Friday, September 21, 2007

MORE THAN ONE BAD ED IN THE AGE NEWSPAPER BASKET

Just when those who crave accurate and honest news reporting from their local daily newspaper are breathing sighs of relief at the imminent departure of one biased journalist, the Melbourne Age has come up with a shoddily produced one-sided piece of blatant anti-Israel propaganda from the Guardian’s Ed Pilkington that would even make Ed O’Loughlin blush - Judges block Gaza activist death case.

Pilkington's report is about a US federal appeals court ruling in favour of Catterpillar, the supplier of bulldozers used by the IDF in house demolitions to prevent the smuggling of deadly arms and munitions used by Palestinian terror groups to cause murder Israeli civilians. The case was brought by the parents of an activist of the International Solidarity Movement, Rachel Corrie who tragically died in 2003 when she placed herself in the path of a bulldozer, which was in the process of carrying out such a demolition. The ruling was made on long established constitutional grounds that the prosecution of the claim involved the court in entering the political sphere, which was beyond its power. Pilkington highlights that part of the ruling that concludes from a practical point of view that a finding in favour of the Plaintiffs case could not be made 'without implicitly questioning, and even condemning, United States foreign policy towards Israel'." By omitting the words "a Court could not find in favor of the Plaintiffs" and replacing them with "argued that the case could not go to trial" he completely distorts the decision to the point of suggesting that the judges believed the Plaintiffs' case had merit. This is not what they ruled upon.

Pilkington's bias against Israel comes out in his very simplistic description of the facts behind Corrie's death which he puts down as a foregone conclusion -

"Rachel Corrie, 23, was killed on March 16, 2003, by a 60-tonne Caterpillar D9 bulldozer in Rafah, Gaza, as she tried to prevent the home of a Palestinian pharmacist being razed. She was wearing a fluorescent orange vest and, according to witnesses, was in full view of the bulldozer operator."

Pilkington fails to mention of the fact that Corrie was a member of the terrorist supporting International Solidarity Movement which portrays itself as a "peace group" but which in fact openly states that it supports the Palestinian "armed resistance". Some peaceniks!

The witnesses who Pilkington quotes as claiming that Corrie was "in full view of the bulldozer operator" included friends and supporters of the owner of the house that was being demolished and used to smuggle weapons destined for use by suicide murderers of Israelis. Most were members of the ISM so they weren't exactly independent witnesses. While their credibility is not questioned by Pilkington, he follows the typical O'Loughlin's blank page methodology by deliberately omitting that fact that bulldozer operator denied seeing Corrie because she was not visible from his vantage point on the bulldozer or the myriad of inconsistencies and lies told by Pilkington's witnesses who even resorted to the use of doctored photographs to ensure that Corrie's death would not be in vain - i.e. that it could be used as a centrepice for their campaign against Israel.

The Stop ISM site is most instructive in providing an insight into how Rachel Corrie was used as an unwitting playtoy for this devious organisation and its cause.

And Corrie is not the only person duped by their perverted Palestinian propaganda campaign. If you're a reader of the Age you have long ago been welcomed to the club.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Is it a coincidence that one of ISM's apparatchiks Michael Shaikh is in Melbourne as we speak debating for the Palestinians and advocating for the end of Israel as we know it?

The ISM is a terrorist protection organization. The goal of the ISM is not to plant bombs and murder civilians. The ISM aims to protect the terrorists who plant bombs and murder civilians. The ISM hopes to keep the IDF out of Palestinian neighborhoods so that terrorists will be free to manufacture explosives, train suicide bombers, smuggle weapons, arm snipers, and fire rockets at residential neighborhoods without interference from the IDF. The ISM calls itself non-violent, and many supporters of the organization. may actually believe that this is a non-violent movement following the footsteps of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

The leadership, however, is using the rhetoric of non-violence in a calculated effort to mask the true nature of the ISM, which is organized for the protection of terrorists. Although the statements made by volunteers while in Israel appear to be carefully phrased so as to omit any mention of cooperation with terrorist organizations listed by the State Department, upon return to the United States they can be startlingly frank about the ISM`s cooperation with terrorist organizations.

Susan Barclay, the ISM organizer deported by Israel after she hid Islamic Jihad terrorist Shadi Sukiya in the ISM office in Jenin, told the Seattle Post Intelligencer that, "she knowingly worked with representatives from Hamas and Islamic Jihad - terrorist groups that sponsor suicide bombings and exist, according to their charters, to demolish the Jewish state entirely."

(Seattle Post Intelligencer, Thursday March 20, 2003, Activist`s death focuses spotlight on Mideast struggle, By Sam Skolnik, Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter)