Heather is of course on about the "UN School" with both of them, which is pretty clearly now documented to have been a military site when hit; Heather appears to know none of this, or perhaps simply to suppress this information. She is either phenomenally lazy as a journalist, or of course an advocate. I do not know which. Either seems likely - the CBC is not known m,uch anymore for in-depth analysis or for departing from its favorite narratives. Noah Pollak has a nice short reflection on this behavior, by no means confined to the CBC.
If he wishes to be particularly scrupulous, he might additionally note that Hamas had rigged the school with explosives which detonated after the IDF took out the mortar team, killing a large additional number of civilians. And he might add that you can go to the IDF’s Youtube channel to view footage from 2007 of Hamas using the very same school as a mortar-launching base. Journalists who abjure reporting the vital details of this story should be called what they are — activists masquerading as reporters.
I was watching a news report from a Gaza hospital yesterday and an interview with a Scandinavian doctor painting a rather dire picture of conditions; it seemed quite convincing, and he even described himself as a Westerner, as if to suggest he would not mislead, Though I wondered what he was doing there, and was mindful of the fact that the report going out was utterly under the control of Hamas, and had to be so considered. Charles Johnson has learned a little more about the good doctor.
Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor in Gaza, is all over the mainstream media, claiming that Israel is indiscriminately and purposely murdering civilians. He’s given interviews to the BBC, CBS, NBC, CNN, ABC, the Independent, Sky News, and the New York Times, among others.
And in 2001, shortly after the 9/11 terror attacks, this supposedly impartial Norwegian doctor (actually a radical Marxist member of Norway’s Red party) expressed support for the hijackers. ... Of course, not a single mainstream media report on the creep mentions any of this.
Gilbert is a radical Marxist and a member of the political Red (Rodt) party, a revolutionary socialist party in Norway. He has been a pro-Palestinian activist since the 1970's and travelled to Lebanon in support of the Palestinians during the first Lebanon war in 1982. He has long been a vocal opponent of Israel and the U.S. Gilbert has acknowledged that he cannot separate politics from medicine, stating, "there is little in medicine that is not politics." He even criticizes the group Doctors Without Borders for providing medical assistance to both sides in a conflict instead of taking a strong stance and supporting only one party. In a 2006 article in Nordlys, journalist Ivan Kristoffersen lamented the fact that Gilbert allows his humanitarian efforts to be politicized by his radical agenda.
Of course, he might be telling the truth at all times, but one has reason to doubt, and it is appalling that the press simply gives him, with utter apparent credulity, a voice. And as someone of Norwegian ancestry, I am horrified at this:
According to Verdens Gang, the largest Norwegian daily, Gilbert and Fosse's current trip to Gaza is funded by the Norwegian foreign ministry.
My various media are all breathless reporting the shocking news that Israel has bombed two UN schools (NO - not the UN!), killing a few people in the process. Not a single one of these reports so far includes this small piece of context:
For some the use of the word UN is holy; I doubt the UN can effectively stop the use of their schools as rocket launching sites, but they could at least express some embarrassment. The laziness of reporters seems to know few bounds. Or perhaps it is intentional.
And David Landes catches it - of course, he is watching. But why is not everybody watching for it? Any photos coming out of Gaza are coming from those few reporters not detained by Hamas. Hamas is in complete control of what we see at the moment. Meanwhile CAMERA catches another amusing instance. Well, it would be amusing were it not accepted so credulously and breathlessly by so much of the Western media.
I think there are many good arguments against the Israeli attacks on Hamas in the Gaza Strip, but it seems few of them are reflected in the many reports I have seen from the pro-Hamas demonstrations held around the world (I am sure the organizers have no wish to so characterize them so, but the evidence suggests otherwise). For example: That anyone living in the West could hold such a sign stuns me. To cite Andrew Ian Dodge, from whose blog I stole this picture,
It would actually help if you realised that: 1. Hamas was elected to run Gaza 2. Hamas clearly states they hate all Jews and want to see Israel wiped of their face of the earth…its in their charter. 3. Hamas are not keen on gays (they kill them), have brought back cruxifiction and don’t like women much either.
Now if you want REAL willful ignorance, consider this one, from the Jawa Report: I doubt they are stupid enough to plan to move to Palestine under Hamas real soon now. h/t SnoopytheGoon on the above. For a more reflective, and somewhat depressing look at similar points, one can hardly do better than Terry Glavin this morning,
So why does any of this matter, all this horror in such a tiny, faraway place? Because the sundering of the "left" unto barbarism and senility matters. Because Palestinians matter. Because Israelis matter. Because this little "war" is a much greater struggle than it appears.
"This is a war for the future of Islam," writes Bradley Burston. "Specifically, it is a war over the future of radical Islam, which for the past decade, has vigorously and skillfully labored to surpass settlements, Palestinian misrule, and a host of other factors to become the pre-eminent obstruction to peace in the Holy Land. "
It is also the pre-eminent obstruction to peace in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan, Somalia, and quite a few other places I could name.
Too bad the "anti-war" movement hasn't noticed.
Oddly enough, I am getting the feeling the Arab leadership is not so stupid as our Western left. Despite Israel's claims of limited goals, useful so as to control expectations and try to avoid having the whole effort labeled yet another failure, my own guess is that the real goal of the mission is to end Hamas' ruling role in Gaza, and that they have the tacit agreement of the major Arab countries, for the simple reason that those leaders have no wish to continue dealing with Hamas. What on earth becomes of governance in Gaza is hard to say but it is difficult to imagine it could be worse than what they have today. But heaven knows, I have been wrong before.
There is a funny irony - amidst all the demands that Israel engage in a dialogue, it seems to me that the only way to arrive at any sort of dialogue is to do just what Israel is doing - remove the Hamas leadership from the process. There is absolutely no way a guy like Rayyan could have engaged in a useful dialogue.
An innocent bystander relying on the BBC for information might have assumed that the BBC's lack of coverage in Gaza over recent months had been the result of a successful ceasefire. But, those who ventured beyond the BBC will be are aware this was unfortunately not the case.
There is a lot more. Our CBC seems to follow the BBC lead - in fact we are using BBC reporters and their narratives.
This AP report includes the following passage regarding the Israeli strike on a mosque:
The mosque destroyed Friday was known as a Hamas stronghold, and the army said it was used to store weapons. Hamas has boasted that more than 100 of the mosque's worshippers have been killed in the past on missions against Israelis.
The IDF have released the following video of that strike:
Maybe in Gaza 'mosque' means arsenal? AP is being at least coy here - 'the army said it was used to store weapons'. Indeed.
UPDATE: Yup, it IS looking as if mosque in Gazan means arsenal. Charles Johnson links to another case supplied by the IAF.
While AFP's summary of "key events in 2008" is useless as a guide to what has happened in Gaza and Israel over the past year, it does accurately reflect AFP's woefully biased coverage of that part of the world: the Middle East according to AFP.
The graphs also put paid to the ridiculous claims various Palestinian "governments" have made regarding their inability to control rocket launchings, suicide bombings, and the like.
