An astute observation from one of our readers:
It's interesting that one little cartoon that's seen as anti-Arab mobilizes the entire Arab world against the "infidels," and the media portrays their violent rage as an expression of their justified indignation.
Here, we are discussing the gruesome massacre of innocent people and babies... and it garners NO response in the media.
It is pathetic.
Ok, time to vent about another toxic word that has polluted our vocabulary with regards to last week’s atrocity in Itamar and other horrific jihadist murders of the recent past.
At first glance, however, the word seems rather benign, certainly nothing in comparison to the malevolent expressions used by the inimical world media we’ve discussed in previous posts (i.e. “settlers,” “cycle of violence,” etc.). In fact, I have heard this word used repeatedly by well-intentioned individuals.
Nevertheless, it is my contention that this is the most egregiously insidious of misleading words used with regards to this atrocity.
The word is “incident.”
Last week I called an Israeli friend and told him we were organizing a prayer vigil and memorial service for the Fogels’. I expressed outrage that the media had completely sidelined the story. He responded that he felt that in the midst of the catastrophic events in Japan, this (sic) incident takes a back-burner position. His callous use of this word deeply troubled me. I will tell you why:
The word "incident" implies that the event was "incidental," something of relatively minor importance, or something that happened by chance and was not calculated. Incident also implies an isolated event, one that can potentially trigger a much larger crisis.
The massacre in Itamar was not a mere incident of separate circumstance. It was not an isolated event.
It was part of a well-planned genocidal war which is being waged by Islamofascist leadership.
The fact that the media glossed over it is not incidental either. It is part of an ongoing overt attempt to marginalize and demonize Israel in the eyes of the world.
The so-called incident in Itamar was not a minor event that can potentially sparked a much larger conflict, or that has exacerbated an already-problematic situation. It has not contributed to the so-called “cycle of violence.”
It was part of an already ongoing genocidal war on the Jewish people. It was the most recent offensive in a decades-old war against humanity.
Would anyone in their right mind refer to the atrocities of September 11th as mere incidents?
Etymologically, the word incident comes from Latin incidere, which means to “happen” or “befall.” In means “on” and cidere means to “fall.” It was something just happened to befall us. Out of the blue. By chance.
Last week, Jews gathered in synagogues around the world and read the Biblical portion of “Zachor.” “Remember what Amalek did to you as you left Egypt, when he fell upon you (karcha) on the way…”
The Hebrew word “fell upon,” (karcha), derives from the word mikreh, a happening, an incident that happened by chance. “Mah karah?” means “what happened?” Etymologically, these expressions come from the word “keri”, which means haphazard or random.
Chassidic philosophy explains that the wicked nation of Amalek tried to poison the minds of the fledgling Jewish nation who had recently gone free from Egyptian bondage. After having witnessed awe-inspiring miracles and supernatural phenomena, the Israelites were inspired to proceed to Sinai and accept their Divine calling. Indeed, they were prepared and psyched to become G-d’s chosen people by receiving His Torah.
Enter Amalek, a distant cousin of the children of Israel. Amalek argued that the alleged miracles of the ten plagues and splitting of the sea were no more than random incidents, or should we say, coincidence. Hence, the Amalekites wished to demonstrate to the nations of the world that Israel is not invincible.
Rashi comments on the word “fell upon” (karcha), that it can also be read “cooled off,” from the word kor (קור), cold. Amalek cooled off the nations’ awe of Israel. In addition, Amalek cooled off Israel’s enthusiasm for receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai.
This is consistent with the literal meaning of karcha, “fell upon you.” Amalek cools off the proper emotional reaction to the events of the Exodus by calling them random and coincidental. Everything is random and haphazard, argues Amalek. There is no purpose, no reward or punishment, no rhyme or reason. No reason for a Torah. The polytheistic paradigm of survival of the fittest works just fine. Indeed, Amalek’s philosophy has persisted until modern times. It was most apparent in determinism of the 19th and early 20th century. The whole world is nothing but a “fortuitous concourse of atoms,” G-d forbid. (Its most destructive manifestation was in the Social Darwinism that brought us the Holocaust.)
This is why Amalek is the antithesis of everything Judaism stands for. There is no such thing as serendipity or fortuity. (We’ll discuss what mazel means a different time). Nothing is by chance. It is all by design. There is a deep lesson to be gleaned, a new motivation for growth and increase in efforts that make the world a better place.
