Old wounds? (From Getty Images)
Perhaps all this is painfully obvious, but the mainstream media has become a full-bore organ of "Palestinian" propaganda. This CNN article is just one egregious example out of many. It goes on for paragraph after paragraph about the civilians wounded in Gaza, with only one skeptical sentence giving the other side of the matter: "Israeli leaders say they are trying to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza." They "say" they're "trying" -- but as the rest of the article shows, obviously they're not succeeding.
What could CNN do if it had any interest in actually being an organ of respectable journalism? CNN reporters could have asked about the Palestinians' admitted use of civilians as human shields. They could have gone to Meshaal and Haniyah and asked why Hamas is launching attacks from civilian areas. They could have asked them if Hamas is, by doing that, trying to provoke Israeli counterattacks that will kill or injure civilians and that can then be used for propaganda purposes. They could have asked why the Palestinians seem to be in such a humanitarian crisis when Israel was sending in truckloads of aid right up until it began responding to the rocket attacks.
Then there is the picture above, which appears online with this article, and is one of an apparently endless series of wire photos depicting wounded children. Of course, CNN wasn't bombarding us with pictures of children in southern Israel wounded by or fleeing from rocket attacks from Gaza, but aside from that, there are some questionable things about this photo. The child, for one thing, although apparently burned badly, is not crying or even distressed. According to a veteran Emergency Room doctor who saw the photo, the wounds appear to be up to 24 hours old, and a dermatologist and pathologist estimated that they could be as much as a week old.
Of course, it's hard to tell anything for sure from a single photo, and maybe this child really has been freshly wounded, but here again -- given all the faked photos and larger-scale (Muhammad al-Dura) fakery we have seen from the Palestinians, it isn't unreasonable to question every photo that comes out of Gaza these days. If CNN were worth its salt as a news source rather than a propaganda organ, it would be going into Gaza and uncovering this fakery. It would be looking into the case of the little girl pictured above, and having her examined by honest doctors to see if she was actually wounded by a recent Israeli strike at all, or if her wounds are older and come from some other incident. And above all, it would be asking about the moral compass of a government that seems anxious to provoke and exploit the suffering of its own civilian population.
But of course, CNN's refusal to do all those things, and to cast any critical eye at all toward the Palestinians and their claims, only encourages the Palestinians themselves to aspire to ever greater heights of manipulative fakery and propagandizing.
And CNN is just one of many.
"Doctor in Gaza: Patients 'lying everywhere," from CNN, January 4 (thanks to Jacques):
GAZA CITY (CNN) -- Gaza's main hospital, already full of Palestinians wounded in the week-long Israeli air assault, reached critical mass on Sunday, according to a Norwegian doctor volunteering at Shifa Hospital."We've had a steady stream [of patients] every day, but the last 24 hours has [brought] about triple the number of cases," Dr. Erik Fosse told CNN. "So this day has been extremely busy."
Fosse said he estimated that about 30 percent of the casualties at Shifa Hospital on Sunday were children, both among the dead and the wounded.
The increase in casualties at Shifa followed Israel's's [sic] ground incursion into Gaza, which it launched on Saturday night. Fosse said 50 patients were "severely wounded" when an Israeli airstrike hit a food market in Gaza City.
"We were operating in the corridors, patients were lying everywhere, and people were dying before they got treatment," he said.
Palestinian medical officials said Israeli forces have killed 37 Palestinians -- both civilians and militants -- since moving into the territory Saturday night. With those deaths, at least 485 Palestinians, including about 100 women and children, have been killed since the military operation began more than a week ago, officials said.
In addition, 2,600 Palestinians have been injured, most of them civilians, officials said.
Most of the casualties are a result of the airstrikes that preceded Saturday night's ground incursion. Shifa is the main hospital in Gaza City. Other hospitals were unable to treat the wounded because of a shortage of supplies and staff.
Israel has said the military operation is a necessary self-defense measure after repeated rocket attacks from Gaza into southern Israel by Hamas militants. Israeli leaders say they are trying to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza.
Last week, Dr. Eyad El-Sarraj, a psychiatrist who runs Gaza's mental health program, said Gaza is headed for "a major humanitarian disaster" unless the fighting ends soon.
Meanwhile, at the Gaza-Egypt border, nearly 25 trucks carrying relief and medical supplies were unable to get into Gaza because they could not get through the Rafa border gate, CNN's Karl Penhaul reported.
Egyptian authorities said the guards who were manning the Palestinian side of the border had abandoned their posts. Aid workers and drivers banged on the gate to protest the closure, but the gate remained shut.
On Saturday -- before Israel launched its ground incursion -- old Palestinian ambulances carried some of the wounded across the border, where patients were loaded onto modern ambulances. Most of those taken into Egypt were civilians, including a teenage boy with his arm blown off, as well as a 4-day-old baby, who was not injured but needed to be kept on a ventilator and in an incubator.
About 10 truckloads of donations from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Greece also crossed into Gaza on Saturday.
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I, for one think Israel should pull their boys out, launch their Arrow SLBM's at Gaza, and call it a day.
If the "Palestinians" want to play with missiles, Israel' gonna win that game every time.