Media Manipulation

Media manipulation about events in Gaza and Israel is running amok these days. Have you heard about those "nasty" IDF troops who are deliberately targeting innocent civilians and *gasp* even shooting at schools? If your only source of news is the Hamas-fed msm, then yes, I am sure you are outraged at the "atrocities". But wait! Turns out that all in the UN school were not so innocent after all. Imagine that. Today's latest horror? Nothing new, sad to say, as Hamas yet again uses schools and innocent children to hide behind. This seems to be a common tactic of terrorists. Iraq, Afghanistan, anyone? How often have the troops in those two places been witnesses to that? Too many, is how many.

But back to Gaza. From the BBC:

A school in the Jabaliya refugee camp took a direct hit

At least 30 people were killed and 55 injured when Israeli artillery shells landed outside a United Nations-run school in Gaza, UN officials have said.

A number of children were among those who died when the al-Fakhura school in the Jabaliya refugee camp was hit, doctors at nearby hospitals said.

Israel said its soldiers had come under fire from militants inside the school....

Be sure and go watch the gutwrenching pictures of the wounded being carried away. (Here)

All very predictable reporting, and in fact, HonestReporting DID predict this just days ago. Take a look at this picture from the media in the 2006 war:

(courtesy HonestReporting.com)

Take a look at this video put out by an IDF spokesman:

Yes! We KNOW that these thugs use children as human shields, and I weep for every child lost. And then I found this over at IsraeliSoldiersMother site:

What School Should Be...

My youngest children went to school today. Thousands of children in Israel did not. Some of their schools are protected, reinforced against missiles. That's the result of more than 8 years of ongoing missile attacks. Though my children's school isn't protected from a potential missile attack, it does have a bomb shelter; it does have a high fence circling it to prevent terrorists from entering (even more, perhaps than preventing children from straying off), and it has a guard that watches as children enter and exit.

In the last few days, the police must have decided that all this was not enough, and so they have stationed police near each of the schools, armed and watching. Our children are our lives, our most precious treasures. Whatever it takes to keep them safe, will be done. That is the message Israel has sent to its citizens.

Several times over the past few years, our schools in the south have been hit by rockets. Last week, two schools and a kindergarten were hit. Thankfully, no one was hurt because our country deemed it too dangerous to allow our children to continue their studies, lest a missile hit there. Of course, it would have been nice if our government and the world stopped the missiles, but if they haven't accomplished that yet, at least they were honest enough to tell parents to keep their children home. The priority has always been the lives of our children....

Rather than risk that and other tragedies, Israel has suspended school everywhere within 40 kilometers of Gaza. They did this because a school should be a place where children learn and play. Where there is light and knowledge. Most of all, it should be a place where children are safe, where they can grow and expand their knowledge in a protected environment. Today, in Gaza, a school was hit by an Israeli missile. The Palestinians claim dozens have died. It's a horrible thing, a terrible tragedy, every parent's nightmare.

Except...

Except that Israel's initial inquiry into the incident, showed that the missile didn't hit the "school" by mistake. The target was true; the aim was accurate. In August, last year, Israel filed a formal complaint with the United Nations, complaining about the school being used to fire against Israel. Israel has already identified Hamas gunmen who were killed at the scene of the attack - even publicized their names.

The proof that the building was a legitimate target was found, once again, in the secondary explosions that occurred. The missile hit the building, causing explosives inside the building to detonate. You can watch these and other videos on the web. You'll see the initial explosion, and then, mere seconds later, multiple explosions and objects shooting high into the air.

If you hit a building that has no explosives, the building collapses and the only thing that rises into the air is dust and rubble. Nothing explodes - again, see all the videos of houses hit in Sderot, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Beersheva. As horrible as it sounds, as tragic as the results are, the missile was accurate. It hit its target and did what it was supposed to do. Secondary explosions prove that the building was used to store rockets.

What it comes down to is a building from which mortars were shot, in which explosives were stored, and in which, Palestinians chose to teach their young. There is something incredibly sick about that....(my emphasis and PLEASE read the rest here.)

Hmmmmmmm...who are we to believe? A bunch of media who (as CBC radio admits) have been barred from Gaza, so they are reporting from a nearby hilltop (no, I am not kidding,) or an Israeli mother who has had many years to watch, study and learn about the different effects that bombs have on differing environments, up close and very personal? I know who I believe.

So let's talk about the CBC, shall we? Media manipulation at it's finest. Really. Last night a national radio show interviewed a very distraught Norwegian doctor; one of two whose government paid for him to go work in Gaza. he has been there for five days, so of course he is an expert. During the course of the interview, this doctor told CBC that conditions were terrible, and that wounded were lying in beds in the hallways of the hospital because there was so many of them. And oh yes, "The Israelis are lying." At one point the interviewer said to this doctor, "I can hear the frustration and disgust in your voice." Quite apart from the fact that I thought "patients waiting in hospital hallways" could be describing more than a few hospitals in Canada, I also wondered how come, if in fact the good doctor felt so over-run by the magnitude of the numbers, he had time to be doing interviews such as this. Oh, did I mention that this doctor is all over the msm? I googled him, and it seems he has time amidst the mayhem to give numerous interviews to any and all media. Oh and yes, he is working in a Palestinian hospital.

You may be wondering who this humanitarian doctor is. You are not alone. The CBC may have been a willing conspiractor in this great hoodwinking, but not everybody is buying it.

Meet Doctor Mads Gilbert:

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Norwegian Doctor in Gaza Supported Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.

Claims by Norwegian Doctor Mads Gilbert that Israel is intentionally targeting Palestinian civilians and not just Hamas, need to be taken with a large dose of salt. Following 9-11 Gilbert supported terrorist attacks on the United States.

