This is today’s BBC: on youthful terrorists
[Hat tip: Steven Hayward at Powerline.]
Get a load of this BBC “reporter,” whose name is Anjana Gadgil:
First she fences with words, calling armed terrorists between 16 and 18 “children” and implying that gives them some sort of dispensation to kill. Then she cites “the UN definition,” as though that matters. Then she tries to not answer Bennett’s question involving a personal hypothetical. And then she falls back on a meaningless moral equivalence in a cycle-of-violence argument that ignores reality. All with a serious demeanor, as though she’s not spouting nonsensical propaganda – because she knows plenty of people will swallow her argument.
[NOTE: Speaking of Jenin, please see this.]
In theory, it should be possible to criticize specific actions of the Israeli state without being a Jew-hater. Sadly, we don’t see that kind of fact-based reporting in any of the legacy media outlets. Jenin is a hotbed of terrorists, and civilians are being killed in Israel and on the West Bank. That should draw criticism of the terrorist groups, not of the Israeli response.
The unorganized militia of the United States is comprised of all men between the ages of 17 and 45.
This is the pool of men that state governments and the Federal government can call upon for military force.
She’s a Jew-hater.
As bad as Christiane Amanpour, nothing the Israelis do is right. As he said, what would her response be if a Jena terrorist attacked her and her family.
Just as the terrorists in France seem to have a free hand to do what they want. Yes some were arrested, but will they be convicted and do time? Don’t bet on it.
Shorter Gadjil, and Amanpour: the only good Jew is a dead Jew.
“In theory, it should be possible to criticize specific actions of the Israeli state without being a Jew-hater.”
Yes Kate, that is true in theory but as you allude to it is almost never true in fact. Most of this “coverage” is an attempt to curry favor with or whitewash neighboring Middle East regimes that are for the most part abominable human rights hellholes.
Just look at Syria. In the past decade alone there have been millions of refugees and hundreds of thousands killed, orders of magnitude worse than anything ever done to the Palestinians. That’s what Israel’s enemies like to do to each other when they don’t have a Jew to gas.
“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” Isaiah 5:20 KJV
I had a conversation with a learned non-religious Muslim writer in Cairo. He repeated the line about the “disaster” of Israel’s founding. I replied that in the same time that this tiny Jewish state was created, there was also created a huge Muslim state which has been an international horror ever since — Pakistan. He stopped talking about it, because he knew I was right.
I love the “Did you set out to kill children?”
And he sorta gives the correct response:
“No, we set out to kill people attacking us. We have no control over the age of the attackers”.
I recall a comment by someone a decade or so ago… something to the end of “Violence in the Middle East will stop when the Middle Eastern mothers care as much about their sons as those of other nations.”
Kate: “He stopped talking about it, because he knew I was right.”
Deep down I believe many of the people in the region know the reality and either refuse to or are afraid to admit it. On another blog I used to tangle regularly with an Arab-American who was very hostile to Israel. I asked him once, “Would the Middle East be better off if the other countries were more like Israel or Israel were more like the other countries?” He replied, “I don’t have a good answer to that, I’ll have to get back to you”. He never “got back” to me because of course he knew the answer.
@ OBH > “I recall a comment by someone a decade or so ago”
Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel 1969-1974.
“We can forgive [the Arabs] for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with [the Arabs] when they love their children more than they hate us…”
It hasn’t happened yet.
The BBC has been an anti-Semitic sewer for decades. They do not hate Jews because of Israel, they hate Israel because it is Jewish.