Amalek is karcha, apathy and coolness to the suffering of another. Judaism is enthusiasm, warmth and vitality. Compassion and feeling for another’s pain.
All that from a three-letter word, karcha. Do you now see how powerfully instructive a single word can be?
Anyway, back to our dismal topic:
Amalek has reared it ugly head. Murder for the sake of murder. Infanticide. Blood thirst.
The world has been so poisoned by the contemporary Islamofascist Amalekites and their collaborators that we have begun to speak in Amalekite terms.
Don’t get so enraged, says Amalek. It’s merely incidental, a random occurrence that affected a couple of eccentric “settlers” who deserved it because they dared encroach on “Muslim” space. Anyway, this happened in the periphery, not in Israel proper. It doesn’t affect the rest of us.
That’s Amalek speaking. Shall we become his vile mouthpiece?
No, this was no incident. This was a cataclysmic atrocity that dwarfs the most horrendous natural disasters in history, even the recent catastrophic earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
Why do I say that?
I am not trying to minimize the loss and destruction wrought by this calamity. My prayers are with all the poor victims and their families.
However, while the recent tsunami was mother nature showing its ugliest, most destructive face, the massacre of five innocent Jews in Itamar was human nature showing its ugliest, most devastating and depraved face.
Mother nature has no free choice. It was never intended to be “bad” or “good.” While G-d is certainly behind it all, G-d’s involvement is concealed and completely masked within the guise of nature. Nature seems to operate with a mind of its own, at least from our limited perspective.
Mother nature was not created in G-d’s image. But man is.
A tsunami kills old and young, good and bad. It does not discriminate. Humans discriminate.
A human being capable of indiscriminately murdering a baby and young children is a human being gone awry. It is the most degenerate form of human life. It is a human who has devolved to the primitive mindset of a predator animal.
This is a tsunami of blind and depraved hatred that threatens to deluge the entire civilized world if we don’t act now.
3. “Palestinian State.”
Perhaps the most lethal weapon in our inimical media’s war of words against Israel is the expression “Palestinian.”
“Palestinian” means “from the land once referred to as Palestine.” While it is generally not used incorrectly, this term is still the source of much deception and misrepresentation of the facts. “Palestinian” means something in reality, but also has a perceived meaning that is not factual.
First let’s discuss the historical reality:
There are presently two Palestinian States. There is Jordan, a Judenrein Arab state which took the lion’s share of Palestine. Then there is Israel, a tiny segment of Palestine which was intended be a safe haven for Jewish Palestinians to live. All Israelis are Jewish Palestinians. Arabs who live there can be identified as Palestinian too, but that is rather misleading as it implies that they exclusively have this distinction. It also implies an ancient and ancestral identity. Neither impressions have anything remotely to do with fact.
Prior to the sixties, Arabs who lived in the West Bank were Jordanians. Prior to 1948, they were Arabs living in the British Mandate. Prior to that, they were privileged Muslims living in the Ottoman Empire. Prior to that, in the early to mid 1800’s, they did not live there. No one lived there, aside for a handful of Bedouins and Jews who scarcely survived amidst the unlivable deserts and swamps of Palestine. When European Jews began to arrive in Palestine, they began to hire migrant Arab workers. Arabs arrived in Palestine from all over; Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, etc. This is how the great majority of Arabs came to live in Palestine. Arafat himself was born in Egypt.
In 1947, the UN proposed a Jewish and an Arab state, not a “Palestinian” State. At that time, the Arabs utterly rejected the notion of Palestine. They regarded it as a Zionist invention. (Read article cited below for more historical data).
Nevertheless, we shall not deprive Arabs of their Palestinian identity. But they are no more Palestinian than all the millions of Jews who made their home in Palestine as well in recent generations. Furthermore, they are no more Palestinian than the millions of Arabs who live in Jordan.
A case in point: my cousin’s father was born in the West Bank before 1948. He is Jewish, a fifth-generation Jerusalemite. On his passport he is identified as being “Palestinian.”
Some modern historians argue that the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza ought to be exclusively called “Palestinians” since they have no other national identity, while Palestinian Jews are now “Israelis,” etc.
While this might have been an acceptable and rational argument, the problem is that there is a false connotation, a particularly dangerous one.
You see, the perceived meaning of Palestinian implies something uniquely un-Jewish, even anti-Jewish. As if “Palestinian” Arabs are native to Palestine but Jews are not. It implies that Jews are colonists who encroached on the Arabs’ turf.
