Yesterday I stated that the hostage rescue by Colombia's military has changed the political landscape in South America. Last Wednesday Investor's Business Daily looked at some of the actors.
It's really early to explore the implications, but here are some of the more immediate:
1. Colombia has undermined the FARC to the point of having it on the run, killing its top leaders, and infiltrating its topmost ranks. At its height, the FARC controlled over 30% of Colombia's territory and terrorized the entire country. Colombia is about to end its decades-long civil war, and the good guys are winning.
While the really hard work is about to start - i.e., ending the stranglehold of the cocaine trade - the victory opens the possibility that that, too, can be attained.
(Please don't come telling me that Chavez is not a Communist. He declared himself a Communist on January 2007, as this laudatory article at the Guardian states,
"Socialism or death - I swear it," he said last week, and declared himself a communist.)
This is a blow to Communism in Latin America. To use Esteban Lijalad's words, "Today Che died".
3. Appeasement never works, and the only way to defeat terror is through relentless, calculated, strategic, effective force. This carries great implications not only for Colombia and Latin America, but also on the war on terror.
The rescue has vindicated Mr Uribe's uncompromising position with respect to negotiating with the Farc and justified his refusal to make concessions in order to gain the release of hostages.
4. Hugo Chavez's dream of heading a Bolivarian empire in Latin America has been dealt a huge blow. The FARC, one of his key allies, is defeated. As Ingrid Betancourt herself said,
"agradezco los esfuerzos de Chavez, pero debe saber que los Colombianos elegimos a Uribe, no a las FARC". (my translation:) "I appreciate Chavez's efforts, but he should learn that we Colombians elected Uribe, not the FARC."
5. Just as the bad guys get together - as Chavez supports the FARC, Hezbollah, and Iran - the good guys also get together for training and technology: The US has funded the Colombian government's efforts in its war against terror to the tune of $600 million/yr in security and antinarcotics aid (h/t Betsy), and Israel (h/t Atlas) provided training:
The Israeli consultation was focused mainly on intelligence issues, special operations and integration and coordination between different security elements. This was in order to prepare them for a coordinated and productive campaign within a short period of time.
6. However, it can not be emphasized enough that it was the Colombians themselves who actually planned, executed, and succeeded in a months-long operation, and who will continue to do the heavy lifting.
Clarification: To give you an idea of why point #6 is so very important, Simon Romero of the NYT summarizes the situation in one sentence:
The mission would require near perfect execution by a military that only a few years ago could rarely be trusted.
That is a hugely significant development, both in the symbolic sense, and in the strategic implications. It marks a new stage in the history of Latin America.
UPDATE As to the rumors circulated by Swiss public radio and their unnamed sources, clearly the Swiss should stick to reporting on cuckoo clocks. Daniel casts a jaundinced eye on the Swiss.
UPDATE 2: Translation of Operation Check: Images from Ingrid Betancourt's rescue Macker sent this video of the rescue, asking that I translate it:
Translation: Please credit me if you use this translation. Thank you.
Operation Check (as in chess): Images from Ingrid Betancourt's rescue 13:23:00 [Voice off camera] "...from this side... hold...hold...backlighting...backlighting..."
13:24:00 [Reporter, now in front of camera, approaching man in long-sleeve t-shirt] "Commander, may I ask you only one question?" [FARC commander] "No, no, there's a rule and I'd be violating a rule." [Reporter] "Allow me, only one question. Only one question, yes?" [FARC commander] "Ask me in the helicopter." (chuckles) [Reporter] "But it'll be too noisy. Let me ask you a question, so it shows." [FARC commander] "No, it is..." [Reporter] "Real easy one, Commander." [FARC commander] "It's against the rules." [Reporter] "Commander, one question, please." [FARC commander, laughing] "No, it'd really be a mistake for me to give a..."
Video cuts him off.
Camera zooms to the hostages: man wearing black t-shirt, Ingrid Betancourt wearing hat, tall man in sleeveless t-shirt & baseball cap.
