RE: [Marxism] "No Outbursts, No Marches . . . Nothing!"

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Mark L. wrote:
> If there were marches and outbursts, it'd be lost in the drumbeating of
> support for Israel.  I've been particularly astonished at the extent the BBC
> is rather blatantly slanting its coverage as well.


Media Lens, June 30, 2006
GUEST MEDIA ALERT: KIDNAPPED BY ISRAEL
The British Media And The Invasion Of Gaza
By Jonathan Cook

Few readers of a British newspaper would have noticed the story. In the
Observer of 25 June, it merited a mere paragraph hidden in the "World in
brief" section, revealing that the previous day a team of Israeli commandos
had entered the Gaza Strip to "detain" two Palestinians Israel claims are
members of Hamas.

The significance of the mission was alluded to in a final phrase describing
this as "the first arrest raid in the territory since Israel pulled out of
the area a year ago". More precisely, it was the first time the Israeli
army had re-entered the Gaza Strip, directly violating Palestinian control
of the territory, since it supposedly left in August last year.

As the Observer landed on doorsteps around the UK, however, another daring
mission was being launched in Gaza that would attract far more attention
from the British media - and prompt far more concern.

Shortly before dawn, armed Palestinians slipped past Israeli military
defences to launch an attack on an army post close by Gaza called Kerem
Shalom. They sneaked through a half-mile underground tunnel dug under an
Israeli-built electronic fence that surrounds the Strip and threw grenades
at a tank, killing two soldiers inside. Seizing another, wounded soldier
the gunmen then disappeared back into Gaza.

Whereas the Israeli "arrest raid" had passed with barely a murmur, the
Palestinian attack a day later received very different coverage. The BBC's
correspondent in Gaza, Alan Johnstone, started the ball rolling later the
same day in broadcasts in which he referred to the Palestinian attack as "a
major escalation in cross-border tensions". (BBC World news, 10am GMT, 25
June 2006)

Johnstone did not explain why the Palestinian attack on an Israeli army
post was an escalation, while the Israeli raid into Gaza the previous day
was not. Both were similar actions: violations of a neighbour's territory.

The Palestinians could justify attacking the military post because the
Israeli army has been using it and other fortified positions to fire
hundreds of shells into Gaza that have contributed to some 30 civilian
deaths over the preceding weeks. Israel could justify launching its mission
into Gaza because it blames the two men it seized for being behind some of
the hundreds of home-made Qassam rockets that have been fired out of Gaza,
mostly ineffectually, but occasionally harming Israeli civilians in the
border town of Sderot.

full: http://www.medialens.org/alerts/index.php


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