The Spectator reports today that last night the BBC TV News featured a “highly partisan report about Gaza” by Jeremy Bowen. The pro-Hamas report failed to mention “a direct hit yesterday by a Hamas rocket on a kindergarten in Ashdod.”

The BBC also failed to tell its viewers that “every single journalist and media utterance coming out of Gaza is controlled by Hamas.”

The highlight of the BBC TV report was an interview with the now famous Dr. Mads Gilbert. Gilbert is the Norwegian doctor who claimed that Israel is deliberately targeting civilians and that “We’re wading in death, blood and amputees.” (See “Norwegian Doctor in Gaza Says This is an All-Out War on Civilians” in today’s Digital Journal)

According to The Spectator, Gilbert isn’t just an innocent long-suffering humanitarian doctor.

Gilbert was presented as just an ordinary doctor. But Gilbert appears not to be just an ordinary doctor. He is a political activist and member of the Norwegian Maoist ‘Red’ party. Not only is he viscerally hostile to Israel and a long-standing activist in the Palestinian ‘solidarity’ movement, but he even supported the 9/11 attacks.

Additionally The Spectator reports that after the attack on the World Trade Center on 9-11, Gilbert not only defended the moral right of “the oppressed” to attack the United States, he also stated that he supported terrorist attacks on the United States.

“If the U.S. government has a legitimate right to bomb and kill civilians in Iraq, they have also suppressed a moral right to attack the United States with the weapons they had to create. Dead civilians are the same whether they are Americans, Palestinians or Iraqis.’ On the direct question whether he supported the terrorist attacks on the United States, Gilbert said: ‘Terror is a bad weapon, but the answer is yes, within the context I have mentioned.”

The Sterile Eye reports that Gilbert and surgeon Erik Fosse are currently the only European health care workers on the Gaza Strip and that they are in Gaza on behalf of the Norwegian Aid Commitee (NORWAC).

The Norwegian Aid Committee (NORWAC) states that it is a humanitarian organization that works mainly with health care issues. “Our work is based on the principle of solidarity and equality regardless of religion, race and ethnic belonging.”...

Imagine that. I guess Dr Gilbert is not such a non-political humanitarian as he and the CBC would have us believe. There's a shocker. NOT! I would like to believe that the CBC was had, and was guilty *only* of sloppy journalistic research. However they got hold of this guy (maybe he called them?) the truth was the first victim in this story. Again. What did Churchill say? "In times of war, truth is the first victim"????? Fact is, we who pay attention have seen the msm complicit in way too many instances. The terrorist thugs in other theatres of war have proved masters at manipulating the message the msm gets fed and which they, in turn, feed the lazy public who swallow the untruths/manipulations. Okay, lies, too! You can read more of the TRUTH about this innocent doctor over at Faultine USA here. As stated, Dr. Gilbert is so busy giving interviews, it's a marvel he has any time left to deal with all the civilian wounded. Another example of a willing, complicit media:

Oh, and if that isn't enough, read the text:

Dr. Mads Gilbert of Norwac, one of the doctors allowed into Gaza to give emergency medical aid, described conditions to the world inside Gaza as of December 31. Things have only gotten worse since then. Meanwhile the world dissembles and pontificates to a large degree, while the United States blocks UN resolutions to stop the slaughter...

Will Israel render the world impotent and complicit in its criminal assault upon the hapless Palestinians, ...? This is the new anti-semitism we see today, the demonization of the Palestinian people and their religion as a way to enable their oppression and slow destruction. (read the whole thing here)

Time and again, in the current situation in Gaza, msm ONLY quotes/interviews/shows video supplied by Israel's opponents; you know, those who want to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. I am very tired of NOT hearing balanced reporting, even as I recognise how hard it must be to do your job - tell the WHOLE story - from the top of a hill. Fact is, though, if a regular joe (Jolene??) like myself can find sources on all sides, surely the msm with their big budgets can also do a little legwork in presenting a balanced, informed job of educating the public? Oh wait; that would mean work.

As we learned early on Iraq and Afghanistan, the msm no longer has a monopoly on how the truth is shaped/manipulated. Courtesy of modern technology, those of us who want the FACTS, who want to know the truth of what is going on, can easily find sources online of those on the ground, those living the nightmare.

An example of that very point comes from Knee Deep in the Hooah! today, as a Palestinian mother puts the lie to Hamas' usual propaganda:

It is because of Hamas that Palestinians are suffering

Posted on January 6th, 2009 , In my own particular idiom, Claire

Where’s the march in Washington for this woman’s lament? Hamas’ actions have caused death and destruction on her family. Where’s her justice? Where is the outrage by all of the so called peace and justice groups?

This mother’s understands a fundamental truth that so many are missing here - it is Hamas, NOT Israel that has caused this war.

From her lips to God’s ear: The fury of a bereaved Palestinian mother captures evil of Hamas in Gaza

Found at Right Nation
New York Daily News
Tuesday, January 6th 2009

Excerpt:

The collateral damage that has been inflicted on the residents of Gaza is a sorrowful consequence of living under the rule of rocket-firing fanatics. It is because of Hamas, and only Hamas, that Palestinians are suffering.

At least some of them know the identity of their tormentors. A New York Times dispatch captured an excruciating moment that took place in a hospital morgue, where a mother had just found half of the body of her 17-year-old daughter.

“May God exterminate Hamas!” screamed the woman in crystal-clear understanding that the terrorist band’s reckless, inhuman actions had brought death to her child.

Go read the rest here, and prepare to weep. Like IsraeliSoldiersMother, this mother knows the truth. Will the mainstream media ever tell this truth? Don't hold your breath.