On NBC Nightly News (11/15/12) , correspondent Martin Fletcher gives viewers a sense of the suffering on both sides of the Israel/Gaza conflict:
FLETCHER: Terror in Israel.
(SHOUTING)
FLETCHER: “There is another one,” a soldier screams.
(SHOUTING)
FLETCHER: More than 200 missiles fired at Israel today.
And in Gaza, despair.
(SHOUTING)
FLETCHER: Burying an infant killed in an Israeli attack.
Frightened Israeli soldiers are being terrorized. And Gazans burying a child? Something else, apparently. 
No.
It is Terrorism when a group uses violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims – ie when Hamas launches rockets indiscriminately at civilians in Israel to drive the Jews/Zionists out.
It is a terrible civilian casualty when a child is killed due to attempts to neutralize the ability of Hamas to fire said rockets. The likelihood of civilian casualties is raised significantly by Hamas’ blatant placement of firing posts near schools, mosques and hospitals.
The bias in the past few stories is incredible. Who is there to challenge the media bias that has been so evident on the FAIR blog this week???
It is Terrorism when a group uses violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims –
Gee, sounds like another Fux Snooze listener. It is only terrorism when “the other guy” (read non-American friends) bomb people right? How tens of thousands of Palestinians and other have to die before it becomes not ok? If you bothered to follow the stories for more then 15 seconds and get a better news source then Murdoch/Ailes network, you might actually find out the truth of the situation.
Perhaps the thought is that the Gazans should be used to their hell by now?
Israel self-identifies as THE fascist nation of today. – George Beres
Of course, it is terrorism on both sides. The difference is that after suffering 150 plus missles fired from Gaza into Southern Israel and after the deliberate targeting of Israeli soldiers killed by a misslle fired into Israel, Israel responded with an attack aimed not at civilians (taking special pains to avoid civilian casualties) but at the weaponry of Hamas and the more radical splinter groups, who apparently are beyond Hamas’ control. To use epithets like “Fascist” state does not help in the solution. And I agree with Eyal, why is FAIR lately being so unfair to Israel?
It’s noteworthy that most western media have failed to report on the almost daily rocket attacks from Gaza over the last several years. Why is that? Is a war on innocent civilians not newsworthy? It is only when Israel acts in its self defense that the media pays attention, usually frames its headlines or leads as “Israel kills Palestinians” or “Israel bombs Gaza” with no or little explanation of the provocations leading to Israel’s response. In this campaign, the media is busy reporting from Gaza, interviewing Gazans, and paying little or no attention to what Israeli citizens are experiencing.
I don’t understand the criticism of FAIR on this issue. US news media are ridiculously biased in Israel’s favor. When the mainstream media start claiming pretty much everything is Israel’s fault, I’m sure that FAIR will counter that too.
“When the mainstream media start claiming pretty much everything is Israel’s fault”
Frankly Curious, make certain you have paramedics on stand-by when you start holding your breath waiting for this to happen.
I don’t think that FAIR is being unfair. When the first flotilla happened, and an American citizen was killed, no one in the U.S. Congress seemed to care. When Rachel Corrie was killed , the U.S. didn’t seem to care about her either. Someone told me to read about the USS Liberty in 1966 and I did; Americans died and President Johnson didn’t seem to care either. I have no idea what this means, but it is a sobering thought about nations not seeming to care about their own citizens. No war makes any sense to me because it’s so often the civilians that lose the most.
Eyal, I can only hope that when people read your lead-in quote (using the definition of “terrorism” as a feeble means of somehow separating the IDF’s agenda from that of Hamas), that they recognize your blundering folly for what it is. You’ve outed yourself as just another biased skimmer on this topic, and your opinions should be considered of little value.
Padremellyrn – sorry, not a Fox news watcher at all. It’s not okay that any Palestinians are dying. But that is a direct consequence of Hamas shooting rockets from densely populated areas and inciting terror. If Hamas wasn’t shooting rockets at Israel, Israel would not be targeting those rocket sites right now. Forget about the earlier argument of whether it was all due to the killing of a mentally disabled adult or a 12 year old child. Those are both tragic but the ‘blame game’ circles for hundreds of years here. There is no ‘good’ reason for either side to shoot and there is no good reason for FAIR to be trying to decide which came first.
Doug – I agree that Gazans live in a hell and I would be thrilled to see that end. But it can’t and won’t until Hamas is no longer their leadership and forming their guiding principles.
