One of the bad things about being in Europe is that the only English-speaking television channel I’ve been able to see for two weeks has been CNN. I can safely tell you that I’ve never seen more slanted news coverage in all my born days.
Here are a few examples:
- When CNN reports casualties from the “crisis” in Lebanon, they note how many Israeli soldiers are killed in action (as reported by the IDF). When they report how many were killed by Israeli action in Lebanon and Gaza, they always refer to “civilians”. Not once in two weeks did I hear a CNN reporter mention how many Hezbollah fighters were killed. I’m sure that the IDF has some notion and has released the numbers but even if they haven’t, isn’t it incumbent on CNN to get in there and find out?
- Not one time did I hear a CNN commentator or reporter mention the fact that the Hezbollah rocket attacks on Haifa and elsewhere weren’t actually targeting Israeli military positions but were launched with the express purpose of killing civilians and doing whatever random damage they might do. This is not a theory or a notion. It is a fact and CNN ought to say so.
- I heard a CNN reporter, in an interview with an Israeli spokesman, ask him three times whether that nation’s launching attacks into areas where civilians live was a violation of the Geneva Convention. It was left entirely to the spokesman to note that Hezbollah’s common practice of locating its personnel and equipment among civilians is expressly forbidden by those Conventions.
- I didn’t find out, until I came home last night and read a couple blogs, that the UNIFIL position that was bombed a couple of days ago was entirely overrun by Hezbollah forces and that they were using the UNIFIL observers, basically, as human shields. One might think that CNN would have an obligation to report that as vigorously as it did Kofi Annan’s ridiculous assertion that Israel targeted the observers themselves, on purpose.
It is no wonder that so many in Europe have some of the opinions they do. If this was all the news I had to see, I’d have some of those same opinions.
UPDATE: It seems that Victor Davis Hanson has been watching CNN also, and adds this striking commentary:
But most of all, the world deplores the Jewish state because it is strong, and can strike back rather than suffer. In fact, global onlookers would prefer either one of two scenarios for the long-suffering Jews to learn their lesson. The first is absolute symmetry and moral equivalence: when Israel is attacked, it kills only as many as it loses. For each rocket that lands, it drops only one bomb in retaliation — as if any aggressor in the history of warfare has ever ceased its attacks on such insane logic.
The other desideratum is the destruction of Israel itself. Iran promised to wipe Israel off the map, and then gave Hezbollah thousands of missiles to fulfill that pledge. In response, the world snored. If tomorrow more powerful rockets hit Tel Aviv armed with Syrian chemicals or biological agents, or Iranian nukes, the “international” community would urge “restraint” — and keep urging it until Israel disappeared altogether. And the day after its disappearance, the Europeans and Arabs would sigh relief, mumble a few pieties, and then smile, “Life goes on.”
And for them, it would very well.
UPDATE 2: In a related story, the New York Times seems simply shocked that Arab opinion would turn toward Hezbollah. I’m sure that has nothing at all to do with the continued biased reporting coming from international outlets like CNN.
Or maybe a bit from the Times itself:
Even Al Qaeda, run by violent Sunni Muslim extremists normally hostile to all Shiites, has gotten into the act, with its deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, releasing a taped message saying that through its fighting in Iraq, his organization was also trying to liberate Palestine.
Yes, because those old stinkers at Al-Qaeda have nothing but love for the Jews and it’s a sad, sad day when Israeli aggression could force them, weeping all the way, to side with their archenemies, the Shiites.
And let no article go by without this piece of “no kidding” realism couched as an actual revelation:
Mouin Rabbani, a senior Middle East analyst in Amman, Jordan, with the International Crisis Group, said, “The Arab-Israeli conflict remains the most potent issue in this part of the world.”
Gee, you think? Considering that at least three (and I’d say more like five) nations in the immediate area have made the complete and utter destruction of Israel their national policy in some way, shape, or form, Mr. Rabbani’s statement seems kind of like letting us know that the sun came up this morning.
Thankfully, in Egypt, a brave author who has emperilled himself by standing up to the government has gotten the attention of the Times
An editorial in the weekly Al Dustur by Ibrahim Issa, who faces a lengthy jail sentence for his previous criticism of President Mubarak, compared current Arab leaders to the medieval princes who let the Crusaders chip away at Muslim lands until they controlled them all.
I’m guessing the Times is just holding that article on the growing schism between the government-defying authors who want to keep Israel off of official maps and those who want it labeled “Dirty Pig Jew-istan”.
Which reminds me, New York Times how is that blogger A’laa and his friends these days?