In practical terms, a “Palestinian State” implies that it must be Judenrein by very definition. There is no place for a Jew in a “Palestinian” State. Indeed, there seems to be an automatic understanding that if any sort of autonomy or statehood is given to “Palestinian” Arabs, all Jewish homes and businesses in the area must be uprooted and all Jewish residents banished and relocated within “Israel” proper. Muslims and Christians are welcome to live in Israel, but Jews cannot possibly be tolerated in “Palestine.” Never mind the fact that the Jew has lived there for forty years. Never mind the fact that his grandfather lived there in 1929, his great grandfather in 1890, his ancestors in 135 CE, his ancient ancestors in 1273 BCE, and his forefathers in 1713 BCE. (Indeed, the very expression “Palestine” implies that any Jewish historical connection with that land must be erased our collective memories).
“Peace” with “Palestinians” means the “peace” partner must accept that “Palestinian” lands are to be strictly Judenrein. By definition, “peace with Palestinians” means ethnic cleansing.
That is a “peace” that no morally conscious human being could ever possibly accept. That is, of course, as long as the morally conscious human being retains his intellectual objectivity, and does not get indoctrinated by the shamefully biased news media.
Indeed, Dr. Moshe Dann describes the ideology which he calls “Palestinianism.” In his article, he explains that Palestiniansim has no positive self-definition. It only means one thing: the utter rejection of a Jewish state of any form.
Indeed, the very notion of “Palestine” precludes the existence of the Jew. This is why we need a lexical paradigm shift.
Some argue that since the very reference to Palestine precludes Israel’s right to exist, Palestinian Arabs ought to be referred to simply as Arabs, just as they referred to themselves as prior to 1967. Others counter that it is too late; the proverbial cat is out of its bag. A national or geographical identity has been forged. Ignoring it serves no purpose.
Instead, they argue, we ought to correct the historical and ethical error inherent in the term, the notion that a Jew cannot possibly have lived in “Palestine.”
To them, Israel ought to be referred to as “Jewish Palestine” and Jordan as “Arab Palestine,” or “Lesser Palestine” and “Greater Palestine.” The Arabs who live in the West Bank or Gaza can be referred to as “anarchist Muslim Palestinians who don’t accept the sovereignty of Jewish Palestinians.” Even better, Arabs who can’t tolerate the presence of Jewish families in Itamar or Hebron can be called: “racist Judeophobic Muslims who advocate ethnic cleansing.”
A true Palestinian, then, is anyone who chooses to make his home in Palestine (Palestine is a historic designation referring to the entire coastal area of the Mediterranean Sea from the border of Modern Egypt to Turkey, including parts of Syria and the Transjordan. Even if we were to agree to the assertion that in postmodern times, “Palestine” only includes the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, the Jews of Israel are still native to “Palestine,” and are no less Palestinian than their Arab neighbors.)
(Thanks to my friend Zushe the Galilean for pointing this out repeatedly.)
That is one perspective.
However, in my opinion, Israel is the name we ought to call ourselves. We are not “Jewish Palestinians.” This is an insult. We are Israel.
What does Israel mean? What does it represent?
The Torah tells us why G-d changed our Forefather Jacob’s name to Israel. "Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, because you have commanding power with an angel of G-d and with men, and you have prevailed." Etymologically, Israel connotes “commanding power” and “prevailing” over an angel of G-d and humans.
That’s a pretty powerful name. It commands awe and reverence. It reminds us that Israel will ultimately prevail over all her enemies, physical and spiritual.
It’s no mistake that everyone calls us Israel. Even our most vindictive enemies, the ones who incessantly plot evil against us, call us Israel. In their heart of hearts, they know that we are G-d’s people and are invincible. In some deep subconscious way, they intuit that their end is near, for G-d is with us.
Palestine, conversely, is a meaningless word. It was concocted by the Romans who wished to erase any vestiges of Jewish sovereignty over the land of Judea. So they fished up an ancient name, Philistia, a warlike pagan tribe that had vanished eight hundred years earlier. (It’s interesting to note that the ancient Philistines did not live in the “West Bank,” but along the coast). This was five hundred years before any Arabs or Muslims arrived in the Land of Israel.
So why would we wish to perpetuate the lie of the existence of “Palestine?”
So, while I might agree that calling the Jewish State “Jewish Palestine” might be more effective while trying to negotiate in the UN, or might score some points with the “pro-Palestinian” world media, it is still wrong.
