Soccer Dad

It depends on what the word "spat" means

The other night Israeli forces entered Gaza on the ground, something they hadn't done since the government evacuated all Jews from Gaza last summer. Meryl Yourish scores the Scotsman for describing the incident as a cross-border spat and writes further

In one fell swoop, the Scotsman downplays the threat of palestinian rockets — which have killed and wounded people, including palestinians who live near the border — and manage to accuse the IDF of being upset that they are unable to stop the rocket fire — not that the rockets are being fired to begin with. Yet another example of how palestinian crimes are utterly whitewashed and ignored, and Israeli self-defense actions are demonized.

The fact of this matter is that it was a purely military operation. IDF soldiers penetrated enemy territory to prevent the enemy from firing rockets into its civilian areas. The military action was successful. Terrorists were killed, with no collateral damage, and no harm done to the IDF soldiers. The soldiers went in, did their job, killed the enemy combatants, and got out unharmed.

But you wouldn’t know it from reading the Scotsman piece.

If the reporting of this incident weren't bad enough, several bloggers have noted problems with the photographs and followup too.

Backspin shows a picture of a dead terrorist next to a rocket launcher and wonders if the news people had been tipped off ahead of the attack on Israel. Backspin links to similar incidents where it appears that the reporters were at the scene to publicize a terror attack - doing the bidding of terrorists, as opposed to simply stumbling upon a newsworthy event.

AbbaGav anticipated that after these terrorists were killed in the process of a terrorist attack the news services would focus on the grief their relatives expressed once they were killed! (The news services didn't report on the grief felt by relatives of a man and a woman who were lynched. Of course in the case of the woman, her relatives might not be grieving because they were the ones who did her in. And then again since they were killed by fellow Palestinians not Israeli, there wouldn't be the same outpouring of grief. No cameras.)

Elder of Ziyon documents the way the grieving relatives were shown - context free. (They were relatives of men killed by Israel; no mention of what their relatives were doing when they were retired by Israeli forces.)

Technorati tags: Terrorism, Palestinian Authority, Media Bias.