I received an email today, obviously part of an orchestrated PR campaign to counter the bad press Israel has been getting of late, with the subject line, “Photos of Israel that will never make the news”. Here’s a sample:
The others similarly portrayed Israeli soldiers in sympathetic light: helping an old Arab[1] man across the street, huddling together in prayer[2], playing marbles in the dust with a child.
All very sweet. And all very beside the point.
No doubt a partisan of Hamas, or Hezbollah, or al-Qaeda could find a photo of one of their fighters stroking a kitten. And, no doubt the partisans of Israel would decry that photo as outrageous propaganda. And they’d be right.
However kind and humane these Israeli soldiers may be — and I personally don’t doubt that Israeli soldiers are, on average, just as kind and humane as anyone else — it doesn’t make up for the brutal and inhumane acts of the Israeli military. It isn’t a matter of balance. It’s a matter of decency.
[1]You can tell it is an Arab man, because he is wearing a khaffiya.
[2]Actually, the folks in the prayer circle look like U.S. troops to me. It seem kind of unlikely that six out of nine Israeli soldiers would be African-American (Afro-Israeli?).
Actually, our news out of Israel and about Israel is more filtered than the news Israelis are exposed to. I plan to do a diary on this very subject. Any “anti-Israeli” item that manages to make it through the filters and into our news is instantly set upon by orginazations and pundits as anti-semitic. Aipac and others make damn sure that US opinion doesn’t sway or waiver. We taxpayers pay 20% of Israel’s defense spending, so they have to keep us well propagandized. Some have claimed that Israel is “Occupying” the US media. I think that’s probably an appropriate way to describe the grip they have on our news here in the US.