As long as there are both Jews and Arabs in the world, the chance of ever achieving peace in the Middle East is vanishingly small. Whatever chances do exist, though, are further diminished by propagandists like Salon.com's Gary Kamiya, who writes sentences like this: "[Hamas fights] using any means it can, including suicide bombers and crude homemade rockets that have killed two dozen [Israelis] in seven years."
Just about every word choice here betrays Kamiya's lack of objectivity. "Two dozen" sounds like less than 24, and the inference we are supposed to draw is that Israel's response was disproportionate to Hamas' measly hostilities. Unfortunately, he omits what he would consider the appropriate number of civillians killed before retaliation becomes ethical. Two dozen, though, is surely something that Israel could have turned the other cheeck about. He also neglects to mention the economic damage casued by these rocket attacks, the many residents forced to leave Sderot to seek safety elsewhere, and the psychological damage certain to befall Israeli children growing up in this area (You wouldn't know it if you get your news from certain media outlets, but "traumatized" is a word that can be applied to Israelis as well as Palestinians).
Calling the rockets crude and homemade is meant to call attention to Hamas' desperateness while highlighting the supposed ineffectiveness of their brand of warfare. Perhaps Qassam rockets are "crude" because they lack a built-in guidance system, making them extremely inaccurate. This precludes Hamas' targeting specific sites, and ensures random death and destruction, but on the bright side, Qassam rockets are conducive to quick and mass manufacture. So say this for Hamas: they've managed to eliminate collateral damage through the ingenious method of intending civillian death.
Saying Hamas uses "any means it can" is a similar ploy meant to highlight their desperateness. In this same article, Kamiya calls "fatuous" Obama's comment that if his house were being attacked with rockets, he would do everything he could to stop it. Maybe he defines "fatuous" as "tending to demonstrate the illogic of my column." He also calls Israel's approach "militarist," for example (I guess) evicting every Jew from Gaza, thereby leaving Hamas unencumbered to produce deadly, "militarist" rockets. Christopher Hitchens, no confederate of Israel's, captured Hamas' essence: "It knows very well that sanctions are injuring every Palestinian citizen, but—just like Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq—it declines to cease the indiscriminate violence."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
also capital punisher, your post was put up just 32 minutes after mine, I like having many posts a day, but you really couldn't wait a bit longer?
ReplyDeleteno it was like 3 hours. the times are messed up on here. it was really early wed. morning.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, the Salon piece is an opinion piece that doesn't pretend to be objective. It is very clear that the writer is anti-Israel.
ReplyDeleteSecond of all, while I won't disagree that there are instances of media bias, I think we go too far when we insist that every word printed anywhere that is not The Jerusalem Post necessarily reflects a bias that is part of a massive conspiracy to delegitimize Israel and increase anti-Semitism.
"'Two dozen' sounds like less than 24." Really? It sounds like exactly the same thing to me. And anyone else who can multiply.
"[A]nd the inference we are supposed to draw is that Israel's response was disproportionate to Hamas' measly hostilities." Um, it is. I'm not saying that makes Israel unjustified or wrong. But it is disproportionate.
But really my point is that you confuse opinion with news. Of course Kamiya picked words that reflect his opinion—that's what a good writer does in an opinion piece. It would be disturbing if you found some (not all) of this language in a news article, though.
I agree that much of the constant outcry over "media bias" would relax if people recognized the distinction you point out, but it's still not prefectly dichotomous. Even the most objective news article will--if long enough--eventually reveal something about the writer, reflected in his word choice (like using the masculine third person singular possessive instead of the PC but cumbersome "his or her" or the generic but grammatically questionable "their"), his choice of what facts to omit (since there are always facts omitted), and his placement of the facts within the article. Also, and what bothered me here, just because someone is writing an opinion column doesn't mean he can fairly resort to the rhetorical ploys Kamiya does here. Qassam rockets are objectively crude, but what else does that say about them, and why did he write what he wrote and leave out what he left out? And whose side might that construction get people to join? Hamas does use any means it can. Israel decidedly does NOT, yet that clause is designed to sway readers to Hamas' side, and with language, not facts. Opinions pieces can be dishonest, too. In any event, you're right that it's just his opinion and it could be much worse. There are plenty of more biased articles; I just happened to be reading this one.
ReplyDelete