Soccer Dad

Nathan's parable

Treppenwitz has an excellent post "Ibrahim's mirror." Reading it is a fascinating excercise in examining our prejudices. I see what my prejudices are, but I'm still not convinced that I'm wrong.

As I reached the middle of the post, I was thinking why doesn't the government just give the guy his tractor back.

But then I read on. And I was angered. Why?

Because when Treppenwitz changed things around I knew that the story after his corrections would never be known.

The original story had elements that the MSM love:

Settlers encroaching on Palestinian land.

Right wing American Jews exacerbating the situation.

A Palestinian unjustly deprived of his livelihood.

These are all part of the MSM narrative. (Not to mention the typical leftist premises.)

But this story will never be covered. The encroachers are the wrong encroachers. The exacerbators are the wrong exacerbators. The deprivee is the wrong deprivee.

I have long been skeptical of claims of the olive libels. Tel-Chai nation has too. That this incident hasn't been reported just reinforces my prejudice against stories that condemn Jews living in Yehuda and Shomron (and lionize their Arab neighbors.)

I suppose it could also be called Nathan's parable after the prophet who confronts Kind David for his misdeed. I see myself as part of the problem, but I still see a bigger problem out there. My mistrust has a reason for its existence.

There are those who are convinced that organizations such as HonestReporting and CAMERA are chasing red herrings and point to the occasional positive story about Israel as proof. The problem is that the individual stories don't make up for a narrative that accepts nearly every Palestinian claim at face value and only shows skepticism to Jewish claims. (Unless those Jewish claims show the same deference to the Palestinian narrative.)

Technorati tags: media bias, Israel.

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Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.