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August 29, 2006

Terrorist Theater Tricks

By - Caroline Glick, THE JERUSALEM POST Aug. 28, 2006

What are we seeing when we watch events from the Middle East
on our television screens? Is it news or is it terrorist
theater?

Let us observe two media events which occurred on Sunday in
Gaza. Sunday afternoon released hostages and Fox News
journalists Steven Centanni and Olaf Wiig spoke before the
cameras. The fact of their release and their statements were
reported by more than 1,000 news organizations throughout
the world.

At the press conference, Centanni and Wiig, who were forced
by their Palestinian captors to convert to Islam, praised
the Palestinians. Centanni said, "I just hope this never
scares a single journalist away from coming to Gaza to cover
this story because the Palestinian people are a very
beautiful, kind-hearted and caring people that the world
need[s] to know more about." Wiig similarly praised the
Palestinians.

While their remarks were covered extensively, no one seemed
to think that the fact that their first post-release
statements were made at a Palestinian Authority sponsored
media extravaganza in Gaza was significant. No one noted
that the men were flanked by Palestinian "security forces,"
and stood next to Hamas terrorist leader and Palestinian
Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. No mention was made
of the fact that the two were initially kidnapped by just
such PA "security officials," or that Haniyeh is one of the
leaders of one of the most fanatical jihadist organizations
in the world, an organization that the majority of the
"beautiful, kind-hearted and caring" Palestinians voted into
office last January.

That is, no mention was made of the fact that until the two
men left Gaza, they remained unfree. No one asked whether
they had been given the option of not giving a press
conference in Gaza. And now that they have spoken, there can
be little doubt that a second press conference by the two
men, in Israel or the US where no one will force them to
convert to Judaism or Christianity or threaten to kill them,
will draw far less media interest. After their press
conference, the two men became yesterday's news.

Conveniently, the same day the PA released the men who its
own forces had kidnapped, Reuters reported that the IDF had
shot a missile at its press vehicle and wounded two
cameramen - one from Reuters and one from Iranian World TV
network - while they were en route to a battle taking place
between IDF forces and Palestinian terrorists. Reuters,
which is demanding an independent investigation into the
attack, is portraying its cameraman Fadel Shada as an
embattled hero who would do anything to bring the truth to
the world.

Yet it is unclear why anyone should believe either Shana or
Reuters. Shana told Reuters that as he was driving to the
battle scene, "I suddenly saw fire and the doors of the jeep
flew open." He claims to have been wounded by shrapnel in
his hand and leg. These are minor injuries for someone whose
vehicle was just hit by a missile.

But then, the photographs taken of his vehicle after the
purported missile attack give no indication that the car was
hit by anything. There is a gash on the roof. The hood is
bent out of shape. But nothing seems to have been burned.
Cars hit by missiles do not look like they have just been in
a nasty accident. Cars hit by missiles are destroyed. Yet
the glass on the windshield and the windows of Shana's
vehicle isn't even shattered. In the photographs taken of
Shana on the way to the hospital in Gaza, he lies on a
stretcher, eyes closed, arm extended in full pieta mode. He
is not visibly bleeding although there are some blood stains
on his shirt, but then his undershirt is completely white.

I did not see these pictures in the media coverage of the
purported IDF attack on the Reuters and Iranian cameramen. I
saw them on Powerlineblog Web site. I did not see any
questions raised from either the Israeli or the
international media on the veracity of Shana's tale, which
of course, provides a nice balance to the Centanni-Wiig
hostage story.

As is the case with the Palestinian war against Israel, one
of the most notable aspects of Hizbullah's latest campaign
against Israel has been the active collaboration of news
organizations and international NGO's in Hizbullah's
information war against Israel. Like their rogue state
sponsors, subversive sub-national groups like Hizbullah,
Fatah and Hamas, see information operations as an integral
part of their war for the annihilation of Israel and defeat
of the West. And their information operations are more
advanced than any the world has seen. As becomes more
evident with each passing day, they have successfully
corrupted both the world media and the community of NGOs
that purportedly operate in a neutral manner in war zones.

It is not a coincidence that I saw the pictures of the
Reuters' vehicle on Powerline and not in the media coverage
of the purported attack. Both the global media and the
international NGO community abjectly refuse to investigate
themselves. As democratic governments and their militaries
have proven incapable of dealing with the phenomenon (in
part because they seek to curry favor with the media and the
international NGO community), the blogosphere has taken upon
itself the role of media watchdog.

