Thursday, February 28, 2013

WHO STARTED IT?

Here is another comment on the following February 26th article discussed earlier:

           http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/02/26/israel-palestinians-rocket.html

The article contains the following casual claim:

         "Over the past decade, Gaza militants have fired thousands of rockets and mortar shells at Israel, and Israel has responded with military strikes."

This is classic war journalism.

CBC does this all the time. They always describe Israeli attacks on Palestinians as "a response" to something done by Palestinians.

It is so routine for CBC to see things this way that they do not think twice about writing a line like this.

But why does CBC not feel it is necessary to start every reference to Palestinian attacks as "a response to" Israeli violence, oppression and ethnic cleansing?

Peace journalism refrains from saying "who started it", or even implying one side was acting solely in response to an unexplainable provocation from the other side.

Can you ever imagine CBC writing a line like the following:

     "Over the past decade, Israel has carried out thousands of acts of violence, oppression and human rights abuses against Palestinians, and Gaza militants have responded with rocket attacks."

It would be unthinkable.

For whatever reason, CBC wants to create the impression that Israel is the innocent victim of violence from wild and crazy Arabs, who commit violence for no other reason than it is in their evil nature to do so.

How this lopsided and phony war journalism serves the interests of Canadians is beyond me.


No comments:

Post a Comment