The following report on the latest non-news from Southern Israel comes from a woman who calls herself BarnesA. She was referred to us by MC, who says: “BarnesA is a fellow Sderotian who, like me, sometimes rattles the keyboard.”
Why is this not news?
by BarnesA
Two days ago, as we were celebrating the close of the modern State of Israel’s 67th Independence Day, we heard the familiar click. The click that precedes the glorious recording in dulcet tones warning us that the green bandana’d banditos across the border, two miles away, have decided to send some fireworks of their own our way. (Mohammed coefficient 100%) .
So for the first time since December, we gathered our most precious belongings (most of whom were already in bed and fast asleep) and raced for our shelters. Here in Sderot, we did not hear the rocket fall. Two hours later we were blessed with the satisfying yet devastating sound of the IAF’s retribution on northern Gaza. I counted at least five large explosions, but now it is a little hard to recall.
Memories of last summer spend the night turning my brain like a pastry hook. Did we kill any children? Did they fire from a school, hospital, residential building? Needless to say, I did not sleep peacefully. To my utter and complete surprise, the rocket fire from Hamas-controlled Gaza, and the resulting reprisal from the IAF, went completely unreported in the international media.
Yemen, of course, is in the forefront of the news. The casualties are growing daily, just this year, the civilian deaths are estimated at between 550 and 1000, depending on the source. There were stories about the Islamic State and their very scriptural adherence to the commandments in the Qur’an, and about their take on the NHS, complete with a cheerful Australian doctor. Stories about Obama and Iran, the earthquake in Nepal, Gallipoli and the Armenian Genocide (take that, Erdogan!), various other tidbits, and of course the vital updates on whatever Kardashian is the centerpiece of the world today.
Nothing about the fact that rockets were fired from Hamas-controlled Gaza at my town on my Independence Day. Nothing.
Of course, I am writing this for a captive audience. You may all be interested to know that the Kibbutzniks have started to talk again about the ‘strange noises day and night’ coming from under their homes, as the Hamas neglect the suffering of their electorate and funnel the world’s aid direct to the esteemed and holy project of earth removal. How proud the donors must be to know that the money that they gave to alleviate the very real and horrific suffering of the children of Gaza is being invested in the land in a very real and horrific way.
This, also, is not news.
When we go to war again in the summer, when the IS/Hamas try again to pour out of their tunnels and create death wherever they can, will that be news? When EU/US-funded ‘freedom fighters’ burst out of Judenrein Gaza to create a Judenrein Palestine, will that be news?
Is it that the ‘nuisance’ of rocket fire at my town is such a commonplace occurrence that it is no longer considered newsworthy? Not even as a three-sentence article buried at the back of a website?
Was it not even worth mentioning for the disproportionate response? Perhaps for Hamas’ denial of responsibility, which highlights how tenuous their control is over their kingdom?
We live here, own houses we cannot sell, (who would buy?) have jobs we cannot leave, debts we cannot pay and friends we cannot bear to lose, right here. We either don’t want to leave, or we cannot leave. We live here with a black cloud hovering in the sky just outside the city. On the day that we celebrate the triumph of our grandparents over the genocidal desires of our neighbours, their children and grandchildren fire rockets from populated areas into civilian areas, and this is not news.
But a politician tugging a ponytail is. The worldwide ramifications of a quick tug are obviously so much more important than a war crime. After all, the war last summer was also not news, there were no protests for and against in most major cities, globally. The repercussions of another escalation in my back yard will not affect anyone else outside of the blast radius — right?
So I guess what I want you to think about is this…
Why is this not news?
Why is an act of war not news?
Imagine that your neighbour fires rockets indiscriminately at your city. Imagine that on your national day or independence day, rockets are fired at you. Now imagine that what Kim is wearing is more important than that.
Now ask yourselves why…
I do not think that the Palestinians by breaking a peace treaty is not news. I would say anyone reading this blog thinks it is news. I was terribly worried for our correspondent when I heard the Palestinians were once again sending bombs to Sderot that it wasn’t news.
I support PizzaIDF.com. Maybe this isn’t the best charity to support but at least I support someone.
This correspondent, missed it, having returned to Bratislava last week, but my wife who is still in Sderot called me within minutes.
Curiously enough Babs, it was BarnesA who was down in the war zone delivering those pizzas, she is bilingual Hebrew/English and has more than a smattering of Arabic and understands the nuances of what is happening much better than I.
This is the why:
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/04/25/miliband-labour-would-outlaw-islamophobia/
This is the UK equivalent of the house minority leader who may well be Prime Minister in two weeks time. He is playing for the Islamic vote, which comprises a substantial number of Pakistan/Bangladesh residents who have ‘postal votes’ some of them faked.
He is prepared to totally compromise free speech in the UK in order to gain power. To him, the ends justify the means, any means.
He is relying on the co-operation of the MSM so that muslims get the news but not Jo the plumber.
MC, A lot of the postal votes from pakistan/Bangladesh are faked but so far, apart from those in Tower Hamlets, no-one seems to care.
What does “outlaw Islamophobia” mean? The old question that couldn’t be answered at OSCE, and several other conferences. So why isn’t Millipede being grilled over it, and forced to admit that, if Millipede has his way, critics of Islam may find themselves in the same category as Hizb-ut-Tahrir and neo-Nazis?
But no-one seems to care. More important is the likes of the Guardian and the SNP repeating ad nauseam that Britain needs to get rid of austerity and spend more money it doesn’t have on projects it doesn’t need, and repeating the oft-mentioned red herring that the Tories want to get rid of the NHS, or that UKIP want to deport all foreigners. And yet it’s the Tories and UKIP that are always accused of “scaremongering”!
No news indeed! In western “democracies” any reporter who tells the truth about Hamas and islam and koran will lose his job.
Miliband Crap is the symptom of the decayed society and directionless: drunk, addicts, immoral, undisciplined, . . .
Miliband Crap is known. He has shown himself that he has no knowledge about anything. And he is the leader of the Labour Party. Nowadays people get elected not by showing what they will do for the nation: They get elected by what they will do for muslims. It is the muslims who rule through their crappy elected representatives.
Is Britain still a country?
Seeing the absolute, undeniable future of what has and will happen in Israel and the intimately predictable response from our “Western” politicians is grim. That this situation exists and some of us can see every facet of it and the inadequate current and future response from our politicians is beyond frustrating.
But worse is the “Why?”, for there is no adequate reason for the cause of such suffering. The root cause though, at some point will be the contents of a book. That book that we all know about, the one that is followed by those with the oil wealth to influence their cultural and humanistic betters. Those whose easy wealth is used to purchase Western business interests and purchase influence. We could laugh at the ludicrous nature of such a situation if there were not for families running to shelters, terrified, facing death within any couple of minutes, were it not for one supremacist psychopath religion bearing sole responsibility for at least trying to regress humanity itself away from what should be an amazing future.