Bloggers have become a critical component of the free
world's defense in the current war. During the Hizbullah
campaign in Lebanon, bloggers scrutinized coverage of the
war in a way that has never been done before. Their work has
exposed the dirty secret of the Middle East that the media
has hidden for so many years: The global media and the
international NGO community, which profess to be neutral
observers, are in fact colluding with terrorist
organizations.

The blogosphere, and particularly Little Green Footballs,
Powerline, Zombietime, Michelle Malkin, and EU Referendum,
have relentlessly exposed the systematic staging of news
events, fabrication of attacks against relief workers, and
doctoring of photographic images by Hizbullah with the
active assistance of international organizations and the
global media.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, with its
internationally mandated status as a protected organization,
is particularly culpable. The blogoshere - and specifically
EU Referendum and Zombietime Web sites - have shown that Red
Cross employees in Tyre and Kana fabricated from whole cloth
a tale of an Israeli airstrike against Red Cross ambulances
in Kana on July 23. In an exhaustively documented report,
"How the Media Legitimized an Anti-Israel Hoax and Changed
the Course of a War," Zombietime showed how Red Cross
employees took an old, rusty ambulance and alleged that the
IAF had attacked it with a missile that blew a hole straight
through the middle of the red cross on the ambulance's roof.

The Red Cross allegation was reported as fact by such
"credible" news organizations as Associated Press, Time
magazine, the BBC, ITV, The New York Times, The Guardian,
The Age, MSNBC, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch both published
accounts of the attack as evidence of Israeli "war crimes"
in Lebanon.

Zombietime clearly proved from simple scrutiny of the
photographs taken of the ambulance, that the hole in the
cross was not the result of a missile attack but the work of
the ambulance manufacturer. It was the hole for an air vent.
The pock marks on the roof were the result of age and decay.
There had been no fire in the ambulance. There was no
attack. It was a complete fabrication, concocted by Red
Cross employees who enjoy their protected status because
their organization has pledged its neutral status in this
and all wars.

One weel later, as EU Referendum reports in a similarly
detailed investigation of the much condemned IAF bombing of
Kana on July 30, (which actually happened a mile north of
Kana at Khuraybah village), Red Cross relief workers
actively participated in the staging of a perverted media
extravaganza where the bodies of dead children were paraded
about before the waiting camera crews for hours and hours.

Rather than demand that the ICRC account for the clear
breach of its binding commitment to neutrality, and rather
than attack the Lebanese Red Cross for its active
collaboration with Hizbullah, the international media has
attacked the bloggers. They are brushed off as "Israel
supporters," and "right-wing extremists." The aim of these
brush-offs is to convince "right thinking" citizens that
they oughtn't have anything to do with these champions of
truth and human decency.

As each day passes, the governments, formal and informal
legal apparatuses, and media of free societies show
themselves to be less and less capable of contending with
the information operations conducted against their societies
by subversive forces seeking their destruction. As each day
passes it becomes clear that the responsibility of
protecting our nations and societies from internal
disintegration has passed to the hands of individuals, often
working alone, who refuse to accept the degradation of their
societies and so fight with the innovative tools of liberty
to protect our way of life. The vigilance of just a handful
of bloggers brought us the knowledge of the corruption of
our media and the network of global NGOs that we have come
to rely on to tell us the "objective" truth.

It is up to all citizens of the free world, who value our
freedom to recognize this corruption, applaud the bloggers
and join them in refusing to allow these corrupt
institutions to cloud our commitment to freedom.

Posted by Robert J. Avrech at August 29, 2006 09:16 AM

Comments

Seraphic Secret is private property, that's right, it's an extension of our home, and as such, Karen and I have instituted two Seraphic Rules and we ask commentors to act respectfully.

1. No profanity.

2. No Israel bashing. We debate, we discuss, we are respectful. You know what Israel bashing is. The world is full of it. Seraphic Secret is one of the few places in the world that will not tolerate this form of anti-Semitism.

That's it. Break either of these rules and you will be banned.

Posted by: jayne at August 29, 2006 02:39 PM

Posted by: Robert J. Avrech at August 29, 2006 03:00 PM

Posted by: jayne at August 29, 2006 03:18 PM

Posted by: Robert J. Avrech at August 29, 2006 03:22 PM

Posted by: jayne at August 29, 2006 03:37 PM

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