The Ultimate Orwell

It has always fascinated me that one of the stereotypes and anti-semitic canards propagated is the supposed Jewish control, or pro-Israel bent of the news media.

If anyone has a chance to actually investigate the truth, they will discover just how false and ridiculous both those claims are. From this summers "photogate" stories of outright faked photos from the war against Hezbollah, to the "Pallywood" dramas played out on your screens so often.

[COLOR seagreen]{Note - for those that do not know - Pallywood is the name that has been given to the staged "atrocities" that Palestinians, and even Hezbollah this summer - think Tyre where bodies were brought in to make it look like Israel had bombed a residential apt. bldg.- film and then submit.

Most photographers in the middle east, particularly in the Arab countries, b/c of their antipathy to all that is Western, are natives of that country or region and not full time employees of the news services. The purchasing news agencies, Reuters, AP, etc. pay these "stringers" or free lancers, when they submit tape. Rarely are the tapes checked for accuracy, although as a result of what happened this summer in Lebanon, Reuters fired their photo editor.

The most extreme example of this "Pallywood" syndrome was the supposed murder of the little boy, Mohammed Durya, I believe was his purported name, filmed by Agence France and sent all over the world. It allegedly showed a little 12 year old boy, frightened, clutching to his father, caught in the crossfire of Palestinian terrorists and an Israeli Army outpost. It was this incident that was used by Yasser Arafat to start the second intifada.

Only later, was the raw footage seen in the West. When that was revealed it was shocking to say the least. What was discovered was that, in fact, the scene was WHOLLY staged. This was recently the subject of a lawsuit in France. A libel charge against the agency. The judge found that the tape was in fact a fiction but did not award damages because in the interest of diplomacy, Israel refused to participate in the proceeding, not wanting to "anger" the French.

There was no Israeli action going on, in fact the "actors" were not even facing the Israeli position. Men could be seen on the film indicating take one, two, etc. directing the actors, calling in ambulances at just the right moment, and most farcically injured "victims" jumping up to prep for the next "scene". There is still some debate over the fate of the boy and his father.

Most reliable reports indicate one of two things, either the father was killed by Palestinian bullets - there was a corpse eventually released to the Israelis and ballistics tests revealed the bullets were not IDF ordinance; or there was no one actually hurt. If you do a web search you will find the raw footage on line.}[/COLOR]

[COLOR blue]Most of the truths can be found through three wonderful organizations, MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute), Camera (committee for accuracy in middle east reporting in America) and Honest Reporting.[/COLOR]

Today I will however focus on one of the most obvious, and overlooked aspects of the anti-Israel bias in the world's press.

Whenever a bomb goes off in New York, London, Riyadh, Baghdad, Madrid, etc. It was set by a "terrorist".

Use of this word is so common that you may not have noticed that the world's media outlets do not describe those who detonate these devices in Israel as terrorists. They are called, instead, in the stories, "militants".

Even those who blow themselves up are no longer called suicide bombers. When reading the story you do not notice the difference as your eye scans the page, but like most of the "story" from the last 60 years it is a subtle and important change (e.g. do you even know what a "settlement" looks like - they look like any suburb in the US, not some bizarre outpost as portrayed in the Western Media;
or, what is the "West Bank" - isn't that the few yards off the edge of a river - in the case of Israel it is 2/3 the width of the entire country).

So, the ultimate absurdity was born out today. A story went across the AP wire of a plot that was stopped by the Israelis (another little reported fact, Israel stops literally hundreds of attacks every week, largely through good basic security - bag checks, etc.).

What makes the story of interest to the wire services is that the plotters were two brothers.

One of the brothers had emigrated to Israel and converted to Judaism. The other brother remained in the Palestinian territories and was a Muslim.

So the almost incredible, bizarre, black is white description of the two brothers who were equally complicit in the planning and attempted carrying out of the plot?

[SIZE 3]The brother that lived IN Israel, who converted to Judaism, was described in the AP story as a TERRORIST, the brother who did EXACTLY the same thing but lived in the territories was described as a MILITANT.[/SIZE]

[COLOR firebrick][B]WHO CONTROLS THE MEDIA?[/B][/COLOR]