A preliminary hearing for Mohamed H. Dawod is scheduled to take place Monday at 10 a.m. Central in Springfield, Mo. The 25-year-old Glendale, Ariz., man is charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action in the Sept. 8 shooting death of an Ohio man at a Greyhound bus station in the southwest Missouri community. Now, the BIG QUESTION is: Will the mainstream media cover it?
Mohamed H. Dawod
Dawod is accused of shooting Justin Hall, 32, of Mt. Vernon, Ohio, during a late-night rest stop for travelers on a St. Louis-bound bus full of passengers from as far away as Amarillo, Texas, point of origin for the bus.
On Sept. 9, I was the first to raise the possibility that the shooting might be a case of terrorism at my website and at BigGovernment.com after officials in the Southwest Missouri community, according to a report in the Springfield News-Leader, were quick to say the shooting appeared random.
A day later, a KSPR-TV report cited Springfield police officials as saying that, because of a language barrier, they only learned Dawod’s name andhad asked the FBI to help them with the investigation. That local television report included this telling paragraph:
Ten separate witnesses say they did not notice the men fighting or arguing before the shooting. One passenger said she watched the suspect wander around the terminal until the call to line up to re-board the bus. “She then observed the suspect remove a silver and black handgun from a back pack he was carrying,” the officer wrote. “The suspect then pointed the handgun upward while saying something. The witness could not understand what the suspect said and didn’t know if he was speaking English.” No matter what was said the witness said Hall didn’t react or turn around. Shortly after the witness says Dawod shot him from a few feet away.
I went on to draw information from two other television news reports that seemed to reveal more than the “official” story lets on about the deadly incident that involved a man with a Muslim name allegedly shooting someone he did not know less than 48 hours ahead of the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
Fareed Zakaria showcased what some are calling a questionable report from the EU on terror attacks. From Breitbart.tv:
The European Union released a report documenting what groups in Europe were responsible for terror attacks on the continent. He points out that only three attacks were from Islamist groups. “the rest,” he said “are from right-wing and left-wing groups.”
There’s something very wrong about Zakaria’s set up here.
In his recent assessment of his year since he was unceremoniously — and illicitly in many folks’ estimation — fired by NPR, Juan Williams indulged one of those fallacious assumptions that just screams left-wing spin. It is the sort of straw man argument that casts aspersions on others — this time against Christians — while pretending to be the logical adult in the room, not to mention while pretending not to be casting aspersions. It is a logical sleight of hand that many liberals use.
First, let me say that I am 100% on Williams’ side in that his firing by NPR was a real breach of journalistic ethics: theirs. The comments he made a year ago that got him fired did not in any way harm his veracity as a journalist, nor were they racist or even incorrect. Heck, they weren’t even injudicious except when taking the brain dead political correctness that infests the left into consideration.
Though that was the discussion of a year ago and really is not something worth rehashing here, Williams did say something outrageous in his review of that year-old issue that deserves to be highlighted. In essence, Williams made an illogical argument about how we should think of radical Islam, and he did so by assuming that domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh of the Oklahoma City Bombing could be considered as representative of Christianity as the Saudi 19 were of radical Islam.
Here is what Williams said [my bold for emphasis]:
… we have to keep in mind that America is a country founded on the ideal of religious liberty. We can’t stereotype any group on the basis of the behavior of extremists among them. We don’t indict all Christians because of Timothy McVeigh.
Is there a better way to bring in the weekend than by chatting with top newsmakers over drinks? Sure, the bar talk and news commentary device has been used before, but that was just a sound stage. Today Accuracy in Media introduces our new video series, Bar Stool Confessions, which offers a closer look at those who break and shape the news.
In a major blow to Al-Jazeera’s drive for acceptance and respectability in the West, the government of Israel says that one of the channel’s correspondents has confessed to acting as an agent of the terrorist group Hamas. The Israeli government also claims to have uncovered a network of Hamas operatives using Al-Jazeera as a cover.
The U.S. State Department designates Hamas as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization” and states that it “was formed in late 1987 as an outgrowth of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.” Hamas does not recognize Israel and its founding charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state. The group considers Israeli settlers and civilians legitimate military targets.
Samer Allawi, a Palestinian who ran Al-Jazeera’s Kabul, Afghanistan, bureau, was released, sentenced to time served, and agreed to pay a $1,400 fine. He was arrested on August 9 and held in an Israeli prison. Various press freedom groups had clamored for his release.
Some commentators are saying that the treatment of the Al-Jazeera correspondent is evidence of a tougher policy by Israel toward Qatar, an Arab dictatorship which completely finances Al-Jazeera and selects its news and editorial personnel. A classified report prepared by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and leaked to the Israeli media in August outlined Qatar’s more radical stance in the Arab and Muslim world and noted evidence of more frequent Hamas visits to Doha, the capital, and funding by Qatar of Hamas.
A story on the Israelnationalnews.com website about the report also indicated that Israel may start restricting the activities of Al-Jazeera correspondents inside Israel. It said, “Qatar is also the home of Arab satellite network Al-Jazeera, which the Foreign Ministry considers extremely anti-Israel. As a result, the Ministry has worked in recent months to prevent reporters from the network from operating in Israel, and has stopped giving them visas. Currently, the only way for an Al-Jazeera reporter to enter Israel is using a passport from a country that has full diplomatic relations with Jerusalem, but the Ministry is seeking ways to keep these individuals out of Israel as well.”