George – not quite sure who you are (though a quick Google search was quite insightful) and I’m going to leave your self-quoting alone
Frankly – my issue with FAIR is that they are not sticking to their own standards with this week’s posts. The first calling out the ‘media’ for playing the ‘which came first’ game and then falling into the trap of playing it themselves is the height of irony. This article complaining about calling rockets aimed at civilians ‘terror’ and being upset that Martin Fletcher didn’t call the tragic death of an infant terrorism is simply wrong. Israel’s goal in targeting Hamas’ rockets is not to incite terror, it is to stop rockets from being fired at its citizens. Hamas’ sole purpose for firing those rockets IS to incite terror and, in their hopes, lead the Jews to flee the country. That is their self described goal and entire reason for being.
gloriana – Sorry but flotilla coverage is not what is being discussed here.
Steven – not sure what being a biased skimmer entails. My goal here is to call attention to FAIR for not following their own rules and for showing a clear bias in these past few stories.
I still find it mind-bogglingly dopey when you have Israeli Lobby apologists like ‘Eyal’ et al, try to defend the indefensable. It doesn’t take an Einstein to recognise that it is criminal to bomb civillians. It is even worse to bomb civillians in the open air concentration camp of Gaza.
You would have to have rocks in your head if you didn’t realise that this sort of balatant brutality against the Palestinians will be the vehicle which gives traction to a growing suspicion, if not hatred, for, and of all things, Jewish. The end result will be that the innocents of Jewish extraction will again bare the brunt of a fomenting tide of prejudice.
What is happenning in Gaza now, and has been happenning for the past decade at least, is criminal and inexcusable.
The Israeli Lobby is working overtime again … the Harolds and Eyals have crawled out from under their rocks to try to justify disgustingly heavy-handed brutality. What do they feed to these people to disconnect them from reality? Palestinians live under a dehumanising occupation force. All common sense and decency have been stripped from them. They are persecuted on a daily, if not hourly basis. These peole are denied basic human rights. And what’s the best the Israeli Lobby and crackpot-Nutandyahoo sympathisers come up with … “Israel responded with an attack aimed not at civilians (taking special pains to avoid civilian casualties)” For fcuk sake, please explain; how do you fire missiles into a concentration camp and simultaneously take pains to avoid civilian casualties?? That is a blatant contradiction. But what does one expect from a people who claim to be the only democracy in the ME while simultaneosly depriving 1.5 million of their population of a vote?? So, would you give the horse manure a break already. Why not try another line for a change. The Goebbellesque BS of the likes of Regev and Nutandyahoo have worn thin and are embarrassing. The international audience have tired of the same dung trotted out on a regular basis and are almost willing for another Adolph to expunge the parasitic criminality, from the international banks, the multi-corps and from Palestine.
The oppression that the Gazans live under is the oppression of Hamas, rpdiplock. Deliberately using their population as human shields, launching rockets from population centers, schools, etc. puts their entire population at risk. The “concentration camp” is of Hamas making, sir or madam. A little self-examination of your attitudes toward the Jewish people seems to be in order.
In response to Harold’s last post …
Do give it a break, already:Who exactly do you think you’re fooling?
The oppression that the Gazan’s live under is the oppression of the USraeli jackboot.
Hamas, to the best of my knowledge are the party who were … elected, under UN supervision (during the ‘let’s pretend they are a separate state, pseudo election process’.
Anyone can make the false claim that the ‘terrorists’ are deliberately using their population as human shields, launching rockets from population centers, schools, etc.” as Israel and FUKUS (France, UK and the US) and NATO allies have done repeatedly, only to be later exposed as having used false information to justify criminal actions, as I suspect you might be doing, using the same unsubstantiated crap to justify your distorted interpretation of reality.
It might be worth your while to remember that normal people would find it embarrassing to defend the kind of Israeli behavior the rest of the world finds heinous.
When will our media begin telling the truth about these conflicts. Israel has always reneged on any “peace” agreements they’ve made. They are STILL building settlements on Arab lands. Unemployment is high and the economy bad in the Gaza. Why? Because the Israelis will not allow them to leave to get whatever jobs may be available to them. They are treated like prisoners in their own land. When will we wise up to the truth? Do the media mention all the walls built arone the Arabs land so they cannot even get to it? All the checkpoints they must pass to get to the jobs they may be lucky enough to have?
The rights that are denied them???? It seems Israel always starts the conflict seizing on the smallest incidents.
Israel never aims a civilians.This is all they(Hamas) do.What do you not see?This is not a surprise.The owners of these missile admit it freely.They want innocents to die
michael e continues with his unbroken record of deceptions:
“Israel never aims at civilians.This is all they (Hamas) do.What do you not see?”
