schachterrific!

Weeks after the story of an Israeli attack on UNRWA schools in Gaza made its way around the world, the truth begins to come out that it didn’t quite happen that way.

John Ging, the director of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza, spoke to the Toronto Globe and Mail last week and agreed that no shell had actually struck the school building. Ging said he had never claimed that the school itself was hit, and he blamed Israel for confusion over where the strike took place.

Shortly after the alleged attack, Ging harshly criticized Israel for firing near the school, saying he had given the exact coordinates of the compound to the IDF and suggesting they had failed to avoid hitting the building.

While admitting that Israeli fire had not hit the school compound, Ging insisted it made little difference.

As the story was spread by UNRWA administrators, staff were told not to speak to the media. Wouldn’t want the facts to come to light, eh?

The editorials of Investor’s Business Daily are some of the finest op-ed pieces you will see coming out of the Fourth Estate. In one of today’s pieces, IDB takes a close look at Bibi Netanyahu, and sees a man with a very sharpened sense of history:

Speaking to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, Netanyahu cautioned that economic woes are distracting the West from a far greater danger. The former finance minister said that while global economic woes are reversible, “the acquisition of nuclear weapons by a fanatic radical regime” is not.

“We have never had, since the dawn of the nuclear age, nuclear weapons in the hands of such a fanatical regime,” Netanyahu added. Stopping Tehran “remains the greatest challenge facing the leaders of the 21st century at the beginning of the 21st century.”

Its worth the read. Take it or leave it.

It’s interesting to note how some mainstream media organization subtly attempt to spin the news, and instead of factually reporting events, choose to leave out parts of the story, or use a carefully nuanced adjective or adverb to subliminally overlay the story with threads of directed meaning.

Case in point: This morning’s Gaza Conflict news from Reuters and the AP.

Here is the Reuters head and first paragraph:

Israel rebuffs U.N. resolution and pursues Gaza war

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

GAZA (Reuters) – Israel rejected a U.N. resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza on Friday and, as jets and tanks again pounded the Palestinian enclave, announced no decision on whether to step up its two-week-old war on Hamas guerrillas.

And here is the same story from the Associated Press:

Israel, Hamas defy UN call for cease-fire

By Matti Friedman and Ibrahim Barzak

JERUSALEM – Israeli jets and helicopters bombarded Gaza Friday and Hamas responded with a barrage of rockets on two cities as both sides defied a U.N. call for an immediate cease-fire.

Interesting difference. But, to me, the best part is in the Reuters paragraph. “Israel… announced no decision….” Isn’t that really non-news? When the speed of news becomes insanely frenetic, suddenly, at this moment, having not made a decision is suddenly newsworthy? And if they decide in an hour? Two? A day? Well, then it becomes news.

Spare me the hype.

French public television channel 2 admitted yesterday that they had mistakenly aired photos of of terrorists blowing themselves up in 2005 at the Jabaliya Refugee Camp while claiming it was destruction caused by the Israeli Defense Forces in the current Gaza conflict:

A news editor at France 2 told Le Figaro Tuesday that they had “made a mistake” by airing those pictures, which he said depict events from 2005.

The media monster needs to be fed. The clock is ticking. There is no time to fact-check. There is no time to verify. Feed the monster. Feed the monster. Another example of misinformation (dis-information?) that gets out into the mediaverse, makes its impression, and cannot be called back.

People you need to take a step back and really use your brains instead of digesting any piece of crap fed to you by a stressed out media.

My opinion, take it or leave it.

All my friends already know pretty much where I stand on this. Yet i recently found an article that pretty much says it for me. The John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs of Harvard University runs a blog called Middle East Strategy at Harvard (MESH). In a recent article entitled “On the Ground in Gaza”, Barry Rubin pretty much covers it:

…many in the West think Israel has some kind of choice in this matter, that diplomacy was an option, that Hamas could be reasoned with. Those people have clearly never heard a Hamas leader speak or read anything on the group’s Arabic-language websites. In a real sense, Hamas is more extreme than Osama bin Laden, who periodically offers his enemy the chance to repent. Hamas’s goal is genocidal.

This has nothing to do with being dovish or hawkish, left or right. For those who are the biggest peaceniks—and this is true in Israel—know that Hamas must be defeated if Israel is ever to make peace with the PA. Even the PA knows it, and that’s what they say in private, no matter what they say in public.

Take it or leave it.