[Reporter, again off camera, while the tall man's hands are tied] "...of prisoners at the hands of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces [i.e., the FARC]. the people's army. We'll have the chance to talk with the three Americans being held by the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces. On politics, we can't talk about politics. Get closer [to the tall man], get closer."
13:27:30 [Tall man, getting closer to the camera] "Tell my family, my family, the whole world." [gets taken away] [Reporter] "On politics, we can't broadcast, we can't have the group of prisoners at the hands of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces, we can't..."
13:27:45 [Hostage with mustache, approaching reporter] "Yes, excuse me. I only have one thing to say: I have been chained for ten years. I am Lieutenant Malagon, of the glorious Colombian National Army, [voice breaks] kidnapped for many reasons by this guerilla."
13:28:01 [Reporter] "Words by Lieutenant Malagon. We can't broadcast them directly, we can't quote them but we know the suffering." [Lt. Malagon] "They should be broadcast, because I have something very important to state...."
Gets cut off.
13:28:29 [Walking to helicopter]
13:29:11 [Lt. Malagon says something, voice drowned by helicopter noise.]
13:29:12 [Reporter] "We understand, but the restrictions, the press is restricted, it's not allowed."
13:29:31-13:31:49 [Sound off]
Once in the helicopter, Betancourt crying, hostages laughing, hugging, thumbs up. Betancourt & other hostage holding each other. Helicopter noise, unintelligible voices.
[Man's voice] "My God, man, thanks." [Betancourt] "Let's give thanks for this moment." [Man] "Who do you give thanks to, mother?"
Betancourt shakes her head.
[Man] "I always expected this, always. Ten years waiting! Ten years expecting it!"
You might think Enderlin's professional standing would have been damaged by all this. You would be wrong. In less than a week, a petition was whipped up by his friends at Le Nouvel Observateur, France's premier left-wing newsweekly. The petition conceded no gray areas, no hint of doubt. It called Karsenty's vehemently argued but exhaustively documented stance a "seven-year hate-filled smear campaign" aimed at destroying Enderlin's "professional dignity." It flatly stated in the opening paragraph that Muhammad al-Dura was killed "by shots coming from the Israeli position." It expressed rank astonishment at a legal ruling "granting equal credibility to a journalist renowned for his rigorous work, and to willful deniers ignorant of the local realities and with no journalistic experience." It professed concern about a jurisprudence that would-shock! horror!-allow "anyone, in the name of good faith and of a supposed right to criticize and so-called freedom of speech, to smear with impunity the honor and the reputation of news professionals."
Based on film footage provided by a Palestinian cameraman, Enderlin's report has become infamous among students of Arab propaganda both for its destructive effects and for its probable falsity. The al-Dura affair now bids to join the Dreyfus affair in the French hall of shame.
Indeed.
Prior posts on the al-Dura trial here. Most recent podcast here To donate to Second Draft, the mailing address is Second Draft P O Box 590591 Newton Center Mass 02459
Police said that Mr Ghanan, 32, was from the northern Israeli town of Beit Dajan and was a member of the Druze community, a minority group whose religion includes an eclectic mix of beliefs rooted initially in Islam.
Naif Ghanan, Raed’s brother, said that police who informed the family of the death told them that the circumstances of the incident were still being investigated. "It is unthinkable that my brother took his own life. We believe this was an accident ' or even an incident in which my brother was accidentally shot by one of the security officials in the area," he said.
The family said that it had hired a lawyer to ensure there was a "complete and detailed" investigation and to gain access to security video footage from the airport.
Do you believe that it is about The Nakba or The Occupation or The Settlements? Do you allow yourself the fantasy that there is a way to stop the madness- a sacrifice big enough to satisfy this ravenous cult?
