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Two-Faced Response to Gaza Bombing
While PA leaders condemn the Palestinian bombing of an American convoy, an official PA newspaper blames Israel for the act.
Yesterday (Oct. 15),
Palestinian terrorists bombed a U.S. convoy in the Gaza strip,
killing three Americans. The convoy had been on its way to interview
potential Palestinian recipients of the American Fulbright
Scholarship.
The news media were quick to report the blanket PA denunciation of
the attack, dismissing the perpetrators as "a small breakaway
faction." Virtually every agency in the world quoted
Yasser Arafat condemning "this ugly crime targeting American
observers as they were on a mission for security and peace," as well
as PA spokesman
Saeb Erakat's lament, "These are American monitors that have
come here at our request...these people were here to help us," and
Palestinian Prime Minister
Ahmad Qurei's
statement, "We strongly condemn this incident and we will conduct an
investigation and we will follow it to find the source of this
attack."
Yet, while expressing remorse and conciliation to a Western
audience, the PA leadership expressed only irrational vilification
of Israel to their own public ― a recurring problem before, during
and after the Oslo period. Pictured here is the cartoon that
appeared today (Oct. 16) in the official PA-sponsored and controlled
daily newspaper, Al-Hayat-Al-Jadeeda
(The road sign reads "Gaza"):
While acknowledging Palestinian responsibility to
Western reporters, the PA is communicating to its own people that
the bomb was planted by Israel; moreover, the Americans themselves
are portrayed with a long hooked-nose ― the classic characterization
of Jewishness. The official PA organ, therefore, not only denies
Palestinian responsibility for the act (blaming Israel instead), but
even promotes to the Palestinian public the wild idea that the
Americans themselves are part of some vast Jewish movement or
conspiracy.
The message of the cartoon was supported by commentaries throughout the Palestinian press. In Al-Hayat al-Jadeeda (where the cartoon was printed), Fuad Abu Hijleh stated "Israel benefits from this explosion...Perhaps American citizens are so naive to believe the Israeli accusations against us, but...we know that the crime against the American citizens is an Israeli plot masterminded by the minds in the Mossad." The editor-in-chief of Al-Hayat al-Jadeeda claimed, "It's possible that the explosive device was part of a pure Israeli operation designed to accuse the Palestinians of being hostile to the Americans and to create the false impression that there are al-Qaida cells here," and Basim Abu Samiah claimed in that paper not only that it's "doubtful" that the perpetrator "was a Palestinian party," but Americans weren't even the target: "The explosion was not prepared for the Americans." Commentator Talal Okal noted in Al-Ayyam that the PA has officially accused Israel of attacking the American convoy, and asked: "Why did Israel blow up the US security vehicle accompanying a US delegation to Gaza?"
Ignoring such material, major news outlets continue to accept,
without due qualification, PA statements accepting blame for their
internal terror problem. Such reporting facilitates the falsehood that
Palestinian leaders have been foisting upon the Western world ― that they are allied with the U.S. and truly committed to peace
with Israel. Meanwhile, those same leaders have been deluding the
Palestinian people, in typical Mideast dictatorial fashion, that all
of their own society's problems are entirely the fault of Israel.
President Bush immediately held the Palestinian Authority
responsible for the attack, uttering the mantra of Israeli spokesmen
after their own terror attacks: "Palestinian authorities should have
acted long ago to fight terror in all its forms. The failure to
create effective Palestinian security forces dedicated to fighting
terror continues to cost lives. "
Nonetheless, the two most influential American newspapers found it
necessary to suggest that Israel and America are themselves
responsible for the attacks:
Washington Post:
"As Israel has demolished homes, assassinated suspected terrorists and
established checkpoints and closures in the Palestinian territories in
response to Palestinian suicide bombings, Palestinians ― particularly
in the Gaza Strip, where sentiments are more strident and radical ― have grown increasingly angry with the
U.S. government for offering no criticism of Israel."
The New York Times: "Anger has crested to new heights in the last
week in the wake of an Israeli crackdown in Rafah, a refugee camp on
the Egyptian border south of Gaza City where hundreds of families
have been left homeless after their houses were destroyed by Israeli
troops searching for gun-smuggling tunnels."
HonestReporting encourages subscribers to contact your local media
to demand they cease facilitating a Palestinian duplicity that issues conciliatory statements to a Western audience, while
fomenting hatred among their own Arab constituency.
Thank you for your
ongoing involvement in the battle against
media bias.
HonestReporting.com |
