Geneva Gibber

Being in Europe, I have had the pleasure of reading primarily European coverage of the Israeli –“Hezbollah” conflict (i.e. – fight the Hezbollah by killing lots of Lebanese civilians and destroying all access routes to prevent any kind of humanitarian assistance). While reading a more balanced view of the matter hasn’t made me any less enraged about what Israel is doing, at least I’ve had the luxury of reading about the conflict from a less biased press. Today, however, out of curiosity, I decided to venture over to CNN.com to see what they were saying about the conflict. I am currently fuming at my desk, and may have to cancel my flight back to the US in protest of our crappy press and heinous president. (Don’t worry mom, I won’t actually do that – I miss free pop refills and air conditioning too much… sadly I am that shallow of a person).

But back to my rant - My favorite sentence in the article was

The combat has left more than 400 people dead on both sides of the Lebanese-Israeli border.

Hmm, that’s an interesting way to obscure the facts. Somehow, I think that clarifying that 377 of those people (almost all civilians) were Lebanese is a rather important part of telling a nonbiased news story.

I also enjoyed the news footage they had of Israel’s plan to enter “Hezbollah’s terror capital.” Of course if it’s a terror capital, what choice does Israel have but to obliterate it?

I could go on and on about this, and I’m sure you’d all rather not here it. Feel free to post comments about how Israel has a right to protect it’s people, bla, bla, bla, but I’ll say now that I think that argument is a load of crap. Sure Israel has a right to protect its people, but they aren’t fighting the Hezbollah, their just using this as an excuse to bomb the hell out of the Lebanese people and to flex their US provided military muscles. I’ve even heard (firsthand) talk of war crimes from people at the UN (which really is a remarkably unbiased source, even if Fox News and the Ann Coulters of the world don’t think so.) In the end Israel is doing exactly what the US is doing in Iraq – making millions of enemies and exponentially diminishing the security of its citizens. It is remarkable how the US and Israel continue to be shocked that their practice of killing lots of people never results in a sustained peace.

# posted by Hoptrop : 11:41 AM