There is no such thing as Palestine.
G-d gave us this land. We are His people Israel. So it is the Land of Israel. Period.
If we put it that way, if we speak with the moral clarity and conviction of the Torah, the nations of the world will surely understand.
An addendum to yesterday's post:
In spite of my aversion to "terrorism" and "terrorists," I will probably continue to use these expression for lack of better ones. "Islamofascist genocidal murderers" is too cumbersome to write or say. Maybe if we'd abbreviate it -- I.G.M. -- but then no one would understand whom or what we are referring to.
I must say, though, that their acts of terrorism do not terrify me. I am not fearful of them. I fear no one but G-d alone.
However, they are shockingly morally revolting to me. Their depravity stuns me. It boggles my imagination. How could a human being handfashioned in G-d's image be capable of such incorrigible wickedness?
They also inspire a feeling of intense rage, a desire to see them cease to exist, to be wiped away from humanity, to vanish from the collective memory of mankind.
It's not vengeance that I am feeling. It's beyond that. It would not please me to see them suffer. It would offer me some sense of relief to see them vanish. Instantly.
They are so detrimental to G-d's master plan for our world, or I should say, so irrelevant, that it would seem that G-d's world cannot be complete until they are gone and negated forever. In existential terms, it seems that the only purpose for their current existence is to stop existing.
Clearly, they don't exist for their own sake. Their existence is only a means to an end, but not an ends in themselves. They exist only because of us, the good guys. They exist only to evoke from within us a greater sense of commitment to G-d and His Torah, to flooding the world with goodness and kindness, to do the right thing to the point of self sacrifice. The exist only in order to inspire in us a more profound courage, an inner strength, if you would, to serve G-d against all odds and prevail.
Several other intense feelings I am feeling as a result of their nefarious deeds are trauma and searing pain. But this has nothing to do with the IGM's. They are powerless in G-d's world in the broader sense. G-d, in His infinite wisdom, planned the tragic demise of these virtuous and pure martyrs. The barbaric animals who perpetrated it were but chess pieces in G-d's hand. It is true that the vile and beastlike humans who committed these unspeakable acts exercised their free choice to do so, and for that they will be judged, as will the society who cultivated them. But that's between them and their Creator.
Another feeling I am experiencing is a sense of deep anxiety that our governments are not fulfilling their G-d-given charge to protect us. They are not recognizing the threat of the unprecedented evil we are witnessing, and, for reasons that I cannot understand, are not allowing our militaries to do what they need to do to keep us safe. If I dwell on this anxiety too much, that can produce despair. Both these feelings are not kosher, and should be suppressed, or, shall I say, sublimated. Instead of anxiety, I can proactively channel this emotive response and transform it into constructive action, to unabashedly speak the truth, to contact my politicians, to write a blog, to double my efforts on spreading Torah and mitzvot, and most importantly, to lend emotional and monetary support to the heroic men, women and children who risk their lives daily in order to dwell in places like Itamar, a vital part of the Promised Land bequeathed to our ancestors as an eternal heritage to every Jew. I can transform the despair into intense hope and yearning for better days, the era of Moshiach.
But again, the anxiety I might have felt was not caused by the IGM’s. It was caused by the ineptitude, cowardice and dysfunction of our governments that allow these beasts to develop and fester. So no, they do not traumatize me, nor do they terrorize me.
They simply disgust me.
Perhaps a more succinct description of jihadists, terrorists, IGM’s, is simply: “human scum, may their memories be erased.”
As far as the Fogels’ go, the correct term for them is not “victims of terror.” Instead, I would call them “holy and pure martyrs who died sanctifying G-d’s name. May their righteous memory be for a blessing, and may G-d avenge their blood.”
Can’t think of anything more concise.
Okay, tomorrow we'll examine the names "Israelis" and "Palestinians."
Stay tuned.
2. “Terrorism.”
This one has bothered me for a long time. What does “terrorism” mean?
Webster Dictionary defines it as “the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.” Terror is defined as “a state of intense fear.” Dictionary.com translates terrorism as “the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes.”
This term is inadequate here for numerous reasons.
Firstly, “use of terror” is too vague. Is my eight-year-old then a terrorist because her antics inspire fear amongst her sibling? I personally know numerous individuals who feel terrorized by their children, in-laws, ruthless bosses or supervisors at work, etc.