Then what did the innocent victims die for on 9/11- or Madrid- or London- the Darfur? This is part of the same grotesque lottery that has been going on for 1500 years. In spite of the sacrifice of the innocent victims of 9/11, it is all too easy for us to deny that we are hostages too, but those “zero beings” from the Islamist void will not be happy to delete only Israel. They have "selected" them for annihilation first but it is nothing personal, you understand, just a sacrifice to prove there is no value to human life. There is no value to anything that does not affirm the spiritual vacuum of Islamism. It is not because they worship Allah, nor is it is that they believe Mohammed was a prophet. It is that they believe that he was the only prophet, that they know the absolute truth and that it is their mission to ignore (and destroy) all evidence to the contrary. If you believe in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, they will not rest until they destroy you too.
An advisor, Daniel Kurtzer, to Barack Obama says that Obama didn't realize what he was saying to AIPAC when he used the term "undivided" in reference to Jerusalem. According to Kurtzer, Obama had "a picture in his mind of Jerusalem before 1967 with barbed wires and minefields and demilitarized zones." Kurtzer says that only after the speech did Obama realize it was a "code word" to use the phrase, "but it does not indicate any kind of naivete about foreign affairs."
As Rubin says,
Once again, this suggests that there is too little adult supervision of a candidate unaccustomed to speaking on the world stage about issues in which there are lots of code words, indeed in which every word (e.g. "preconditons," "immediate withdrawal") has meaning to Americans' foes and friends."
"The meeting between me and the Israeli prime minister will be meaningless without the technocrats laying the foundation, without reaching the final stage."
And as the campaign develops, Poohbama rolls right along. Drew has a photo of Obama's foreign policy team.
"Africa and the Arab world are ready to back and finance Barack Obama as long as he helps the oppressed populations", said the Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, calling however on the US democratic presidential candidate to not always defend Israel at all costs, as all American presidents have done so far
He of the many spellings proposed a new country, "Israstine""
Kadhafi, speaking in occasion of the 38th anniversary of the expulsion of the Americans from an old base near Tripoli, also urged the government of Tel Aviv to accept the prospective of cohabiting "with the Palestinians in one state" that could be called 'Israstine' (also 'Isratine', according to another version). In regard to the exiting US President, Kadhafi merely said that he proceeded in his "evil warmonger" policies, accusing him of being behind the skyrocketing oil prices, also because he managed to weaken the value of the dollar used to calculate the price.
Obama should promise to give Africa the money Washington allocates to Israel to "build a dam on the Congo river to supply the whole African continent with power", he urged. "We fear that Obama will feel that, because he is black with an inferiority complex, this will make him behave worse than the whites. This will be a tragedy," Gadafy added. "We tell him to be proud of himself as a black and feel that all Africa is behind him."
No word as to whether he was in the company of his thirty virgins.
UPDATE Who looks worse, Gadafy/Kadhafi, or Keith Richards? I post, you decide:
Sunday, 15 June Reader Pat Patterson reminds us of Gene Simmons: Who looks worse, then, Gadafy/Kadhafi, Keith Richards, or Gene Simmons?
Pelosi is so hung up with trying to prove that the Iraqi government is failing because to acknowledge otherwise would be to hint that something has gone right in the past year with our new strategy in Iraq. And she can't do that because she is politically invested in that strategy's failure and her party's efforts to pull the rug out from under those efforts. So her solution is to praise the "goodwill" of those who are behind a lot of the violence that we see in the entire Middle East. Her ignorance and partisan approach to reality is breathtaking.
A Turkish-born barber, living and working in Saudi Arabia, was recently convicted for the ‘crime’ of apostasy and has been sentenced to death. The man, Sabri Bogday, had a quarrel with a person from Egypt and a Saudi during which he seemingly cursed the name of God. This is of course unacceptable in Saudi Arabia and… as a result, the judges of that country have decided that Bogday deserves to die.
My friend Steven posted this video, A Trip Across Israel - as you can see,
This video documents a drive across the entire width of Israel from the West Bank wall to the Mediterranean Sea. The point is to illustrate how small and intrinsically vulnerable it is.
