Friday, January 18, 2008

THE NEWS


The Australian newspaper continues to provide a balanced coverage of the events in the Middle East. Abraham Rabinovich’s report Hamas threat to Israel: captive may vanish stands in stark contrast to the misinformation published by its rival broadsheets Australia's main capital cities.

In his article, Rabinovich covers a number of items of news relating to the conflict betweeen Israel and the Palestinians. Which of the following would you expect to see covered in a report from the Melbourne Age or the Sydney Morning Herald?

# Threats by a senior Hamas official that captured Israeli soldier would come to harm if Israel did not halt its attacks on Gaza,

# The death of the son of former Hamas foreign minister Mahmoud al-Zahar, the most militant of Hamas's political leaders who was one of 19 Palestinians killed in battles this week,

# A message of condolence was sent to Zahar by the Israeli soldier's father, Noam Shalit,

# Israel maintained air attacks and hit two vehicles, one of which killed two members of the Popular Resistance Committees involved in the making of rockets while the other unintentionally hit a civilian car, killing two (a PRC spokesman said the apparent target was its chief rocket maker, who was passing in a similar vehicle),

# Hamas fired close to 50 rockets into Israel yesterday, many of which hit the Israeli town of Sderot. "The town has had few casualties but most children and many adults are reported to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder",

# Israel's Defence Minister Ehud Barak warned Israel would step up its attacks if the massive rocket attacks continued,

# Palestinian sources reported that Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya intended to order the rocket attacks scaled down or halted after anger over the deaths in Gaza had subsided,

# The Palestinian Authority chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said peace negotiations would be suspended until Israel's attacks on Gaza ended.

# Israel's right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party headed by Avigdor Lieberman announced its 11-man faction was leaving the coalition government.

That’s what I call news – rather than the one-sided selective embarrassment that is served up on an almost daily basis by the opposition!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Is Saeb Erekat typical of Palestinian "peace" negotiators when he tells Israel that unless it stops defending its citizens from terrorists the peace process will be suspended?

Go figure????????????????

Olmert should tell him to shove his peace talks where the sun doesn't shine.