By Beryl Ratzer.
Point to Ponder: How is it that the UN, EU, most of the media and virtually all liberal activists refuse to acknowledge that Hamas used UNRWA schools and hospitals as safe houses from which to fire rockets on the civilian population of Israel; refuse to concede that Hamas uses their children as human shields and successfully uses the pictures of dead or injured children (including those from conflicts not connected to Israel) in the propaganda war against Israel?
But more to the point, how is it that Egyptian-American Writer Magdi Khalil does recognize this. See his interview on Al-Jazeera TV (Qatar) – August 19, 2014.
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia had this to say: “It is shameful and disgraceful that these terrorists are doing this in the name of religion, killing the people whose killing Allah has forbidden, and mutilating their bodies and feeling proud in publishing this. They have distorted the image of Islam with its purity and humanity and smeared it with all sorts of bad qualities by their actions, injustice and crimes.” See more
Point to ponder: The western media portrays Hamas as an organisation with no other aim than to “end the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip”. This is the impression we get from every interview with Khaled Mashaal.
But did you know that the Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal has a twin brother? You didn’t? Well, nor did I, but that is the only explanation for the conflicting speeches given by Mashaal to the western media and those given to his own people. Mashaal’s twin brother tells it as it really is.
“A picture is worth a thousand words” is a well-known saying. But, as we have seen, so often the pictures and clips we have seen, particularly of the latest Gaza conflict, have not only been doctored, they have been calculatingly staged.
No less so the commentaries and articles. Reporters on both TV and in the press who have deliberately distorted their reports, whether by outright falsification or deliberate omission are never held accountable. The public rarely realizes to what extent journalism has become political propaganda, a stage to promulgate one’s personal agenda.
In the 3D test Natan Sharansky simplified anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism as being the use of double standards demonization, deligitimisation against the Jewish people or Israel. Dubious reporting also has a 3D test – it is disingenuous, devious and deliberately deceitful.
Matti Friedman, former AP correspondent who has reported from Lebanon, Morocco, Egypt, Moscow, Washington, DC, the Caucasus and Israel is one of the few journalists to examine this poisonous phenomenon.
“The lasting importance of this summer’s war, I believe, doesn’t lie in the war itself. It lies instead in the way the war has been described and responded to abroad, and the way this has laid bare the resurgence of an old, twisted pattern of thought and its migration from the margins to the mainstream of Western discourse—namely, a hostile obsession with Jews”. Full article
Richard Behar, an investigative journalist, has written and even longer expose about the media and how little it can be trusted for accurate and truthful information. Full article
In this age of political correctness trying to give an international definition for “terrorism” has become virtually impossible. Brutality and lack of respect for human life are the common denominators. There are so many terrorist organisations, the majority of which seem to be Islamic or Moslem. As mentioned above, there is an inexplicable reluctance to draw a parallel between Hamas and the better known terrorist organisations.
Brigitte Gabriel, is an author, social commentator, activist and one of the leading terrorism experts in the world. While she may be a bit too blunt for some in this 14 min clip but, if you have an open mind, she raises many, many points to ponder. And pondering is what ptp is all about.