It's hard to exaggerate the significance of Mohammed al-Durra, the 12-year-old Palestinian boy allegedly killed by Israeli bullets on Sept. 30, 2000. The iconic image of the terrified child crouching behind his father helped sway world opinion against the Jewish state and fueled the last Intifada.
It's equally hard, then, to exaggerate the significance of last week's French court ruling that called the story into doubt. Not just whether the Israeli military shot the boy, but whether the whole incident may have been staged for propaganda purposes. If so, it would be one of the most harmful put-up jobs in media history.
You probably didn't hear this news. International media lapped up the televised report of al-Durra's shooting on France's main state-owned network, France 2. Barely a peep was heard, however, when the Paris Court of Appeal ruled in a suit brought by the network against the founder of a media watchdog group. The judge's verdict, released Thursday, said that Philippe Karsenty was within his rights to call the France 2 report a "hoax," overturning a 2006 decision that found him guilty of defaming the network and its Mideast correspondent, Charles Enderlin. France 2 has appealed to the country's highest court.
Judge Laurence Trébucq did more than assert Mr. Karsenty's right to free speech. In overturning a lower court's ruling, she said the issues he raised about the original France 2 report were legitimate. While Mr. Karsenty couldn't provide absolute proof of his claims, the court ruled that he marshalled a "coherent mass of evidence" and "exercised in good faith his right to free criticism." The court also found that Talal Abu Rahma, the Palestinian cameraman for France 2 who was the only journalist to capture the scene and the network's crown witness in this case, can't be considered "perfectly credible." ... Judge Trébucq said that Mr. Karsenty "observed inexplicable inconsistencies and contradictions in the explanations by Charles Enderlin
France2's reaction? They haven't reported on the decision at all. The inconsistencies and contradictions remain.
Prior posts on the Al Dura case here. Last week's podcast here.
The Paris court ruled in favour of media critic Philippe Karsenty, who called into question the veracity of the report, but it also said that it did not rule out that journalists at France 2 had acted professionally.
Karsenty, head of an online media commentary site, had appealed a 2006 decision which found libellous his statement that the station's Israel correspondent had orchestrated images which later became a symbol for Palestinian militants.
In February, Karsenty presented judges with new evidence including a ballistics report and footage from other sources, which he said proved 12-year-old Mohammed al-Durra's death had been staged.
The court said in its ruling the new footage "did not allow to rule out the opinion of (France 2) professionals," but it also rejected claims by state prosecutor Antoine Bartoli that the new evidence was "neither complete nor serious."
France2's newscasts have not mentioned the decision at all; the only place in their website that mentions it is Enderlin's own blog where he sticks to his guns and says he's going to appeal. Enderlin wasn't even present at the supposed shooting. Dr. Richard Landes notices that comments to the contrary are not allowed.
My friends Nidra Poller and Erik Svane are in Paris.
Notice also how they end the article by writing "that he didn't die at that exact moment" suggesting nothing more than perfidious playing around with the details of what is a very real tragedy. Whereas PK is really saying that his movements prove that not only did the boy not die at all, he was just pretending to be killed in a deliberately-written script...
Nidra:
The joke is that the media didn't cover the trials, didn't consult the documentation, didn't inform readers that there was a controversry. Now they suddenly jump in, report the verdict, and then reverse it in their sly little way.
Every article I've seen in French includes a paragraph that re-reports the death of Mohamed al Dura more or less as Enderlin told it in September 2000. So all these journalists who never came to see what was really happening are now smarter than the court, smarter than Karsenty who won, smarter than their readers who will sooner or later catch on!
Excuse the profanity, but that's more than smart, that's smartass!
Here in the US, none of the major newspapers have anything on this decision. If you do a google news search you find that most of the news stories come from Israeli newspapers. A few bloggers are writing about it, among them Yid With Lid, who wants to know where in the world is Muhammad al-Dura. Pamela also posted Nidra's report, where Nidra noticed how the spin started immediately. ShrinkWrapped expects that the media posturing will continue indefinitely.
