Who Started It?

On August 21st, CBC is still doing Israeli propaganda work for them, suggesting very strongly, including in the headline, that the Palestinians started the recent round of extreme violence:

Hamas admits kidnapping 3 young Israeli men, setting off Gaza war

Killing of 3 boys in June provoked spiral of violence that led to war in Gaza

What CBC, like Israeli propaganda, always fails to point out is that the killing of the three Israelis was part of a cycle of continual violence that was only unusual in that, instead of Israelis killing Palestinians, which is routine, in this case the Israelis were victims. From an objective perspective, this killing of Israelis was not so special, because it followed on a whole series of Israeli killings of Palestinians, and was immediately followed by more Israeli killing of Palestinians. It is only special if you look at it with a biased, Israeli perspective which says: Killing Israelis is horrible and unacceptable and must be punished, but killing Palestinians is routine and acceptable. Fine for Israeli racists, but why does CBC adopt this lopsided perspective?

Also, did Hamas actually say they "admit setting off Gaza war"? I doubt it. This headline is probably a lie. Actually the article even quotes the Hamas statement that the killings were provoked by Israeli arrests:

"This was an operation from your brothers in Qassam undertaken to aid their brothers on hunger strike in (Israeli) prisons," 

And the sub-headline is also a lie - the spiral of violence was well underway with about a dozen Israeli killings of Palestinians from January to June 2014, including TWO unarmed teenagers in May. The killing of the Israelis provoked only Israel, while according to CBC, we are  to believe that the killing of Palestinians does not provoke anything.

Also did Hamas really admit to organizing and ordering the kidnapping and killing of the 3 Israelis? The wording quoted by CBC does not say this. It simply says that the action was in keeping with the spirit of their fight against Israel:

"There was much speculation about this operation, some said it was a conspiracy," Saleh al-Arouri told delegates at the International Union of Islamic Scholars in Istanbul on Wednesday, according to a recording of the meeting posted online by organizers.

"The popular will was exercised throughout our occupied land, and culminated in the heroic operation by the Qassam Brigades in imprisoning the three settlers in Hebron," he said, referring to Hamas's armed wing.

When Israeli youths burned to death an innocent Arab teenager in Jerusalem, this was also in keeping with the rhetoric for revenge coming from Netanyahu and other even more extreme Israel leaders, so it may not be very different from what happened with the Israeli teenagers.