While today's news outlets are loaded with reports about the Palestinians breaking through Egypt's tight borders with the Gaza Strip and bemoaning the fate of the impoverished Gaza population, Hamas sits back and continues its destruction of the area and its people. Hamas can afford to sit back, arms crossed militantly and arrogantly across its chest because the world sits back and ignores the fact that Hamas has caused the hardships in Gaza. Meanwhile, across the Israeli border, the city of Sderot prepares itself for another barrage of Kassam rockets that Hamas fires at it up to forty times a day.
We don't much read about those attacks on Sderot, and we rarely see photos of the concrete barriers residents have seven seconds to reach once the sirens alarm them to another attack. We don't see schoolchildren or office workers huddled in hallways, their heads covered to protect them from flying debris. We don't see pictures of Israeli women crying or Israeli children being hurt. We don't hear about newly made widows or newly made orphans in Israel. Let me quote Masha Rifkin, an American volunteer in Sderot who witnesses these attacks: "As I write this, Kassams are hitting Sderot. Children are screaming, mothers are collapsing in despair, and doctors are pulling shrapnel out of the bodies of Jews." We don't get news reports of this.
What the AP feeds us constantly in its uncompromisingly partisan coverage is that "a militant leader in Gaza" was killed in an Israeli attack. Usually there is a photo of a screaming Palestinian woman to show us how relentless the Israelis are. Forget the ceaseless attacks in Israel because Israeli lives do not matter in the AP's political agenda.
The AP is upset that the Gaza citizens, victims of Hamas and not of Israel (because the borders are closed to protect Israelis from Hamas), are heading toward Egypt, another of the Arab states that have left them to suffer since the Arabs refused a state of their own back in 1948. While Israel flourished and grew, no Arab state offered help to those who chose to leave. What the press likes to call "refugee camps" are full-blown cities--duh--we're talking 1948! But that's another story.
Just remember when you're reading about Gaza and Hamas, when you see photos of crying women and funerals that all of this can be avoided if Israel could stop defending itself against attacks from Hamas. Remember, too, that Jews die the same way other people do when their city is hit by random barrages of Kassam rockets. Hamas doesn't care who they target!
press media AP news politics "Middle+East" Sderot Egypt "Kassam+rockets" Hamas Gaza Israel
No comments:
Post a Comment