A media pogrom will soon descend upon Israel, to occur at a site housing Arab Bedouins called Khan al-Ahmar and as Israel responds to the barrage of hundreds of rockets from Gaza which have already claimed civilian lives.
Poised to begin this media slaughter are the BBC, the New York Times, Associated Press, CBS, NBC, PBS, and on and on. For the foreign media have become today’s cossacks, slashing at Jews on the streets, and have taken over the job of the priests who cursed the Jews from their church pulpits.
And when Israel gives Hamas its due and finally removes these Bedouins, no media barbarians will display more hatred and violence towards Israel than the western European news organizations.
When the illegal Bedouin shacks are removed, the narrative the foreign media will transmit worldwide will be their 21st century version of the old Christian curses about long-nosed, foul-smelling Jews with blood-soaked hands. But instead of Jews oppressing Christians, now the media screams that Jews persecute defenseless Arabs, as the world media blasts away at the legitimacy of the state of Israel.
Meanwhile, the rockets fall on Israel.
But stand by, because this next pogrom might be only hours away.
The scripts are written, the tv scouts have determined where to set up cameras, and the journalists who broadcast their half-truths are doing what they normally do before covering a big story. They are not preparing, not reading, not learning; they will again do their best to report no context, no history, and no complexities.
The next media onslaught against Israel will occur at the Gaza border and another at a dot on the map called Khan al-Ahmar, where 180 Bedouins have erected a few shacks, set up tents and call this a town. They did this without permission or permits, and Israel, like every country on Earth, demands that all illegal buildings, whether built by Arabs or Jews, be removed.
As expected, the removal of these Bedouin shacks has become a rallying cry for all who hate Israel. But knowing this, what might Israel’s media gurus do to prevent the upcoming global thrashing of Israel by the world’s media at Khan al-Ahmar? near Gaza?
In truth, it is really not so difficult to halt this media pogrom.
For Israel only has to prevent the world media from having pictures to broadcast at Khan al-Ahmar and Gaza. Simply put, no pictures means no story.
All of the primitive totalitarian regimes prohibit the media from transmitting inconvenient pictures, and are rewarded every day as the press happily ignores these countries’ most ghastly behaviors.
Beyond preventing pictures from being televised, Israel also needs to seal off Khan al-Ahmar so there is no media access to this community and no interviews with the Bedouins, who the mindless foreign media must portray as victims.
And only after the area has been closed, Israel needs to take away the tents and few shacks and keep the area sealed off for yet another few weeks.
Why a few weeks? Because the foreign media is not made up of very stern stuff. They have a child-like attention span and will quickly move on to their next breathless assignments, beaming their important ‘Breaking News’ to all corners of the earth.
If foreign media has no access to Khan al-Ahmar for one or two months, the removal of the shacks will quickly become ancient news.
It must keep the media away from the IDF and leave them reporting only what Hamas says.
Of course, some leftist Jews will shriek, what of our vaunted democracy? What of our freedom of the press? What of the people’s right to know?
Well, what of the right to know? In the never-ending war against Israel, today’s foreign media is used as a lethal weapon to blast away at the very legitimacy of Israel through non-stop lies and blood libels delivered to every television on planet earth.
And what message is delivered by the foreign media?
- Images of the bombings of Gaza, with little to no mention of the thousands of Arab missiles shot into Israel before Israel's response. Or of Israel's measured response to the destructive kite terror.
- Israel’s destroying the homes of terrorists, without reporting on the atrocities the terrorists commit against Israelis.
- And endless images of the residents of Gaza under fire, but never, ever of Jews living in bomb shelters in Sderot. And skewed reporting on Israeli civilian casualties, if they are mentioned at all.
There is no context explained to viewers about Israel’s wars by these foreign journalists, who instead have an anti-Israel political message they must deliver.
Regrettably, those who oppose restricting the foreign press are naive. When at war, the United States, Britain and most major powers restrict journalists’ access and their coverage of news--and especially the transmission of images---as best suits their national interests.
And have no doubt, Israel is at war today, just as it has been every day since long-before 1948. Having lost on the battlefields, the Arabs now use the always-willing media in their quest to destroy Israel.
The foreign media thrives on simple stories---and the Arabs always frame their story as their being the victims of the eternally evil Jews. And since it takes two to tango, so the media enthusiastically joins hands with the Arabs to transmit lies about Israel.
As we have seen, the media virtually never covers stories about Arabs oppressing Arabs--not to mention imprisoning, torturing and killing their Arab brothers. But the foreign press loves stories about those foul Jews trampling on Arabs.
Israel’s leaders watch over a very small country and are rightfully cautious in their decision making. So, reining in the foreign media appears to be particularly difficult for the Israeli government.
Just because it is a democracy does not mean Israel must hand over the tools of a free press to a totalitarian enemy and their partners in the media.
But what if the foreign media has knowingly, or even unintentionally, become our enemies? What if they happily allow themselves to become weapons for use by our enemies, transmitting stories sure to harm Israel?
This is not 1948, in which the world media had just arrived in Israel after reporting on World War II and had an understanding of right and wrong.
In recent years, everything has been turned upside down, as a new leftist weapon called ‘moral equivalence’ demands that journalists report that there is no difference between the IDF and the terrorists of Hamas, that there is no difference between the bomb that blows up a crowded restaurant in Jerusalem and the bombs that the Israelis drop in retaliation.
So, let Israel consider behaving as other democracies do, and act to prevent the foreign media from harming the state. Perhaps it is time to call the foreign media the enemy, or at least as being the hostile parties that they are---as they provide aid and comfort to the Arab enemy.
For clearly, protecting democratic freedoms was never an absolute, and does not mean Israel must provide democratic tools for the totalitarian enemy to destroy Israel.
Just because it is a democracy does not mean Israel must hand over the tools of a free press to a totalitarian enemy and their partners in the media, who will use these freedoms as weapons to destroy Israel, the region’s only democracy.
Similarly, bowing down to the ideals of a free press must not become some new derangement that results in Israel allowing their press freedoms to be turned upon themselves as a weapon by the foreign media.
And those who would prevent Israel from restricting the foreign media should remember that in no democracy is a free press allowed to become the instrument of national suicide.