24-Oct-08: Natural responses

In a Haaretz report tonight, Hamas, the outlawed terror organization, says the murder of an 86 year-old Jewish man in a Jerusalem suburb on Thursday afternoon, was a "natural response to Israel's continued aggression".

In its own 'natural response', the all-knowing BBC places its version of the event under the misleading and politicized headline "Israeli dies in settlement attack". It is reporting at this hour that "There has been no immediate claim of responsibility for what the Israeli authorities called a "terror incident".

Seems to us there is something perfectly natural, sad to say and very much in character, about the BBC reporting the news this way. For decades, the BBC and several other agenda-driven media channels, have described the government of Israel - whose offices are located in the nation's capital, Jerusalem - as "the authorities in Tel-Aviv".

The Melbourne Age, relying on a Reuters video clip and story (see below), is reporting the terrorist attack and murder under this heading: "Settler dies in West Bank stabbing".

In fact, Gilo is a suburb of Jerusalem. The neighbourhood is located well within the city boundaries and built on land legally and properly acquired by Jews long before the state of Israel was established in 1948. The Egged city bus that serves our own Jerusalem neighbourhood ends its run in Gilo, and never comes close to leaving the city of Jerusalem at any stage.

Calling Gilo a settlement is mischievous and offensive. It's also a fine way to delegitimize the place and to dehumanize the people who call it home.

The unbearable lightness of the Hamas terror regime's statement, and the yawn with which it is being received by the media, is disturbing to us. A 21 year-old religiously-inspired thug, armed with a knife and a passion for Jewish blood-spilling, is now being healed in a Jerusalem hospital after Daniel Motza, the police officer whom he stabbed (the second of yesterday's victims), managed to fell him with a shot from his service pistol. His murderous intentions are perfectly natural to the authorities in Gaza.

Perfectly natural, too, that Israeli doctors will now spend time, effort, skill and units of Magen David Adom-supplied blood healing this barbarian.

And perfectly natural that the Palestinian Arab terror organizations in all their various guises and branches will continue to plot their next attack on children, elderly pensioners and mothers - oops, sorry - settlers - in this ongoing war.

UPDATE 8:00am Friday:

Above: The Melbourne Age today prominently carries this Reuters report on the wounding of a Palestinian man by the Israeli authorities "who say" he had stabbed a police officer. Reuters says "The man wielding the knife and the police officer are being treated for their injuries". The un-named eighty-six year old gets into this only because, as Reuters put it, the police "say" they shot the Palestinian after he killed a settler. For Reuters, the story is about allegations (presumably refutable) and about occupied territories (occupation is never refutable in the lexicon of its editors), but only marginally about murder and terrorism.

And not at all about the humanity of the victims of terrorist organizations like Hamas.