The Israelis can easily be accused of “terrorizing” suspicious Arabs at security checkpoints. Building homes for Jewish families in Jerusalem (or anywhere else in the West Bank)? Well, hardliner Arab nationalists feel terrified by that. So that’s terror too.
Speaking of security, my friend was terrified to fly because of the harassment he was subjected to at the airport. Can the TSA be rightfully called a terrorist organization?
Terror is in the eyes of the beholder. Indeed, CNN refused to acknowledge the obvious that the Itamar massacre was in fact terrorism. Instead, their article was entitled “Israeli family of 5 killed in ‘terror attack’, military says.” They made sure to encircle the words “terror attack” with quotations, suggesting that there is a doubt whether the brutal murder was indeed an act of terrorism. The body of the report said that “Five members of an Israeli family were killed in the West Bank early Saturday morning in what the Israeli military is calling a ‘terror attack.’” The Israeli military called it a terror attack, but the “unbiased” media leaves room for doubt.
“Terrorism,” therefore, is an ambiguous term that can be easily construed or misconstrued to fit anyone’s agenda. It allows for convenient moral equivalence to be drawn between the murderer and the victim. The disturbed employee who went on a killing spree at the post office felt terrorized by the federal government, so he “terrorized” them back.
Moreover, terrorism doesn’t do justice to the actual crimes committed. Whom would you rather be? The slain victim or the survivor? The term terrorism would suggest that the primary target of the terrorist act is the survivor who now is in an induced state of terror, whereas the actual victim is dead (and in some cases, died instantly or with momentary terror). The survivor should then be accurately described as the “victim” of terrorism. The slain victim is nothing more than a technicality. Calling it “terrorism” is effectively sanitizing the egregious act of mass murder.
However, all the above arguments aside, even if we will accept the definition of terrorism quoted above (“the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes”), this might pertain to the IRA or Russian nihilist anarchists of the 19th century. Contemporary extremist Islamists, however, are quite a different story.
You see, the modern-day jihadist doesn’t necessarily have a political or coercive objective in mind. He just wants to murder us. It’s his religion, as pathologically depraved as it sounds. Murder for the sake of murder.
Moreover, even if we were to be so naïve as to accept the LA Times’ outrageous assertion that this atrocity was in protest to the settlements, murder of Jews by Muslim jihadists cannot rightfully be described as terrorism for a specific political objective. Imagine that the terrorists were to accomplish this stated goal, the dismantling of all settlements. Does anyone seriously believe that there would be peace? Certainly not. The terrorists would continue to murder us until Israel would cease to exist. And then what? Then the Muslim Brotherhood could be free to take over where Hitler left off, Heaven forefend (לא תקום פעמים צרה).
In other words, the baby-slaying of last week was not a means toward a political end. It was the end in itself. The jihadist’s ultimate objective is genocide. His ruthless acts of murder are methodical and deliberate, consistent with his end goal.
In light of all the above, I feel that Muslim jihadists ought not to be called terrorists. Instead, why not just call them what they are? They are Islamofascist mass murderers.
Okay, so the problem with “mass murderer” is that it implies that the perpetrator personally murdered many victims. For example, Hitler, Eichmann or Arafat might be called mass murderers, but the low level Gestapo guard who murdered few might not.
So let’s create a new, more fitting description. They are Islamofascist genocidal murderers.
It doesn’t matter if they murdered one or five or more, G-d forbid. They carried out their dark deed as part of a determined and sustained effort to commit genocide. They participated in genocide, so they are genocidal murderers.
The modern jihadist movement is not a new phenomenon. It is part of the genocide movement begun by Hitler and Al Husseini, erstwhile Mufti of Jerusalem. The thousands of murders perpetrated by Arab “terrorists” since Oslo are not isolated acts of terror for particular political objectives. They are part of a consistent plan of the Muslim Brotherhood to commit genocide, a Final Solution, if you would.
May the Almighty protect us from their evil schemes. May G-d grant our leaders the wisdom to acknowledge the enemy for what it is and take the painful but necessary measures to deal with the threat effectively and responsibly.
Tomorrow we'll address another oft-misunderstood catchphrase, "Palestinians."
Semantics in the Israel-bashing Media
Recent examples of the mainstream media’s word choices and their subtle innuendo have deeply disturbed me.
