Media Bias

UPDATE: Gaza Diary: Not a life for children

I will confess that I did not appreciate the full horror of the Palestinian situation until fairly recently. Partly this is because I had not really dug into it. As long as anybody stays on the surface of the bubble, meaning as long as you rely on the mainstream media, it’s very hard to understand the degree of bias presented on the Israeli/Palestinian issue. It’s very difficult to comprehend the degree of suffering that the Palestinians have endured and continue to endure. In fact, their suffering has increased to unbearable levels.

But Palestinian suffering does not get the same media treatment as Israeli suffering.

Here’s a fresh example from this past week.

JERUSALEM - Hamas militants fired a rocket into an Israeli border village yesterday, wounding two young sisters as they played outside their home. The attack followed Israeli strikes against Gaza militants and threats of an “all-front” war on the Islamic group.

Israel responded with more air strikes and a ground raid early today, killing six militants.

The rapid-fire events threatened to escalate into large-scale combat that could derail US-led Mideast peace efforts.

Hamas stepped up its rocket barrages on southern Israel for a second day, retaliating for an Israeli strike that killed seven of its police officers. More than a dozen rockets rained down, one exploding at Kibbutz Beeri, a communal village about 4 miles from the border fence.

Two sisters, ages 12 and 2, suffered minor injuries as they played in their yard, police said. Their mother was taken to a hospital for shock.

Israel unleashed an intensified air campaign after Hamas claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing Monday that killed a woman in southern Israel. It was the first such Hamas attack in Israel in more than three years.

Here is the accompanying picture, captioned: A woman tried to comfort a child yesterday after a Palestinian rocket fired from Gaza hit a kibbutz in southern Israel. (MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP/Getty Images)

In Gaza many people live in rubble instead homes. In Gaza people are dying every day because Israel has cut them off from humanitarian aid. In Gaza raw sewage runs down the streets.

There is no comparison between the suffering of Gazans and the suffering of these Israeli villagers. Sorry. None. The media has been over-reporting Israeli deaths and under-reporting Palestinian deaths for years. Go ahead. Look at the charts.

This is wrong. This is totally unjust. In supporting the Israeli government, we support them in unjustly and cruelly oppressing the Palestinian people. Please realize what that means. It’s probably not what you’ve been told because of said media bias. I highly recommend reading Lawrence of Cyberia’s blog, and in particular this post, if you need to be brought up to speed, as I did.

There’s so much horrific injustice in the world. Why is our country so often at the center of it? Why does the media play these games? What the hell is going on? We are being manipulated, but why do we need to be manipulated about this issue? Think about it. Cui bono.

Here are some pictures of people suffering in Gaza. Compare these pictures to the one above and ask yourself, is there really any comparison?