Did you hear the one about the granddaughter of Ismail Haniyeh, terrorist leader of Hamas, seeking medical help in Israel?
Ha ha ha, yeah, me too… Wait. It wasn’t a joke?
But I thought it must have been a spoof from The Onion, or the Daily Mash, or whatever satirical website the kids are reading nowadays. I mean, I couldn’t see the story anywhere in the mass or mainstream media.
In fact, the only places you can find mention of the fact that Amal, who has an acute infection of the digestive tract, is being treated in an Israeli hospital, is from Israeli or Jewish news sources. A little trip to the Google news reader will reveal an effective “apartheid” of news coverage on the issue, with only outlets like the Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, Jewish Chronicle and Jewish Telegraphic Agency lending column inches to the story.
But this isn’t the kind of apartheid that regularly gets hurled against Israel. This is an anti-Israel media apartheid.
You see, when Al Jazeera sponsors a Swiss lab to come up with inconclusive findings over a long-dead terrorist leader, the BBC goes ape-shit, pumping out over a dozen articles on the matter. They may as well have replaced the Middle East homepage last week with, “Ffffuuuucckkk! We knew it was Israel all along!!!!!1111″ in big, bold, (Arabic?) letters.But when Israel is found to even be graciously treated the grand-daughter of the terrorist leader Ismail Haniyeh, whose will it is no less to wipe Israel off the map… they’re not so bothered.
From a human interest perspective alone, this is fascinating stuff. But it really also does have regional implications.
And this isn’t even to say anything of the rank hypocrisy of a Hamas leader’s blood relation seeking life support from Israel. But another day, eh?
In the meantime, if you mosey on down to the BBC Middle East page, you can read one story about Israel, about an al-Qaeda detainee or indeed some Iranian propaganda line thrown into their report on the latest bomb blasts in Lebanon. The Telegraph is still pushing the settlements story from last week. There’s nothing on Sky News’s “World” Section. The New York Times leads on the Iranian nuclear negotiations, and The Guardian spins the news about the Al-Qaeda operative to seem like a story about “a Palestinian man… who has been held in an Israeli jail without charge or trial for more than three years.”
Fox News has nothing. Al Jazeera has nothing. CNN has nothing, and only as I write this have I noticed that ABC News has posted some carbon copy Associated Press notes on the matter.
So did you hear that one about the granddaughter of Ismail Haniyeh, terrorist leader of Hamas, seeking medical help in Israel?
Me neither…
UPDATE 13:22 > Ma’an News Agency reports that the poor one-year-old child, Amal, is now “clinically dead” and has returned to Gaza. While I wonder if we’ll now see reports about this development coupled with conspiracy theories about Israel’s involvement in her death, I hope we can all spare a moment to realise how tragic the death of a child is, and if you are someone who prays – please extend your kindness towards her.
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