Sunday, July 03, 2016

03-Jul-16: Friday night rocket attacks from Gaza

Two rockets were fired into southern Israel during Friday night causing serious anxiety to thousands of families across the region, most of them in their homes for the Sabbath.

One, according to Times of Israel, exploded just outside a preschool in Sderot, the Israeli city that has borne the brunt of the unfettered terror emanating from the rocket-infested Gazan vipers' nest. Fortunately, though this was certainly not the rocket men's intention, no serious injuries were caused to humans.

But there are slightly conflicting testimonies. Ynet, evidently working from different witnesses, says a Sderot kindergarten building was in fact hit and damage caused to the building, but that no one was physically hurt. It does say one person suffered from panic and was taken for treatment. Note that the Jerusalem Post has a photo of the damage, which does not appear to be insignificant, and it reports that two persons needed medical care.

Anyone out there among our readers with connections at Associated Press? Its syndicated report, carried at the Christian Science Monitor for example, is headline "Israeli airstrikes on Hamas after rocket hits empty Sderot kindergarten", as if to suggest that the terrorists decided to go after an empty building. Is this a sign of editorial silliness, or malevolence? (Ask yourself how relevant to the attack the nature of the building that was struck is.)

Another rocket exploded in an open area of the Sha’ar HaNegev region a little earlier in the evening, also fortunately causing no damage.

At the BBC, neither rocket attack was mentioned in any of its news bulletins, consistent with a pattern being tracked by the indispensable BBC Watch which notes that 
"Audiences continue to be systematically deprived of information vital to their understanding of this particular “international issue”, in clear breach of the pledges to its funding public laid out in the BBC’s public purposes.

3 comments:

sheldan said...

"Is this a sign of editorial silliness, or malevolence?"

This sounds like what another Web site refers to as "It all started when Israel fired back." Somehow, the mainstream media cannot bring themselves to get the facts straight on this issue.

Rita said...


The BBC and assorted Al Jazeera Branches (including the Deutsche Welle, the Australian ABC/SBS, the French Ch.2) are the new "Der Stürmer". One can never lower one's expectation of them with regard to Israel and the Jews, without them even doing worse.

Decent and half-intelligent people (be they Jewish or not) have no difficulties to decide which side to take: the Terrorists' side or Israel's and the Jewish People's side.

This Ongoing War said...

In a previous age, we might have argued against the point that multiple voices in the global media seem to share a consistent and ever-hostile view of Israel that gets reflected in how they report news.

Today, having personally gotten to know editors and reporters and analysts from many countries and from many of the world's most influential news-reporting media, it's clear to us that there is a very real, and very poorly understood, problem that everyone who cares about democracy and justice ought to be thinking about all the time. It's deeply worrying, and what's most worrying is how few people worry about it.