friends on the other side will join us in coming to a sensible, bipartisan solution that can be passed quickly,” McConnell said in a floor speech. “As most senators know, the Iron Dome missile defense system has played a critical role in defending Israel’s population from the rocket attacks launched by Hamas from within the Gaza Strip.


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