Which is exactly what the media is doing.
This is a disgrace: the image of Mohammed al-Dura shot and "dead" has been played thousands of times over and over. As Scott Johnson (via Powerline) said earlier this year,
Based on film footage provided by a Palestinian cameraman, Enderlin's report has become infamous among students of Arab propaganda both for its destructive effects and for its probable falsity.
In the asymmetrical warfare of global Jihad against the West, the "weak" side treats the media of the "strong" side as a theater of war, and no single case shows the Western journalism's vulnerability to this kind of manipulation better than the Al Durah affair. Nothing illustrates the dysfunctions of our media more than their pervasive refusal to reconsider this case, despite the amount of damage it has produced. Nothing endangers Western democracies more than mis-information, and news broadcasts, products of a free and honest media, are the eyes and ears of the civil polity. No creature, no matter how powerful, can survive if its senses betray it, especially in a war zone.
Pajamas Media also has an article by Phillipe Karsenty where he explains what the decision means:
Our victory today was a victory for freedom — the freedom to think and to speak one’s mind; the freedom to question what one is told; and the freedom to disbelieve the solemn pronouncements of others when the individual concludes that his reasoning is correct and that the state and the state-run media — and all of the institutions they represent — are wrong.
The al-Dura lie is an assault on our ability to think, to criticize, to evaluate, and finally to reject information — especially the right to reject information on which we base our most cherished assumptions. One of Europe's most cherished assumptions is that Israel is a vicious Nazi-like entity that deliberately murders Palestinian Arab children. Moreover, polls conducted in Europe have identified Israel as the greatest threat to world peace, greater than Iran and North Korea, Pakistan and Syria. The al-Dura hoax is one of the pillars on which these assumptions rely.
There are no stories (at least, not yet), in which the mainstream Western media admit that in the past, they have allowed themselves to be fooled, over and over again, by the narrative of Palestinian Victimhood and Israeli Evil because it suited them–the facts be damned.
UPDATE You can listen to the podcast here To donate to Second Draft, the mailing address is
Second Draft P O Box 590591 Newton Center Mass 02459
French courts are due to render a verdict on the libel suit brought about by a media watchdog group against France2, a government-run news TV station. The case has to do with a news report where France2 reporter Charles Enderlin claimed that the child Mohammed al Dura had been shot dead by the Israeli Defense Forces.
The verdict on the al-Dura trial in France is due tomorrow.
2000 Sept. 30, 2000: Palestinian gunmen and Israelis soldiers clash at the Netzarim junction in the Gaza Strip. A large contingent of foreign reporters, photographers and television crews are present, including France 2 cameraman Talal Abu Rahma. Much of the day’s events are filmed by the various (20 or so) television crews, but only Abu Rahma records what he claims to be Mohammed Al Dura’s death by Israeli bullets. (A Reuters clip apparently captures Jamal and Mohammed Al Dura filmed from a different angle.) He records 27 minutes of footage that day. While France 2 Middle East Bureau Chief Charles Enderlin is not at the scene at this time, he later views Abu Rahma’s clips and accepts the cameraman’s account of events.
Enderlin edits the film and provides the voice-over commentary for that evening’s news broadcast. Only a small portion (55 seconds) of Abu Rahma's footage is broadcast on the evening news. The footage shows Jamal Al Dura and his son Mohammed huddled behind a thick concrete barrel, gunshots hitting the wall behind them. The footage does not show the child dying.
Correspondent Charles Enderlin comments on the footage for France 2 :
3 pm... everything has turned over near the Netzarim settlement in the Gaza Strip...here Jamal and his son Mohammed are the targets of gunshots that have come from the Israeli position.... A new burst of gunfire, Mohammed is dead and his father seriously wounded.
France 2 distributes the footage – free of charge – to the global media, and it is broadcast around the world.
