3-Oct-06: The Mess That Political Correctness Gets You Into

For the past 48 hours, rifle-toting fighters loyal to Fatah and to Hamas have been blowing each other's brains out in various parts of the Gaza Strip.

The casualties (10 dead, 100 wounded on Sunday; 2 more dead yesterday with many more wounded; the Palestinian government's cabinet building riddled with bullets) have been happening at the kind of fearsome rate you would expect among a population that's armed to the teeth. And naturally they include plenty of innocent, unarmed non-gunmen because - well - that's what happens when you tolerate savages with lethal weapons in their hands on your streets.

So how do the "objective", "impartial" news media report on the mutual massacres?

Just as you would expect, if - like us - you are appalled at the ongoing, unchecked group-think, ignorance and shallowness of reporters, photographers, headline writers, editors, "fixers" and news producers who ply their trade in this neighbourhood.

Take the BBC's Gaza specialist Alan Johnston who delivers yet another classic of the whitewash-Palestinian-terror genre of reportage for his employer's website. Immediately under the heading "Gazans bury dead after clashes" , Johnston starts his story from Gaza City like this:

"Once more, Gaza has been burying its dead. Not - this time - the victims of Israeli attacks, but the casualties of factional street fighting. "

Two notorious, blood-drenched terror organizations getting stuck into one another in the most violent way, and Mr Johnston frames their story as one of victimhood. The Israelis are of course the attackers - that's beyond obvious.

Not one syllable to suggest that both Fatah and Hamas openly declare themselves as engaged in an aggressive struggle against an occupying force (the Israelis) whose "crimes" against them justify any form of barbaric savagery. No, for Mr Johnston the victimhood of the Gazan Arabs is so self-evident that he's probably wondering why Zionists like us even bother to call him to account for this shallow piece of agenda-driven reportage. Oh, and if you're looking for a reference to terror anywhere in Johnston's BBC article, look elsewhere.

The Guardian, under a rather laconic header ("Hamas Closes Offices as Violence Spreads"), points out that many of the injuries occured when a gun battle erupted at Gaza City's main hospital. (Just imagine the vituperative fury and demands for UN Security Council sanctions if it had been Israel that directed gunfire at a Gazan hospital.)

Then it offers this piece of bald-faced malevolent untruth:

In addition to the internal Palestinian rivalry, there has been a series of Israeli military operations in Gaza since the capture in June of a soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit, by Palestinian militants. Israel says it is acting to get its soldier back, but more than 200 Palestinians have died in the operations, most of them civilians. Yesterday, Israel's chief of staff said a much larger military operation in Gaza was being considered.

It might have been a tad more honest and accurate if the paper had explained that many of those 200 Palestinians were armed combatants and that the military operation under consideration is related to the unrelenting rocket attacks on peaceful Israeli settlement, towns and cities (never occupied, never disputed) located within firing range of Gaza. Rocket attacks which on any theory of international relations amount to acts of war. (Rocket attacks that we have been chronicling here daily for many months. But which are still basically unknown outside Israel.)

On this point, The Scotsman gets it right when it says:

"General Halutz [the IDF chief of staff] also raised the prospect of a broad ground offensive in Gaza to try to stop Palestinian militants from firing homemade rockets into Israel."

Its article is entitled "Unity hopes fade as infighting leaves eight Palestinians dead", and it includes this rather telling, even poignant, quote:

The ordinary people of Gaza were yesterday trying to avoid getting caught in the crossfire of fighting between Hamas and Fatah that continued for most of the day. "This is forbidden in Islam - we are in the holy month of Ramadan," said Majed Badawi, 33, who managed to escape uninjured after his car was hit by gunfire. "It's a shame on Hamas, who call themselves real Muslims, and a shame on Fatah as well. Why are they fighting and over what? We are victims because of both of them."

Why is it so rare to find a quality journal that is ready to go against the commonly-accepted PC narrative and chooses to depict - accurately - Gazan Arabs as victims of Palestinian terror?