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Monday, March 19, 2007

Islamic Jihad "work accident" in Gaza City

Another work accident:
Gaza - Ma'an - One Palestinian activist from the Al-Quds brigades, the military wing of Islamic Jihad, was killed and five others wounded in an explosion in a house in Ash-Shati refugee camp in Gaza City in the Gaza Strip on Monday.

The explosion took place at noon on Monday and destroyed the house of the Hessi family.

Palestinian medical sources said that Ala'a Hessi, 26, was killed in the explosion and five others were injured. The Islamic Jihad movement is in mourning for Hessi and confirmed that he was one of its members.
Oops!

Remember last summer when the entire world castigated Israel for "targeting" populated areas of Gaza and Lebanon? Western nations who are no stranger to creating far worse collateral damage during wartime didn't hesitate to condemn Israeli actions as Hezbollah hid among Lebanese civilians.

Now, who exactly is condemning Islamic Jihad for building weapons and explosive factories in people's houses?

(And who knew that Islamic Jihad had anything other than a military wing?)

The late Mr. Hessi hated Jews so much that he didn't hesitate to build a bomb in his own family's house. As a known member of PIJ, one can assume that his family approved of his sacred work - because the intended victims of his explosives are Jewish families, not his own. And he ended up not only destroying his own life and house, but he also damaged neighboring houses as well.

Obviously this is a "dog bites man" story and there is nothing spectacular about it in the context of general PalArab depravity. I've reported dozens of similar "work accidents." But the reason it is worth emphasizing is precisely because it is not a noteworthy news story - the very frequency that these things happen ensure that Palestinian Arabs get a free pass from the world when they support and allow actions that would be considered grave war crimes by any real nation on the planet. Since it doesn't get reported, and since Israeli actions that are far less severe get reported constantly, the world gets a heavily skewed idea of what is going on in the Middle East.

Because of this skewed coverage, the average person would have no idea that Palestinian Arabs have killed roughly four times of their own people this year than Israels has. One would think that this is an important statistic for a true understanding of the situation, but the news is not trying to give the big picture - and this is a large reason why Israel ends up getting the lion's share of bad press.

The number of Palestinian Arabs violently killed this year by their own actions is now 142 by our count.