Oct. 1, 2000: ABC's Gillian Findlay also says the boy died "under Israeli fire." She repeats this language a few days later. Other media outlets make clear that the father and son were caught in the crossfire between Israelis and Palestinians.
Oct. 3, 2000: Palestinian Cameraman Testifies
Talal Abu Rahma volunteers to testify in a sworn statement to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights the details of what he saw at Netzarim on Sept. 30. He says:
I spent about 27 minutes photographing the incident which took place for 45 minutes.... I can confirm that the child was intentionally and in cold blood shot dead and his father injured by the Israeli army.
(For complete statement, click here.)
Preliminary IDF Investigation
There is no autopsy on the boy and no bullets recovered. After a hurried preliminary investigation, the IDF expresses sorrow over the tragedy, concluding that its troops were probably responsible for killing Al Dura. IDF Major General Giora Eiland says:
There is no way to prove who shot him. But from the angles from which we fired, it is likely that he was hit from our gunfire.... It is very reasonable that they were hit from our gunfire.
While the IDF attempts to put the incident to rest by accepting responsibility for Al Dura’s death, Major General Yom Tov Samia, commanding officer at the time, and other senior officers in the Southern Command are convinced that IDF soldiers have not shot the boy.
October 2000: Nahum Shahaf, an Israeli physicist, contacts Major General Samia to voice his doubt about Israeli responsibility and offers to collaborate in an investigation of the matter. Samia agrees and the IDF investigates further.
Oct. 23, 2000: An IDF re-enactment of the Al Dura incident, with the participation of Nahum Shahaf, raises serious doubt about whether the gunfire could have come from Israeli positions. Investigators lay out replicas of the Israeli army position, and the concrete barrel and wall which sheltered Al Dura. Soldiers fire shots at the barrel and wall using a variety of different weapons and study the indentations made by the bullets. Also studied is the dust clouds which result from the wall being struck by bullets from various angles. The shape and size of the clouds is compared to the shape and size of dust clouds in the video of Al Dura.
The re-enactment indicates that based on the location of the Israeli soldiers, the concrete barrel would have prevented Israeli bullets from hitting Jamal and Mohammed Al Dura. The bullet holes and dust clouds in the Al Dura video further indicate that the fatal shots could not have come from the Israeli position, but rather from an area more directly across from the father and son, near a Palestinian police position.
Oct. 25, 2000: Telerama, a French magazine, publishes an interview with Charles Enderlin in which he explains the brevity of the news clip broadcast of the incident. He asserts:
I cut the images of the child's agony (death throes), they were unbearable. The story was told, the news delivered. It would not have added anything more...As for the moment when the child received the bullets, it was not even filmed. Nov. 27, 2000: IDF releases the findings of its comprehensive investigation into the Al Dura killing. It concludes that Al Dura was likely killed by Palestinian gunfire. States Israeli Major General Yom Tov Samia:
A comprehensive investigation conducted in the last weeks casts serious doubt that the boy was hit by Israeli fire. It is quite plausible that the boy was hit by Palestinian bullets in the course of the exchange of fire that took place in the area.
Dr. Landes produced the documentary Pallywood. You can download it from Second Draft, and here's the YouTube:
The podcast starts at 11AM Eastern, and the chat room's open by 10:45. The call-in number is (646) 652-2639. Join us!
"There was a lot of hate in that little Nakba rally."
Yesterday Mary, Yid With Lid and Pamela attended the Al-Nakbah rally in Dag Hammarskjold Park.
Aside from the curiously phallic signs the women carried, it's interesting to note that 1. most of the attendees were bussed in school buses 2. the people carrying signs reading "Peace, not ethnic cleansing" were screaming, "Jew Jew I hope you die today!" at a Jewish guy.
As Mary said, "There was a lot of hate in that little Nakba rally."
