Sunday, October 14, 2007

Mohammed al-Dura, anyone?

The modern intefada against Israel was largely born in the course of one event; the death of a young Palestinian boy named Mohammed al-Dura, shot during a clash between Israelis and Palestinians.

At present, the truth about that incident is under investigation, and France 2 has been ordered by a court to turn over the raw, unedited footage of that day several years ago. There is good reason to believe the boy was either accidentally or purposefully killed by Palestinians themselves, and that they used the incident to blame Israel and inflame passions against the Jews.

Al-Dura's death was, of course, captured on video and made into a thousand propaganda pieces, and reported unflaggingly by all major media as having been at the hands of the IDF.

Whatever the truth (and it seems now that the IDF is innocent of that death), it is startling how the story changes when the 'guilty' party is not a Jew but a Palestinian.

There is no more clear evidence of the selective outrage of the modern media; when a young Palestinian boy is killed, the size of the headline and the world-wide spread of the story is completely and entirely dependent on whether a Jew pulled the trigger, or someone else.

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