On the contrary! The question is, what does michael e not see? In the last attack against Gaza, 2008-2009, Israel managed to kill about 1400 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians. Eyewitness accounts of deliberate targeting (i.e., at close range) of civilians exist.
Hamas, by contrast, killed 13 Israelis — 1% as many.
Wikipedia reports:
“The conflict damaged or destroyed tens of thousands of homes, 15 of Gaza’s 27 hospitals and 43 of its 110 primary health care facilities, 800 water wells, 186 greenhouses, and nearly all of its 10,000 family farms; leaving 50,000 homeless, 400,000-500,000 without running water, one million without electricity, and resulting in acute food shortages.”
It is said that Hamas “only” targets civilians. This is because Hamas lacks the sophisticated munitions that the Israeli IDF possesses; Hamas lacks the ability to precisely target military facilities. The vast majority of Hamas rockets are ineffective, resulting in no casualties.
Perhaps Western nations, concerned with the terror that Israelis live under (about 1% of the terror that the Gazans suffer), ought to deliver more advanced weapons delivery systems to Hamas.
The ultimate Terrorism is the Occupation of Palestinian lands, the daily murder of Palestinian men, women and children, the daily drone flights, the assassinations from the air and on land, the blockage of Gaza for five years now, the occupation infrastructure in place of checkpoints, etc, etc,. That is basic terror. Gaza is an open-air concentration camp! People are unable to get medicines or other necessities unless allowed by the Occupying Power, unable to move, unable to live. They are under siege and have the right to use any means to fight back. They are the ones needing our protection and help. Israel can act with impunity everywhere in Palestine because their benefactors, the American government, let’s them do whatever they feel like and gives them the military arms to do it with, compliments of the American taxpayer. The reason? Everyone is afraid of AIPAC, the Jewish lobby and in fact, Congress is Israeli-occupied territory. This is the overriding reason why America has a very bad reputation in the Arab and Moslem world although Christian Palestinians suffer the same way as their Moslem brethren. Most of the “corporate media” do a good job of censoring themselves by rarely if ever explaining the real situation on the ground and consequently few Americans know the awful reality being faced by the Palestinian people daily, nor do they talk about the crimes continuing to be committed by the Occupiers. But I see from many of the comments here, stated more elegantly than mine, more and more people are becoming knowledgeable and aware of this outrage.
It is time that as human beings we move as citizen of the planet to criminalize war….Please join me in starting a petition to send to the United Nations Let,s move to the next level…….HUMANITY.
charlessmith49@yahoo.com
The UN assessments have shown that BOTH SIDES have committed WAR CRIMES against each other. However Israel is legitimate and the Palestinians are not. Israel has the protection of the USA and the Palestinians do not. Te US press, most of it, bias is on the side of the Israelis not on the side of right or wrong. That is the problem here. Why it is a bad idea for the US to be involved in negotiations since they are on Israel’s side not neutral.
From http://www.medialens.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=706:gaza-blitz-turmoil-and-tragicomedy-at-the-bbc&catid=25:alerts-2012&Itemid=69
The sequence of recent events, so lacking in ‘mainstream’ reports, that led to Israel’s massive attacks on Gaza can be summarised thus:
October 29: The BBC reports that ‘Militants in Gaza have fired 26 rockets into Israel, officials say, amid a flare-up in fighting which shattered a brief ceasefire between the two sides. No injuries were reported from the barrage, in the south of the country.’ The BBC said that, ‘It came hours after Israeli aircraft hit targets in Gaza, after militants fired rockets following the killing by Israel of a Gazan who Israel said fired mortars at its troops.’
November 4: an innocent, apparently mentally unfit, 20-year old man, Ahmad al-Nabaheen, is shot when he wanders close to the border with Israel. Medics have to wait for six hours to be permitted to pick him up and they suspect that he may have died because of that delay.
November 8: Israeli soldiers invade Gaza, shooting and killing a 13-year old Gazan boy, Ahmad Abu Daqqa, who was playing football.
November 10: Palestinian resistance fighters attack an Israeli army jeep near the boundary with Gaza, injuring 4 Israeli occupation soldiers. An Israeli shell kills two children in Gaza. An Israeli tank later attacks a funeral service killing two more civilians, wounding more than 20 others.
November 11: Palestinian resistance fighters reportedly agree a ceasefire.
November 13: Reuters reports that truce between Palestinians and Israel appears to be holding.
November 14: Israel breaks ceasefire by killing Ahmed al-Jabari and launching intense attacks on Gaza. According to investigative journalist Gareth Porter: ‘Israeli assassination of Jabari destroyed possibility of mediated Israeli-Hamas truce.’