The first war was a short one. Sunni Arab Nationalists in thrall to Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser wanted to attach Lebanon to the United Arab Republic – a brief union of Egypt and Syria. An even larger bloc of Maronite Christians resisted. A nation cannot hold itself together when a large percentage of its population – roughly a third – wish to be annexed by foreign powers.
The second war was a long one. This time, Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organization formed a state-within-a-state in West Beirut and South Lebanon and used it as a launching pad for terrorist attacks against Israel. Again, Lebanon’s Christians resisted, as did Lebanon’s Shias. The second civil war was actually a series of wars that were merely triggered by that first fatal schism.
The third civil war resembles both the first and the second. With Iranian money and weapons, Hezbollah has built its own state-within-a-state in South Lebanon and South Beirut which is used as a base to wage war against Israel. Hezbollah also wishes to violently yank Lebanon from its current pro-Western alignment into the Syrian-Iranian axis. Roughly one-fourth of the population supports this agenda. No country on earth can withstand that kind of geopolitical tectonic pressure. For more than a year members of Hezbollah have tried unsuccessfully to topple the elected government with a minimal use of force, but their patience is at an end and they have turned to war.
Michael concludes,
There may be lulls in the violence, but there will be no real peace in Lebanon until Hezbollah is disarmed or destroyed.
Hezbollah is not going to disarm.
Yid With Lid thanks France for Hezbollah's takeover of Lebanon.
We talked about Lebanon in last Friday's podcast - and we're not optimistic.
On the stump, she warmed up (or rather, berated) supporters by complaining about how her husband is an underdog even after he keeps winning primary and caucus after primary and caucus. With a scowl etched on her face, she bellyached that "the bar is constantly changing for this man." Call the waambulance, stat.
I like the duck-billed platypus Because it is anomalous. I like the way it raises its family Partly birdly, partly mammaly. I like its independent attitude. Let no one call it a duck-billed platitude.
Israeli sanctions imposed in an attempt to force the Palestinian group Hamas to stop rocket fire have caused shortages
Having made that assertion, the Beeb then mentions the Hamas-generated strike by the Gaza oil distributors as "Israel says":
But Israel says Hamas is deliberately preventing fuel from being distributed.
It says there are a million litres of fuel at a border terminal which Gaza fuel distributors, with the backing of Hamas, have refused to collect in protest at the Israeli restrictions.
It's not until paragraph #15 that you read
The fuel shortages have been compounded since 7 April by a strike by Gaza's fuel distributors and petrol station owners, who have been refusing to pick up about 1 million litres that Israel has pumped into the Nahal Oz fuel terminal, saying the quantity is insufficient.
Not that that had anything to do with shortages...
Two young men (and one bicycle) lie in the road. The young men show some traces of blood, the form of which resembles that produced by a knife wound. No sign of a shell crater or other damage is visible. In the distance is seen a collection of cars, one of which is claimed to belong to a cameraman killed by the the same shell. The footage continues by getting closer to this car. No obvious damage, fire or smoke is visible. A new camera angle then shows a vehicle marked with TV insignia in flames with heavy billows of smoke surrounding it and spreading prominently into the air. The camera of the camerman is displayed amid scenes of grief.
My puzzlement is:
- whether the injuries displayed on the young men are compatible with a tank shell - whether a tank shell could have hit both the youngsters and a car 100 meters away - why the car is not on fire in one image and is very prominently in flames in the other
The events are drawn entirely from Palestinian accounts, presented from the Palestinian point of view, and transmit uncritically all the conclusions and value judgments of the Palestinian stringers who supply the material.
In contrast, anything that would reflect badly on the Palestinians is invariably preceded by the phrase "Israel says". Palestinian accounts are reported as fact, while Israeli versions are alleged, and obviously meant to be questioned.
Fausta was born and raised in Santurce, Puerto Rico and is a long-term resident of Princeton, New Jersey. She discusses New Jersey, taxation, current events, and how news are reported in the French and Spanish-language media at Fausta's Blog.
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After meeting with Palestinian and Israeli leaders in his trip to Israel, 
