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Thursday, January 24, 2008

4,200 Balloons

From YNet:
The Israeli consulate in New York released 4,200 red balloons Thursday, equal to the number of Qassam rockets fired at Sdeort since the Gaza disengagement, outside the United Nations headquarters in the city. The display aimed to protest the international community's disregard for Qassam fire at Israel.

Consul for Media and Public Affairs in New York, David Saranga, said that the protest aimed to place the distress faced by Israelis on the American and global agenda.

"To this day, all attempts to place this issue on the American media's agenda have failed," Saranga said.
So far, none of the major wire services have posted a single photo of this protest.

But protests against Israel that appear to have attracted a dozen or so people get prominent coverage, like this one from Lebanon. AP posted no less than 10 pictures of this protest, each one cropped in such a way so that you cannot see how tiny it really is.

Which proves Israel's point precisely.

This of course begs the question - why does AP consider a small protest of Hezbollah-supporting college students in front of the Egyptian embassy in Beirut to be infinitely more newsworthy than Israel's more creative and innovative protest taking place opposite the United Nations?