Rockets? What Rockets??

Though the ceasefire between Israel and Gaza still holds, and the sirens (at least in the South) have been silenced, the media barrage against Israel continues. Earlier I noted the lack of balance in Tony Lerman’s New York Times opinion piece in which he criticizes Israel’s military operation but fails to mention the word “rocket” even once. Since then, I’ve repeated the same handy dandy maneuver of using ctrl f with the word “rocket” to check coverage of the conflict in online news items.

Let’s begin with Harriet Sherwood of The Guardian. Featuring a pitiful photo of Gazans picking through a tall pile of gray rubble, Ms. Sherwood’s piece quotes Naima Musabeh, who says, “There is nothing left, we lost everything. Where is the good from this? We are destroyed.”

Now in Ms. Sherwood’s place I would have said, “Well, Naima, had you not let that nice young Hamas terrorist set up his rocket launcher in your living room, this might not have happened to you.”

But no. Ms. Sherwood wouldn’t dare mention the “r” word, now would she? That would not serve her anti-Israel agenda at all.

Moving right along, we come to another glorious New York Times piece, this time about the BDS movement gaining traction in Europe as a result of the “Gaza War,” as if the war were confined to Gaza, alone. This long-winded piece, complete with lengthy quote from MP George Galloway, and illustrated with a photo of demonstrating Muslims decrying, “Israel’s attacks on Gaza,” rationalizes the BDS movement, tying it to the operation in Gaza without once mentioning the provocation for that operation. Again, the simple six-letter word “rocket” is blatantly omitted (from a piece numbering some 30 paragraphs) and along with it, all context, balance, or any semblance of journalistic neutrality.

Next up, this report from the UN News Centre on Gazan poverty and oppression begins, “Even before the latest crisis in the Gaza Strip, the tiny enclave’s local economy was in a state of total collapse, chiefly due to the accumulated impact of a crushing seven-year blockade and two devastating Israeli military operations in November 2012 and December 2008.”

Oh really? I thought the total collapse of Gaza’s economy was due to Hamas was using aid and supplies to turn Gaza into one large launching pad aimed at Israel. Apparently, the UN doesn’t find any merit in this idea of self-induced misery, since the report fails to mention, even once, the word “rocket.”

Then of course we have this contribution by the ever-faithful Ma’an News Agency, which tells the sad tale of a 23 year-old Gazan woman who succumbed to “wounds sustained during the latest Israeli assault on Gaza,” as if Israel just unleashed its full military might on tiny little defenseless Gaza for absolutely NO REASON WHATSOEVER.

Um. It’s not that I’m callous. I don’t like to hear about civilians dying, but seriously, bias much? The piece has me inventing knock knock jokes:

Knock knock.

Who’s there?

11,000 rockets.

11,000 rockets who? I don’t see any rockets, what rockets? Where? Rockets? What’s a rocket?

No rockets mentioned in the piece about the late lamented Gazan woman. Not a one. She just died. Because Israel. Okay?

Last (but only for now), is this piece from the New York Observer complaining that the war between Hamas and Israel made Tablet go all right wing. Tsk. Basically, this rant accuses Tablet of defecting from the ranks, mainly because it is now posting opinions from both the left AND THE RIGHT of the political spectrum.

That might have been okay before Gaza, claims writer Amy Klein as if Gaza happened in a vacuum, but it’s not okay NOW. And of course those 11,000 plus rockets Hamas shot into Israel were too piddly to even rate a mention by this august writer whose byline mentions the tantalizing fact that “Amy Klein is a New York-based writer who has written for most of the Jewish publications mentioned.”

Yes, she certainly did mention a whole lot of Jewish publications in her piece.  Ms. Klein, however, mentions not one of the thousands of rockets shot at her Jewish brothers and sisters.

I guess that’s simply not PC.