Choosing Your News

How the world has changed! We always assumed that the news we might get about world events would be the same wherever we looked to get it. Not anymore!

Your news, whether the detail reported, the spin on how it is reported, or whether events are reported at all, really depends on where you look for it. Maybe that was always true and we never realized it. Well, we realize it now.

After the October 7^th attack on Israel by Hamas the world’s airways were flooded by reports about Israel’s occupation of that place when Israel had left the territory more than twenty years previously. Few in the media mentioned that.

Immediately there was talk of genocide by Israel when it was Hamas that had opened hostilities and placed their civilians in harm’s way as Israel pursued those who had brutally murdered mostly civilians, even burned babies alive in front of their parents before executing them. And as Hamas promised to do it again and again, including wholesale rape before mutilating bodies. Few reported that. There were immediately cries for a ceasefire repeated in the media, and an end to Israel’s attempt to disarm the terrorists.

The U.S. government, pursuing its own concerns about the impact of events on its forthcoming presidential elections, and pleasing Arab-origin citizens in Michigan, who won’t vote Democrat anyway, has filled the airwaves with their concern for the civilians Hamas has placed in danger. Nobody is reporting that many Palestinians were among those performing evil acts on October 7^th. Or that Palestinians freely elected Hamas to govern them.

The information about what happened on October 7^th, and what is happening daily in Gaza is reported in Israel. Few choose to let the general public learn of those reports. They prefer to share the news offered by Al Jazeera from Qatar that prints mainly lies.

The bulk of the media prefer to quote inflated casualty figures from Hamas, which may  mostly be the deaths of terrorists killed in combat, or losses from Hamas failed missiles which fell, (one-third,)among the population in Gaza. They surely include the natural death rate of 2 million people. In truth we cannot know what is the true civilian casualty list, but we do know that Israel is going to unprecedented lengths to minimize civilian harm compared to war situations in the past. Few report that.

In the past it was a matter of principle, journalistic ethics, to search out the truth, particularly if it was hard to get at. That seems to have gone the way of the dodo. Today it is up to us to search out the truth if we are interested. And most of us have other fish to fry. We swallow whatever is placed before us, or we follow our biases.

Shall we talk about Lebanon? Shall we mention that Hezbollah bombarded Israel for a year before Israel invaded Lebanon to put an end to it? Shall we mention that 80 thousand abandoned their home in northern Israel to ensure that what happened October 7^th, would not be repeated by Hezbollah? Has it been reported that the IDF found that Hezbollah was actually planning the same operation but were prevented from doing that by Israel’s general evacuation of the near border area?

Now, beheading the Hamas in Gaza, Israel has destroyed two-thirds of Hezbollah’s missile firing capacity. It has eliminated almost all of its leaders. It has enforced what the UN promised to do more than forty years ago, the last time it withdrew from Lebanon. Now, big surprise, all are calling in the media for ceasefire from those genocidal Israelis. Nobody called for a ceasefire when Hezbollah had 150,000 missiles it was going to fire into Israel on Iran’s orders.

 And now that Iran itself has fired two salvos of missiles in to Israel to no effect, and Israel  pondered its reply. Iran quickly talked about a ceasefire. It is in all the papers. Israel is so bad, why does it want war? It must be their crazy Prime Minister Netanyahu!

Have you noticed that Israel has changed the world’s parameters? This nation of nine million people has Iran, with 85 million people, shaking in its boots. Iran is diminishing the impact of the Israeli attack yesterday. Iran suffered extensive damage to their ability to produce missiles and their defenses were almost non-existent. Iranian voices were complaining about the ineffectiveness of the Russian defenses which they purchased. It will take months and even years to repair the damages suffered. Not a word in the press.

Israel has drawn the teeth of Hezbollah, with which Iran menaced the Middle East. In a few weeks Israel has reduced Hezbollah to rubble. It has taken so much longer in Gaza because Israel sought to preserve the lives of Hamas-held hostages. Where in the media do you find that story?

Where do you get your news?