In yesterday’s blog, we rambled about how BBC hijacked a story of an atrocious Arab murder and transformed it into a diatribe on Israel. In one fell swoop, with one stroke of ink, an innocent baby murdered in her crib became a generic settler. A horrific act of murder, of infanticide, became a justified reaction to “illegal occupation.”
Words are such powerful tools. In the wrong hands, like that of the BBC or Associated Press, they can be used to cause much damage and spread much falsehood.
In the prophetic words attributed to Mark Twain, “A lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
Well, the BBC effectively sent a lie all the way around the world in seconds, with one carefully chosen word.
Hey, don’t get me wrong. I’m not anti-semantic. Some of my best friends are linguists. Really. :-)
I enjoy playing with words too. It’s not the semantics I deplore. It’s the propagandists who abuse it.
In fact, I don’t really mind writers choosing words to advocate their cause. It’s just when the news media-turned-propagandists use carefully nuanced words to further their own hidden (or not so hidden) agendas.
Anyhow, the more I think about it, many of the words we regularly use to describe the current state of affairs in the Middle East are largely inaccurate.
Let’s delineate a few:
1. “Peace Process.”
By now, any sane observer would come to the obvious conclusion that this process has nothing to do with peace. Indeed, while most Israelis would love to live in peace, it has become painfully clear that their partner does not really want peace, nor did they ever really want peace in the first place.
For the Arab leadership, peace was an artificially Western concept that had no place in their agenda. For them, it was hudna. In Muslim ideology, hudna means temporary cessation of hostilities, an opportunity to regroup and re-arm, until the jihad can be continued with greater effectiveness (read: more horrendous carnage).
This is the great fallacy of Oslo. In Rabin’s blissfully utopian mind, he was making painful concessions for peace. In Arafat’s sinister mind, he was gaining ground, advancing the front. His handshake for peace was in fact nothing more than a strategic and temporary delay of war. Like the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact or Neville Chamberlain’s “Peace in our Times!,” there was nothing peaceful about Oslo, the Roadmap, or any other foolhardy attempts at “peace.” So let’s stop calling it peace.
Likewise, the so-called “Peace Now” movement, which calls for a Muslim State alongside Israel, is not about peace. It is about war, bloodshed and prolonged misery.
So let’s be honest and call it the “War Process.”
Someone who still seriously believes that conceding more territory to Arabs will achieve “peace” is not pro-peace. He is pro-war. Such a person is not a dove, but a flightless ostrich with his head in the sand.
Tomorrow, we’ll examine another buzzword, “terrorism.”
Thank you to all for reading yesterday’s blog and for your comments.
To clarify my title:
The enemy is among us. We invite it into our living rooms and broadcast its message throughout our homes, cars and workplaces. We grant it prominent space on our PCs, BlackBerries, I-Phones and Facebook pages. We invite its message into our minds by allowing it to define our perception of reality.
The enemy is the mainstream media.
That is not to say that there aren’t bigger, more dangerous enemies. But they are formidable enemies nonetheless. Enemies that we ought to acknowldege.
Every time you visit their sites, tune into their programs, buying their products, etc., you are supporting their inimical cause.
I remember when Ted Turner made hideously anti-Israel remarks in public. In disgust, I promptly cancelled my subscription to AOL. I remember thinking to myself, would I pay to subscribe to Al Jazeera TV? Would I even wish to give them any clicks at all?
So why are we going to CNN or BBC for news?
Why are we funding propagandist organizations that tacitly endorse terrorism?
By the way, thank you to www.honestreporting.com and www.arutzsheva.com for keeping us apprised of the media's recent abuses. Personally, I stopped tuning to the above-referenced news sites years ago.
My challenge to all remains: when will Americans wake up to the reality that the "news stations" are feeding us with not just news, but with political indoctrination?
Itamar Massacre and the Complicit World Media
Ok, that’s enough for me.
I have had it with the media. Enough is enough.
I used to think that the enemy was extremist Islam. Then I came to understand that the enemy includes “moderate” Muslim leadership. Then I learned that the United Nations and European Union endorse, support and collaborate with the enemy, and hence, are the enemy by collusion.
Now I am dismayed to discover that ostensibly “unbiased” US and British media outlets have deplorably aligned themselves with the Axis of Evil, the bestial and bloodthirsty thugs in Samaria, Gaza and around the world who would love nothing more but to continue the work of Hitler.
But from our media’s perspective, the war monger murderers are in fact victims, oppressed freedom fighters who seek peace. And the real victims, innocent babies and their loving parents, are villains by default. Of course they are villains. They are hardly human. The media has a great name for them. They are “settlers.”
