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CNN Goes There. All. The. Frigging. Time.

The Jews of Israel have neither slumbered nor slept, at least not very well, since the news began to trickle down in a thin and unreliable stream of rumor mixed with truth. That was Friday, when many of us were preparing for Shabbos. There was a gag order and word had it that there was, at the same time as the gag order, a misinformation campaign by the press so as to mislead the captors of our boys.

That meant that whatever we read or heard from the media was unreliable and could not be believed.

All we knew for sure was that at least two young Jewish boys had gone missing.

Now we know it is three. We know their names. And the entire house of Israel prays for them.

We’ve been here before. Many of us remember that terrible Sabbath when all the women in Israel prayed for Nachshon Wachsman’s safety as they lit the candles that ushered in the day of rest. Alas, Nachshon’s young life was not spared.

We remember when Gilad Shalit was kidnapped. Many of us said countless psalms on his behalf during that first endless summer. We saw his baby-face in the news. We shook our heads and tsked.

This is what they do, Arabs: they wield terror. And when people go missing in Israel, we know why and we know what has happened.

Failed Negotiations? Nah

It has nothing to do with failed negotiations.

It has nothing to do with Jews building homes in this territory or that.

And contrary to what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says, it also has nothing to do with the newly formed Fatah/Hamas government.

All these things provide a pretext, an excuse, some form of cover for what they do at any time at all. The pretext is just their way of building their symbiotic relationship with the media and the world.

Who knows who said it first: that the kidnapping is the result of Israel’s intransigence? Was it the PA, the Obama Administration, or the media?

No one knows. And it doesn’t really matter.

Once one of them says it, the others join the chorus. And then it kicks in at the grassroots level, despite all evidence to the contrary: the sweets handed out in Gaza, the cartoons of 3 Zionist mice, the Facebook page of the Palestinian Authority Press with its request in Arabic to destroy the CCTV footage so as not to aid the IDF in their recovery of the three young captives.

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And of course, one does not really even need a pretext, an excuse, a form of cover, if what we know to be true is to begin with called into question.

This is what CNN did when it placed the word “kidnapped” in quotation marks in its homepage headline, as if even the very fact of the kidnapping wasn’t to be trusted. As if this was just one more Israeli ploy to scuttle the nonexistent peace process.

CNN

Because all is legitimate in love and war and this is CNN’s war against Israel.

Here is how this happens, this nefarious semantic twisting by CNN that casts Israel as pest and villain instead of victim:

As the story first breaks, Israeli media refers to the missing boys as “presumed kidnapped” because investigations of crimes in countries with due process are careful to begin preliminary investigations of crimes with careful language and “presumptions,” rather than assertions.

This is true even when the evidence overwhelmingly points to a specific conclusion, as it does in this case. There was no doubt the boys had been kidnapped.

The INVESTIGATION, however, was still preliminary at this point, and therefore the language used by Israeli officials and the Israeli media reflected this reality.

Respect For Due Process

Cautious language at the earliest stage of the Israeli investigation of the kidnapping is reflective of the fact that Israel is a democracy that respects due process rather than an implication that the evidence might lead to any conclusion other than the obvious one: the boys were kidnapped.

CNN, unlike Israel however, is all too ready to implicate and point fingers. CNN chose to take this careful language, so reflective of Israel’s status as a democracy respectful of due process, and ran with it. CNN surrounded the word “kidnapped” with quotation marks, thereby using punctuation marks as a weapon in its war against the Jewish State. In so doing, CNN cast Israel in a vengeful and evil light for even venturing the suggestion that the boys might have been kidnapped.

Even though all preliminary investigations of crimes in democratic nations begin with this same sort of careful language and with “presumptions.”

But surely, you might suggest, CNN’s use of quotations around the word “kidnapped” is only a device to lend emphasis to the word! Alrighty then, let’s not be as hasty to judge CNN as CNN is to judge Israel. Let’s click on the homepage headline and take a look at the article:

“The deployment of military assets to search for the teens, and the swift presumption of kidnapping, are a reflection of the tensions that exist between Jewish settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank.”

Um, no. The deployment of military assets to search for the teens is because THEY WERE KIDNAPPED BY TERRORISTS and terrorists must be dealt with by the military as opposed to law enforcement officials. Like DUH.

Um, no. There was no “swift presumption” of kidnapping. There was a preliminary investigation that overwhelmingly pointed to evidence that the boys were kidnapped and the police acted accordingly by referring the matter to the military. In fact, the police waited longer than they should have to do so and many Israelis are upset about this.

Um, no. The deployment of the military and the swift presumption of kidnapping have NOT A THING TO DO with tensions between Jewish settlers and Arabs calling themselves “Palestinians” in Judea and Samaria or anywhere else. Arabs kidnap Jews because they hate them and covet their land. Also because Jews stubbornly refuse to embrace Islam.

It has nothing to do with “settlers” or building homes. It has nothing to do with tension. It has to do with the ideology of 1.5 billion Muslims.

“The expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank has been a lasting point of contention in the region. It has altered the map of the Palestinian territories, making it more difficult to draw a contiguous Palestinian state as part of any peace agreement, according to critics. The highly contentious issue of Israeli construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians seek for a future state, has hurt peace efforts.”

Um, no. That’s the pretext. That’s the excuse. That’s the cover for all the terror the Arabs wield against Jews. It’s what they serve up to the Obama Administration, the EU, and the Western media. And nope. Still doesn’t make it true.

Homes don’t have anything to do with this. Want proof? Israel threw 8,500 Jews out of their homes in Gaza and bulldozed all the homes and gave the land on which those homes formerly sat, to the Arabs. The homes and the building of them, proved no impediment to giving away the land they were built on. The homes are made of concrete, stone, metal, and wood. They are inanimate. They don’t create tensions. And they are easily bulldozed. Not a LASTING point of contention. No point of contention at all.

A Simple Equation

Let me rephrase this in easier terms for the hard of understanding:

Homes + bulldozer= No homes

The bottom line is not that Jews build homes, because these can be and have been easily knocked down in the past. It’s also not the people who live in those houses for x number of years.

It’s that Arabs have kidnapped three kids.

This is what they do and it’s evil.

CNN won’t tell you that. Which makes CNN culpable in part, and part of the problem at the very least.

About the author

Picture of Varda Epstein

Varda Epstein

A third-generation-born Pittsburgher on her mother’s mother’s side, Varda moved to Israel 36 years ago and is a crazy political animal who spams people with right wing political articles on Facebook in between raising her 12 children and writing about education as the communications writer at Kars for Kids a Guidestar gold medal charity.
Picture of Varda Epstein

Varda Epstein

A third-generation-born Pittsburgher on her mother’s mother’s side, Varda moved to Israel 36 years ago and is a crazy political animal who spams people with right wing political articles on Facebook in between raising her 12 children and writing about education as the communications writer at Kars for Kids a Guidestar gold medal charity.
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