The school Israel didn’t shell | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog
As much as I disagree with Andrew Bolt's take on greenhouse gases, posts such as this one provide a valuable service to those who fail to exercise skepticism when it comes to media reporting of Israel's actions and Palestinian's claims.
9 comments:
J F Beck noticed a similar story about another Palestinian school - see here.
While I think posts like Beck's and Bolt's are just a leeeeetle bit pedantic (Bolt: 43 people died, but NOT IN THE SCHOOL! Beck: the school WAS shelled, but it was UNLIKELY that people would be killed) they do, I think, reveal a definite media bias.
Why there's such a bias I don't know, but maybe it's because the media so loves a victim story. Hamas love putting themselves and other Palestinians in a victim position. Ergo, the media is much more likely to report stories that appear favourable to Hamas/Palestine.
That, and they're so unwilling to accept corrections to their hysterical headlines (schools bombed!). So pieces those by Beck and Bolt rarely get much media attention.
Oh jeez, really?
Does it really matter if they were in or outside the foooking school?
Come on, seriously, these are desperate, sleazy 'arguments'.
More important and pertinent: way back when this was still news, when it happened (as opposed to Bolt re-writing recent history), Israel admitted that their evidence of the school being used as a base for firing missiles was two years old, and they admitted that they had no evidence that the school was still being used as anything other than a school.
In other words, Israel fessed up pretty quickly (well, it took a week or so), that they had no justification for bombing the school or causing the deaths that occurred there (or right outside the door, if you want to be picky) - civilians, of course.
Caz: aw come on, Bolt ends with "you may still not like what happened", which I take as allowing for some legitimate disagreement over whether the Israeli's actions were too careless.
The point of his article, though, is surely that it is another case where the initial media reporting of the way Israel has caused deaths is frequently inaccurate, and usually with the bias running in one direction.
I reckon (whether or not you agree that it makes much sense) that people's reactions are going to be stronger in the case of a school being targetted and kids inside being killed, compared to kids outside the same school being killed if the school itself was not a target. Accuracy in reporting (or at least, an element of scepticism in reporting) therefore does make a difference.
The problem with this Bolt beat up Steve is that it's such a poor example of MSM bias or false reporting ... whatever point he's attempting to make.
Israel did not deny targeting the school! They did concede that their intelligence for doing so was a couple of years out of date.
In terms of the media providing misleading coverage of this particular event - ah, good grief! - they reported what they knew at the time, which is basically what they do with everything, whether a car accident, a house fire, or, a war, it's just that the latter is more subject to revision in subsequent days than other events. The MSM did not report that the school was occupied - on the contrary, they reported that it wasn't in use at the time of the bombing.
Anyone who believes there is accuracy in ANY reporting / journalism would be sadly mistaken!
More pertinent, anyone who believes anything said by anyone in the Middle East is dangerously naive!
Sometimes when Bolt gets on his high horse he is at least compelling, even if still wrong, but not in this case. Not convincing or compelling.
Forgot: as for bias running in one direction in terms of deaths caused, well, difficult one to argue, since the body count for Israel is normally single digit, if any at all. It's difficult even for Israel to turn one death into something more than it is, though they give it their all in trying (media tours of sites, etc).
Don't take that the wrong way. Keep in mind I have no side in this - I'm a non-believer - so none of them get my backing. There is no end to it and never will be, it's meaningless and pointless.
By the way, Caz, are you sure you've got the right school here? The Israelis did attack more than one. As for the one the subject of Bolt's post I haven't found anything yet other than it was either a response to an immediate attack from within the school (the first reason given) but that was changed within a couple of days to attack from outside the school.
Sheesh, how many schools were there?!
OK, it's not funny ... but ...
You could well be right.
All the same, I find it morally repugnant that Bolt and his merry followers are attempting (and apparently succeeding) to take the moral high ground over whether or not 40 or so people were killed in or outside a school. And doing it under the guise of "media bias" adds to the fraud.
Lets flip it around: if the deaths had been in Israel, a consequence of a rocket sent over from the Gaza Strip, would Bolt or any of his readers be carping about media bias, or wringing their hands about the niceties of exactly where the rocket landed, the intended target, or where exactly the dead bodies were located?
Nuh, I don't think so.
We need to be very careful not to be suckered by any aspect of the ongoing saga that is the Middle East. (Alas, our pollies never give us a break in that regard, so we all end up having to be suckers.)
Then again, I still often feel that I'm the only person in the Western world who never for a minute fell for the "weapons of mass destruction" propaganda. Other people - seemingly normal, with at least average intelligence - believed it, hook line and really big stinker!
(Not that Saddam didn't deserve to swing. Turned out to be the most expensive hanging in the whole of human history though.)
Caz, your comparison with how right wingers would feel if the shoe was on the foot skirts over the issue of intentionality. If it was a Gazan rocket fired at random into Israel, then of course it wouldn't matter if caused death within or outside of an Israeli school. It would invoke outrage because it was intended to cause death and destruction.
But if it was (let's say hypothetically) caused by a missile fired from a Gazan fighter jet during a period of hostilities between Israel and Gaza, then the question of what they were aiming at would be relevant to determine the intention and morality of it in the course of warfare.
But isn't that the point: if a rocket from Gaza kills anyone at all, even if, fired in self defence, there is always outrage.
On the other hand, what we have is a quibble about intentionality / morality of an Israeli attack resulting in mass deaths - if they aimed for the school "oh dear, that was naughty" - but so long as the school wasn't the intended target, well, that's OK then.
There are no doubt many questions of morality (and I notice that some countries are making quite strong statements against this war and Israel's behavior), but this particular example is really pushing the envelope of hair-splitting.
Urban warfare is grubby, that's a given. The whole Israel / Palestine situation is grubby, ugly and mostly immoral. No one gets to come of it smelling like roses, not ever.
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