This week the US armed forces suspended the use of all 60mm mortars following a training accident which killed 7 US soldiers in Nevada. It is unknown yet whether the cause was a faulty mortar round or misuse or human error. And while tragic and terrible, that's not my point here. My point here is draw attention to where I first saw this reported, in The Guardian.
And to highlight a few things.
1) The Guardian routinely calls Hamas
mortars 'homemade bombs' and 'firecrackers'.
2) 60mm is the smallest common mortar
round used by any Army in the world today. There are smaller, but
they are called grenades and are fired by a rifle.
3) Hamas routinely uses mortar rounds
which are 81mm and 120mm.
4) A standard 65mm mortar round weighs
about 3.7lbs. A standard 81mm mortar round weighs about 9lbs. A
standard 120mm mortar round weighs about 30lbs.
So the smallest mortar used by anyone
killed 7 men and, yet, according to the very paper which reported it,
when Hamas uses something TWICE as large against women and children
in Sderot they have suddenly morphed into 'firecrackers' and harmless
homemade gadgets barely worth the effort.
One would think that if 6 year olds in Sderot are 'safe' from 'firecrackers' then 7 GI's must have been horribly inept to be killed by one, at least according to the Guardian. One needs to always keep in mind the facts of the matter when listening to what the press has to say about Israel not only because of their spin but because of their selective omission of the facts.
You must always ask why the dog didn't bark.
One would think that if 6 year olds in Sderot are 'safe' from 'firecrackers' then 7 GI's must have been horribly inept to be killed by one, at least according to the Guardian. One needs to always keep in mind the facts of the matter when listening to what the press has to say about Israel not only because of their spin but because of their selective omission of the facts.
You must always ask why the dog didn't bark.
Trudy, please excuse me if I am wrong, but isn't the Guardian a sort-of left-leaning journal?
ReplyDeleteFor perhaps nearly all of two seconds I thought you might have been serious here Mike.
DeleteOy
Ignore that inconvenient fact, Mike. Look over there, it's 150-year old Pat Buchanan and those seven weirdos from Westboro Baptist Church! And Chuck Hag... oops, let's forget about Chuck Hagel, actually...
Delete~~~
Okay, perhaps a bit facetious on my part, I don't mean to downplay the harm such people can cause, but still. It seems to me that denying, or seeking to obfuscate, the direction from which most institutionalized, mainstream anti-Israel hatred is coming from these days isn't a particularly useful endeavor. To say the least.
Identification would seem to me to be the first step toward addressing the problem. It seems fair for one to then ask - okay, so what do we do about it? But before you can even think about that, I'd argue that one first needs to at least acknowledge the direction from which we need to fight it, and not continue to lash out wildly and vindictively at those who point this out.
Jay,
Deleteyou're my brother from another mother.
"One needs to always keep in mind the facts of the matter when listening to what the press has to say about Israel..."
ReplyDeleteMost people won't. Hence, my going beyond listing those items of press malfeasance and into calls for the Jewish State to take up its duty of enforcing the end of this war in all but name waged against her by the press.
The media is the enemy. We can't expect an enemy to behave other than an enemy. Once you've come to realize that a certain state, organization or media outlet is the enemy, you can only make it stop the hostilities against you by the means enemies are always made to stop their hostilities: By defeating them. In the physical battlefield, this requires a clash of arms; in the ideological one, where the media is Israel's enemy, our opponents must through the use of threats (meted by the Jewish State) be compelled to ignore Israel when preparing their "news accounts."
As McLuhan said, "The medium is the Mess Age." (in one case at any rate...he also used Message and Massage.) This has been going on for a long time. The question may now be whether it is too late to change that pervasiveness. It certainly may be for England at least.
ReplyDeletePS....he also said," "Control over change would seem to consist in moving not with it but ahead of it. Anticipation gives the power to deflect and control force." I'm not sure how that gets done but it sounds powerful.
ReplyDeleteThe dog that did not bark was not The Hound of the Baskervilles; it was a stable dog in the Sherlock Holmes story called "Silver Blaze."
ReplyDelete