It is amazing how the Israeli leadership blatantly lies to the world! After reports that militants had launched Soviet-made missiles towards Ashkelon for the first time, an Israeli military leader had the audacity to say that the missiles were Iranian-made. Huh??

Also, I enjoy how the Western media goes out of its way to make American viewers feel comfortable by giving the view of middle-class Israeli people when discussing the war the Israelis are waging against Gaza, and not the view of the actual people being affected or hurt by it. When people are dying on one side of the security fence, how is it even ethical for the BBC to ask the residents of Sderot, who moved there from somewhere else, how hard it is for them for homemade rockets that rarely hit their target to land in the desert in the general region of their city? Poor people (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7270650.stm).

This article by former Ma’ariv correspondent, Yonatan Mendel, rails against this ridiculous treatment of the Palestinians by the press: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n05/mend01_.html. For example, when a militant Palestinian group takes an Israeli hostage across the security fence (in this case a soldier) it is “kidnapping”, but when Israel does the same across the security fense (in this case, a parliamentarian) it is “arrest”. Similarly, the IDF never “murders” anyone; it merely “hits” them. How can these writers even take themselves or their reporting seriously?

This passage in particular sticks out, because it very accurately describes the type of reporting depressingly common when the situation in Gaza is discussed:

‘A Qassam fell next to a residential house, three Israelis had slight injuries, and ten others suffered from shock.’ One should not make light of these injuries: a missile hitting a house in the middle of the night could indeed cause great shock. However, one should also remember that shock is for Jews only. Palestinians are apparently a very tough people.

During the July War I was at home watching CNN when some reporters interviewed a family in the north of Israel that was clearly much affected by the rockets being launched by the Hezbollah. A pleasant woman who had moved only a few years before with her whole family from Brooklyn was describing how whenever they heard the emergency siren (much less actually saw a rocket, God forbid) the whole family would go into the house’s bomb shelter, a large, well-lit room that had electricity, an internet connection, toys for the children, a kitchen, and a bathroom, and would have to wait it out. It was terrible, she continued, having to stay there for an hour or two on some days, and the children would get very bored. After spending some more time with this intolerable woman who spoke the words just so, so as to best appeal to American sensibilities, CNN moved on to some reporter surrounded by obliterated apartment buildings talking about the general destruction behind him. Where was our Lebanese American to explain to us how she had no bomb shelter, but was instead at the IDF’s mercy, in a lilted voice laced with American colloquialisms? Where was our human face? The blatant bias was shocking and filled me with anger, since it wasn’t hard to imagine which scenes an American would react more emotionally to.

Never mind that the woman in Israel had made it clear the most pressing issue for her in this war was the boredom her children might suffer for a few minutes. It pains me to think how much the Lebanese mothers of Qana might give for a few minutes of boredom with their dead children…