“Five settlers killed” the headlines screamed. Then the articles proceed to report on illegal Jewish settlements. The atrocity, the merciless slaughter of young children and their parents, is sidelined with barely a mention.
Moreover, in the biased eyes of the BBC reporter, the subhuman murders and “illegal” Jewish settlements share a moral equivalence. Indeed, the reader is led to believe that the murders were in fact justified by well-deserved Arab rage over the existence of Jewish settlements.
The BBC piece is a classic example of obvious media bias. Not just bias, but complicity. The article aims to arouse worldwide sympathy for the terrorists and indifference to the slain victims, their family and community. This effort can only help in emboldening terrorists worldwide.
In my mind, the modern mainstream media is the re-embodiment of Nazi collaborators and supporters during the Holocaust. The Jew cannot be the victim. The Jew is the guilty by default. He is a “settler,” guilty of illegal occupation. He does not belong in Berlin, Warsaw, or the West Bank. He does not belong, period.
Never mind the fact that this settler was a three month old infant in her crib. That is irrelevant to the “story” (read: their agenda in reporting the story).
I remember asking my Hebrew School teacher at age ten, “Why did the Holocaust happen? How could G-d have allowed such unspeakable atrocities and such appalling loss of life?”
My teacher responded: “If I could offer you any reasons, any justifications, then I’d be as bad as Hitler.”
His words hauntingly echoed in my mind as I read the BBC’s article fraught with moral equivalence and subtle justification. Hmm. I thought back to my teacher’s remark about justifying evil.
On another occasion in my childhood, my mother and I were discussing the evil perpetrators of the Holocaust. I argued that just because Germans supported Hitler, this did not necessarily mean that they approved of the horrific crimes he was committing.
She responded: “Cannibals have a cannibal king.”
If you support or condone cannibalism, you are aiding and abetting cannibalism; in a sense, you are cannibal.
If the BBC or CNN can condone or rationalize murder, does that not constitute a tacit endorsement of murder?
(In fact, Associated Press did not even call it a “murder.” Instead, they reported that the settlers were “knifed to death,” and, elsewhere in the article, “killed.”)
Speaking parallels of West Bank 2011 and Europe of 1939-1945, here’s another spine-chilling one:
In 1939, following the horrors of Kristallnacht, Jews in Germany saw the writing on the wall, and many tried to flee Germany. Problem was, almost all countries had closed their doors to Jews. The US also had strict anti-immigration laws, and refused Jews entry.
A German vessel, the St. Louis, set sail from Germany with over nine-hundred Jewish passengers, mostly women and children. Turned away from every country they arrived at, they were turned away from American shores as well. With no other option, they returned to Europe. Hundreds of them perished in the German death camps.
U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull was opposed to letting the Jews enter the United States, apparently because Southern Democrats, who were anti-immigrants, threatened to stop supporting Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election.
While the St. Louis passengers were awaiting their fate, the Wagner-Rogers bill died in committee. It would have allowed twenty thousand Jewish children from Germany to come to the United States. When asked for her opinion of the bill, Laura Delano Houghteling, wife of the commissioner of immigration and a cousin of President Roosevelt's, remarked "Twenty-thousand charming children would all too soon grow up into twenty-thousand ugly adults."
BBC didn’t even need to repeat Houghteling’s telling observation. They just omitted any mention of the age of the victims and simply called them settlers. (“Illegal settlers” conjures up the image of ugly, belligerent adults).
So that’s it. In my book, Time Magazine, CNN, BBC, New York Times, etc., are not just sympathetic toward the enemy. They ARE the enemy.
That’s right, the world media, the Reuters, Associated Press, and all the rest. The ones who serve you your news and feed you your daily dose of information concerning world events. To be more precise, they are not reporting events. They are indoctrinating you with a poisoned and skewed view of reality. Their agenda is to advocate the enemy’s agenda. The media is no longer your friend (if it ever was). It is your ENEMY.
Sadly to say, this is plainly evidenced by the media’s coverage of recent horrific atrocities. If you haven’t figured this out yet, you’re simply not paying attention.
The West’s primary media outlets, presumably motivated by greed and moral bankruptcy, have “sold out” to the enemy.
For further reading on the subject:
http://honestreporting.com/baby-killers-bbc-butchers-the-real-story/
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/142874
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/142843