Stop the War concluded:
‘Israeli government claims that they are conducting a “defensive” operation in response to rocket fire from Hamas is not true. Israel is directly responsible for the latest round of violence and must cease attacking Gaza immediately.’ (Email, November 15, 2012)
On November 15, retaliating to the escalation in Israeli violence, Hamas missile strikes launched from Gaza into southern Israel killed three people. Every violent death is a tragedy but Yousef Munayyer, executive director of the Jerusalem Fund, gave much-needed perspective in an article published the same day:
‘While Israeli officials are quick to rattle off the numbers of projectiles fired from Gaza, rarely do they tell you what they fire into Gaza, what the effects of this fire is and what the fallout from it is.
‘For example, in 2011, the projectiles fired by the Israeli military into Gaza have been responsible for the death of 108 Palestinians, of which 15 where (sic) women or children […]
‘Through September 2012, Israeli weaponry caused 55 Palestinian deaths and 257 injuries. Among these 312 casualties, 61, or roughly 20 percent, were children and 28 were female. […] It is important to note that these figures do not represent a totality of Israeli projectiles fired into Gaza but rather only Israeli projectiles fired into Gaza which cause casualties. The total number of Israeli projectiles fired into Gaza is bound to be significantly larger.
Munayyer added: ‘more Palestinians were killed in Gaza yesterday than Israelis have been killed by projectile fire from Gaza in the past three years.’
The U.S. Army Manual definition terrorism is the “calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear. It is intended to coerce or intimidate governments or societies … [to attain]
political, religious, or ideological goals.” U.S. Army Field Manual No. FM 3-0, Chapter 9, 37 (14 June 2001). If we accept that the small minority of Palestinians who do fire rockets into Israel are engaged in ‘terrorism’, then we must accept that the Israeli government and IDF are also engaged in much larger scale and more signifcant ‘terrorism’. Yet as the occupying or in reality colonial power Israels justification for such acts is actually less compelling than Palestinian terrorists. These actions are in linked to Israeli economic, social and demographic policies towards Palestinians. The key ingredient here is unlawful and unfair acquisition of ‘land’ by force, cooercion and punishment of an entire society (West Bank and Gaza), by the threat of force and other nefarious means. The distinction that it is somehow the fault of Palestinian civilians that they happen to be in the vacinity of an IDF designated target is absurd. Is it the fault of Israelis for happening to live in Israel? What exactly are the Palestinians supposed to do? Where should they seek shelter? The absurd notion that because you hit a target ‘designated’ legitimate you are absolved of criminal responsibility is not logical. If you know, absolutely for certain, that once you fire a rocket, bomb etc (even at a target designated somehow ‘legitimate’) that you WILL probably or certainly kill scores of innocent civilians in the explosion and cause hideous injuries to an untold number of others, you have accepted these deaths/injuries as acceptable to the mission and expected nothing less. No one ordering the shooting of weopons (even machine guns) in densely populated areas can ever be surprised by this reality. The sematics over the deliberate targeting of civilians is actually rather silly, if you act in the way described (ah la the US and Israel or any number of other nations), you ARE by logical consequence ‘targeting’ civilians. That is murder. Even the mafia will usually kill only the individual targeted for death, they do not wipe out an entire building, street, shopping centre etc to kill ‘one’ person.
Since few on this sight can understand what it is like to be under constant missile attack,or have any sympathy for the Israeli’s who are living this, let me appeal to logic.I may not like the elephant living outside my garden wall.But it takes a lot of stupid to have my family standing next to him as i stab at him with my pen knife over and over.So I appeal to Hamas .Are you really doing what is best for you own people?You are about to have your heads handed to you.And your people- their asses.Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor.
For Zionists who blame Palestinian fighters for firing rockets indiscriminately at civilians in Israel! Why not allow Hamas getting F16 and drones with laser guided missiles and 400 nuclear warheads, so you both can fight equally!!!!! Honorable fighters never fight less equipped enemy!
It is deplorable that the world,s super powers,not only condone but
participate in the wholesale killing of humans.If it,s the moral authority
principal you want to convey, then you should act accordingly.
Do the defenders of Israel not see that there could be more effective approaches to control terror than killing people and embargoing and bombing them into submission?
Tishado of course they do.What have they not tried?They have given land only to be attacked from it.They have removed troops only to have the terrorists flow in.They have lifted embargoes(land) and so we see the result.Theses missiles came through that open area.If they lifted sea embargoes the same would happen.What would you have them do next sir?
How come there are so many fascist-Zionists on the FAIR blog?
Good post. I learn something totally new and challenging on websites I stumbleupon every day.
It’s always helpful to read articles from other authors and use a little something from other sites.