This site has been maintained as an archive and not an active blog. That may changing soon, as I no longer think I am preaching to the choir. For all those who visited through the years, my thanks to you, and well wishes for your endeavors in your current and future projects.
May God richly bless you all.
JMT
A Palestinian bull dozer operator used his tractor as a weapon today, attacking pedestrians and vehicles in downtown Jerusalem, killing three people and injuring thirty, before being shot dead by a member of the IDF and an Israeli police officer. It's a scene that sounds like it could have come from a horror movie, but it happened on the crowded streets of downtown Jerusalem around noon Wednesday. A Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem was operating his bulldozer at a construction site, and suddenly turned his tractor into a weapon, attacking nearby pedestrians and vehicles, killing three women and injuring some thirty other people, overturning two transit buses in the process.
The driver, who reportedly had a criminal record and was the holder of an Israeli (blue) identification card, was shot dead by a SWAT officer near the old Shaare Zedek Medical Center. The terrorist was identified as 31-year-old Hossam Dawiath, a father of two from the village of Tzur Baher.
The terrorist continued on his killing spree, but a short while later a soldier and a SWAT officer jumped on top of the vehicle. The officer then shot the terrorist in the chest and leg and killed him.
The attack came with no warning; there was no indication that the man was going to go on the rampage today that took three lives. The dozer was from a nearby construction site for the Jerusalem Tram system.
I know that there are those who feel that Israel has badly mistreated the "Palestinians" in the period since the reformation of the nation of Israel. I know that there are those who believe that the nation of Israel has no right to exist in it's present incarnation simply due to the fact that Israel had not existed as a nation for nearly 2,000 years. Their claim is that Palestine has every right to oppose Israeli occupation of the region because they had secured the area and made it their own. But yet and still, there was never an established nation called Palestine. Since the diaspora of 136 AD, the region had gone without having an established governmental structure until the mass return of the Jews from around the world in the last century.
The Palestinian "problem" exists as much at the fault of the Arab nations as it does anyone else for not allowing their fellow Arabic people to do anything but live in refugee villages between nations, a position Palestinians found themselves in for the early on terrorist activities against the newly formed Israeli regime.
But Palestinian apologists won't hear any part of this, because they don't think the Israeli's should be back in their traditional homeland to begin with.
Let me take a moment to point out the hypocrisy in this mindset; I have heard the same people who will not allow for a the notion of a return for the Nation of Israel to their homeland turn around in the same conversation and demand that white Americans make apologies to blacks for slavery.
In any event, an attack upon an unarmed civilian populace is an act of cowardice, in my estimation. I sincerely hope that this isn't the beginning of a new trend of terrorist tactics to be employed by terrorist organizations.
For years the main stream media has pushed the notion of how the Palestinians have been treated harshly by Israel, often blaming Israel as the instigator in situations where the IDF has retaliated for actions against Israel. Now the situation has changed.
To say that there has been unrest in the Middle East for the past several decades would be as much of an understatement as to say that the Grand Canyon is a big ditch. We have discussed, in the past, such issues as the Balfour agreement, the wars between Israel and her neighbors, the very right of Israel to exist as a nation, and the plight of the "Palestinians." The main stream media has invested much time and energy driving the "blame Israel for all of it" bus that now, as thinks have taken a strong, radical, dramatic change in the Middle East, the detractors of Israel are remaining strangely silent, not reporting on the current situation faced by Palestinians.
Could it be that there is nothing that screams of media bias more than the silence of the media over the peril being faced by Palestinians as they find themselves in the middle of fighting between other Arabs?
Intense fighting broke out in Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp on 20 May between Fatah al-Islam, an Islamist armed group that had recently moved into the camp, and Lebanese armed forces. According to reports, 168 Lebanese soldiers, 42 civilians and 220 Fatah al-Islam members were killed before the army gained control of the camp on 2 September.
During the clashes, both sides put civilians at risk. Fatah al-Islam established armed positions in the camp and withdrew to them after attacking an army base. The army carried out heavy and possibly indiscriminate artillery shelling of the camp. The camp was largely destroyed. It appeared that after the army took control there was widespread looting, burning and vandalism of vacated homes and property. In December, the Prime Minister wrote to Amnesty International to say that the army was investigating the reports, noting that one finding was that the army had burned some homes to rid them of a poison spread by Fatah al-Islam.
Most of some 30,000 Palestinian refugees displaced from Nahr al-Bared relocated to Beddaawi refugee camp. They were allowed to return to Nahr al-Bared from October but the majority remained displaced at the end of the year. The camp remained off-limits to the media and local human rights organizations.
On May 10th, Johnny Simpson reported that al-Qaeda had declared war on Hezbollah in Lebanon. Fighting, which has been going on for over a year now, has spilled into Palestinian settlements, so far leaving several civilians injured or dead as a result of clashes between hostile factions. The civilian populace isnt safe when there is no fighting, however, as reports of abuse have become all to common place in Arab on Arab violence.
Scores of Palestinians were threatened, humiliated and abused by soldiers, often after being stopped at army checkpoints. Abuses included being stripped, being forced to lie on the road, and being beaten, kicked, hit with rifle butts, insulted and humiliated. In several cases individuals were reportedly whipped, given electric shocks and sexually abused.
Some 200 people were arrested and remained detained on account of their suspected involvement with Fatah al-Islam. Tens of these were reportedly charged with terrorism offences that can carry the death penalty. There were reports that some detainees were tortured or otherwise ill-treated.
So where are the news networks as these things are happening? The United Nations has done their usual with regards to incidents in the region where Israel is not involved for taking the blame: absolutely nothing (although they have passed a resolution for the investigation of the death of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 22 others in 2005). Other than a few more local sources and outlets, there is very little being discussed about the Palestinian situation, now that it's not something involving Israel.
What does this say of the main stream media that they pick and choose which side to take in a situation, rather than objectively reporting the news? What does it say for us, as a society, that we allow ourselves to be so easily influenced as the many, by the few, rather than examining situations ourselves to come up with our own conclusions?
Opinion pieces, like those who write them, are just that. The opinions of those who write them. They, like all other forms of media, have their place and purpose, and as such, in setting forth to reach an audience, should do so responsibly. When reporting the news becomes so overwhelmingly influenced by opinion, however, there is no objectivity, there is no integrity of an unbiased reflection of events.
This is no new trend for the media. "Yellow Journalism" has it's roots in the late 1890's, during circulation battles between Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal, both of whom are blamed or credited, depending on your point of view, for drawing the United States into the Spanish-American War. Print media, and later on radio and television media, have continued to fall into a consistent pattern of employing such journalistic "tactics" in order to sell papers or garner ratings from listeners and viewers. In the process, someone always suffers the consequences for being the target of biased reporting.
This time, however, the law of unintended consequences factors in. The Palestinian refugees, a product of political and social manipulation and wrangling as well as yellow journalism, have been used for years as a thorn in the side of Israel, with Arab nations not allowing these people to come across their borders into their nations. As recently as this past spring, Palestinians breached a wall separating their villages from Egypt, opening a route for refugees to travel to markets in Egypt to shop and do business. The Egyptian response was to agree with Israel that Palestinian authorities reseal the wall, as a chaotic situation had ensued with the masses of people flooding into Egypt, some returning with weapons to their villages.
But this time, as violence continues to shift and wind it's way across the Middle East, the media is turning it's attention elsewhere, unable to blame Israel for the danger in which Palestinian civilians find themselves facing. The clear message sent by the silence of the media? "If Israel isn't to blame, it ain't news."
