The art of deception

When Palestinians slaughter Palestinians in the course of a shoot out in a Gaza mosque the safe option for our local broadsheet is a feel good story about this beer salesman.

When the news isn't quite going in the direction you want it to go, the artful media propagandist can still push his agenda by means of diversionary tactics. If you have to keep the slaughter in Gaza away from the attention of your readers when there's not a Jew in sight to be blamed, then what better than a puff piece about a Palestinian beer manufacturer from the West Bank whose business is booming - Palestinian Oktoberfest in the West Bank?

Taybeh Beer's been around for quite a while and is living proof that the co-operation between Israelis and Palestinians can bring about beneficial outcomes for both people.

But the Palestinian lobby which pumps Palestinian tyres at every turn doesn't need a story about Hamas brutality in Gaza at the very time when its waiting for the soon to be published U.N. report that's been commissioned to make a finding that Israel committed war crimes in defending its people from the thugs of Gaza based on eyewitness reports from er ... well ... people sympathetic to the thugs.

Thugs like those described in this story from the Australian which actually does take the trouble today to properly inform its readers - Hamas hit hardliners in Gaza battle.

And in the meantime, let's drink to the beer maker from the West Bank whose business will no doubt end up in ruins if the boys from Hamas ever gained control of his part of the world.