What you’ re about to read is perfectly true. I came within a butterfly fart of firing this memo off to my boss this morning in a fit of real rage. But my wife, yet again, intervened.
“You’ve been whining like this for ten years. Just go get a new job,” she said.
“Don’t send that memo!”
She’s right.
I agreed not to push the send button, but only if she let me send the memo to The Daily Caller, minus the names. I hate writing anonymously. Readers who’ve criticized me for it are totally justified. One of these days I’ll reveal myself to readers of The Daily Caller, but until that new job comes, or I’m fired, which is increasingly likely, I don’t want to have to pull my kids out of college because of their father’s selfishness. Here’s the memo that I want to send but – under great duress – can’t.
Dear XXXX,
I’m writing for some clarification about how we are supposed to cover the Gaza flotilla story. If we, as a news organization, are supposed to be acting as a public relations arm of Hamas, or Hezbollah, both internationally recognized terrorist organizations, or if we are supposed to be jumping on the bandwagon of 1930’s style anti-Semitism that’s presently sweeping much of the world, then we are doing a fine job. If we are supposed to be acting as a news organization that covers the story objectively, then our coverage is a travesty and an embarrassment.
...In addition, remarkably, her piece made no mention – absolutely none — of the Israeli perspective in this story. For example:
The widely aired (though not here) video that clearly shows an IDF soldier being tossed over a railing, and others being beaten with sticks, was omitted.
The fact that bullet proof vests and night vision goggles were found among the “humanitarian aid” on the ship was omitted.
IDF video of confiscated knives and metal bars that were apparently used as weapons was omitted.
Information that Israeli soldiers were also wounded and injured was omitted.
Moreover, her piece included no background whatsoever on why Israel’s interception (“attack” as we called it ) of the flotilla would likely have passed muster in any court outside the thug-ridden United Nations.
Read the whole thing.
Local news typically doesn't have any experts on international affairs, so the media meme of Israel-as-aggressor becomes the easy narrative to cover stories that go beyond their own back yard. I saw Adam Shapiro on a local Fox station, answering the halfway decent question of whether he believes that Hamas should have the rights to import weapons, by saying "we are against all violence" - but the anchor didn't follow up to force a yes or no answer.
But Free Gaza and the other "humanitarian" groups of the flotilla are very clear that they want to see Gaza/Hamastan treated like a sovereign nation, which necessarily means the freedom for Hamas to import whatever weapons it desires. (Yesterday's interview with the Amnesty International official showed that this was pretty much their position as well. And this applies to the PA, too)
So we have an entire generation of people supposedly concerned about human rights who feel that the only moral thing that must be done is to have Israel just allow unlimited supplies - including weapons - into Gaza.
It might make them uncomfortable, but, hey, they aren't Hamas' targets.