"Religon of Peace" maintains its peaceful image with Western media

If Israel kills Hamas terrorists in Gaza in the act of launching rockets the muslim world is outraged and the western media goes into overdrive to cover events and denounce the Jews. Yet Fatah muslims blowing up Hamas muslims in Gaza, even when a 4-year-old child is one of the victims, is not considered sufficiently important to merit a single word in most newspapers or even on the 24-hour news channels (Al-Jazeera, which devoted hours of coverage when an arrested Palestinian was shot in the foot with a plastic bullet by an Israeli soldier also somehow managed to avoid the events on Saturday). Today's Sunday Times weighs about three tons, but apparently they do not have enough room to say a single word about what happened in Gaza. Nor do they have a single word to say about the multiple bomb attacks by Islamists in India yesterday that killed dozens.

Today's terrorist attack in Jerusalem

Having close family members who were either nearby today's attack or were in the exact location shortly beforehand makes it somewhat personal. Hamas and all the other Palestinian groups, including Abbas's own Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade have, as usual, glorified the attack - claiming it is a "natural action". So it is apparently perfectly natural to crush to death young women and babies. One of the young women could very easily have been my own daughter. And all this during a supposed ceasefire. And not in any 'occupied territory'.

So I got to thinking why such attacks continue and this is where I start to blame the western media and leftists. The fact is the attacks continue because few in the western media actually disagree with the Hamas notion that such acts are natural (Bradley Burston has written a fantastic article on this very point). On the contrary, the BBC and their ilk - if they report such stories at all (most news outlets in the UK totally ignored the story today as usual) - inevitably seek to justify such acts in ways that are not too dissimilar to the way Hamas does. What people in the West fail to realise is that the Palestinians - including even Hamas - are incredibly sensitive to 'Western opinion'. You only have to look at how they reacted when they received widespread condemnation over the kidnap of the BBC journalist Alan Johnson to realise this. Basically, as soon as they saw it was hurting their image Hamas released him. Simple as that.

But killing Israel civilians is ALWAYS justifiable in the eyes of the leftists in the West who dominate the mainstream media. So, no matter how heineous the terrorist attack, it will never be condemned - or even exposed - by that media. In fact, if news of terrorist attacks against Israelis is covered at all in the mainstream media it will normally be accompanied by more prominent material sympathetic to the Palestinians (often even focusing on the family of the terrorists themselves - conveniently ignoring all the rejoicing and candy-handouts that preceeded the BBC interviewers knock at the door).

Compare the reaction to today's terrorist attack with the accidental death of Rachel Corrie - an ISM activist dedicated to the destruction of Israel - when she deliberately ran into the path of an Israeli bulldozer in 2003. Don't hold your breath waiting for the kind of international condemnation (not to mention endless documentaries, plays, books and articles) that followed that death.

So if, as Bradley Burston implores, the leftists could for once bring themselves to condemn unconditionally this kind of attack, there is a very good chance it could have a real impact in avoiding future similar outrages. Their deafening silence means that THEY are part of the problem, and it is fair to put some of the blame for the deaths of these innocent young women on them.