Although the emir of Qatar pours hundreds of millions of dollars into the channel, making it effectively a propaganda machine for the regime, he prohibits a free press and free elections at home. Bloggers critical of the royal family are simply taken away and tortured, while Al-Jazeera turns a blind eye and deaf ear to their fate.
But because the country hosts a U.S. military base, it enjoys a moderate and even pro-Western reputation. Qatar uses expensive public relations and lobbying firms like Barbour, Griffith & Rogers (BGR) and Brown Lloyd James.
A preliminary hearing for Mohamed H. Dawod is set to take place Oct. 12. Now, one question remains: Will the mainstream media show any interest in the case that involves a man with a Muslim name shooting a man he didn’t know in a public place on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States?
Mohamed H. Dawod
A 25-year-old man from Glendale, Ariz., Dawod pleaded not guilty Monday to charges of first-degree murder and armed criminal action in the Sept. 8 shooting death of Justin Hall, 32, of Mt. Vernon, Ohio, at a Greyhound bus station in Springfield, Mo.
On Oct. 12, Dawod will appear before Judge Mark Fitzsimmons at 9 a.m. inside a courtroom at the Greene County (Mo.) Courthouse to answer charges that he shot and killed Hall in front of a crowd of fellow passengers on the bus traveling from Amarillo, Texas, to St. Louis.
Now, especially for members of the mainstream media, I’ll offer some background on the case.
In my first report on the shooting, published the morning of Sept. 9, I wondered whether or not this was a case of terrorism but reported it as only a possibility after officials in the Southwest Missouri community quickly said the shooting appeared random.
In an update several hours later, I cited a local television station report that raised questions about the alleged randomness of the shooting when it quoted Springfield police officials as saying that, because of a language barrier, they had only learned Dawod’s name and had asked the FBI to help them with the investigation. In other words, I wondered how they could declare a shooting “random” if they were not able to communicate with the suspect.
In the same update, I shared a telling paragraph from the same television station report:
Ten separate witnesses say they did not notice the men fighting or arguing before the shooting. One passenger said she watched the suspect wander around the terminal until the call to line up to re-board the bus. “She then observed the suspect remove a silver and black handgun from a back pack he was carrying,” the officer wrote. “The suspect then pointed the handgun upward while saying something. The witness could not understand what the suspect said and didn’t know if he was speaking English.” No matter what was said the witness said Hall didn’t react or turn around. Shortly after the witness says Dawod shot him from a few feet away.
I also asked another question:
Could it be that, when the man pointed the handgun in the air, he shouted, “Alluh Akbar,” the cry that’s been heard coming from the mouths of so many Islamic extremists moments before they suffer from so-called “sudden jihad syndrome”?
In the ignoble quisling tradition of “Hanoi Jane,” Max Blumenthal recently traveled to Lebanon to trash the American media, denounce Israel, and reinforce conspiracy theories about the power of the “Israel lobby” in U.S. politics.
Blumenthal, who is linked to Media Matters for America, told the host of “Transit” on Lebanon’s Future TV that the American media censors criticism of Israel: “There’s no mainstream American television program, cable program, that would allow me to speak as freely as I’m speaking to you right now about some of the issues that I talk about.”
He added, gratefully, that he’s reached a global audience through Al Jazeera, which “everyone watches in the United States.”
Shortly thereafter, Blumenthal slammed Israel: “[D]uring the Second Lebanon War, when Israel was attacking this country, Ehud Olmert, the prime minister at the time, went to Jewish groups in the United States and said: ‘Every Jew in the world is fighting this war.’” (My emphasis.)
Blumenthal did not mention that the war was started by the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, which targeted Israeli civilians, Jewish and Arab, throughout the war.
There are two reasons for Blumenthal’s bias and cowardice: first, his own far-left agenda; and second, the fact that Hezbollah dominates Lebanese politics and media today. Blumenthal had the “courage” to attack the American media and American democracy on Arab television, but didn’t offer the slightest criticism of Hezbollah or terrorism in general on television in a society where he knew he could suffer real consequences. (Hezbollah members were recently indicted by the UN in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, who founded Future TV.)
The rest of the interview is filled with lies, demonstrating Blumenthal’s willful ignorance of the peace process and his enthusiasm for tales of “extremely radical” Jewish political donors who he claimed are “sheep for the directors of AIPAC” in U.S. congressional elections.
Blumenthal told viewers in a country whose politics are overshadowed by a tottering Syrian dictatorship, a murderous terrorist mafia and a meddling Iranian theocracy that American democracy is a sham in which the “Israel lobby” writes legislation that the Congress hurries to pass on its behalf. Along the way, he slandered Christians who support Israel and referred to George W. Bush as “the most white president” in American history.
Blumenthal also proudly proclaimed that he will never work as a “staffer” in the American media. Perhaps he could join Cynthia McKinney as a contributor to Iranian state TV?
A journalist for Al-Jazeera has been arrested on suspicion of being an agent of the Palestinian terror group Hamas. The journalist, Samer Allawi, Al-Jazeera’s bureau chief in Afghanistan, is a Palestinian. He was apprehended by Israeli authorities as he attempted to leave the West Bank.
The detention of Allawi, a major development in the media wars over the future of the Middle East, is not the first time that Israel has detained journalists from the channel. During the 2006 war in Lebanon, several Al-Jazeera journalists working in Israel were apprehended and warned about providing military information to Hezbollah, another terrorist organization. The accusation was that Al-Jazeera journalists were reporting the specific location of Hezbollah rocket strikes on Israel, enabling the terrorists to more accurately aim their weapons. In total, Hezbollah rained an estimated 3,970 Katyusha rockets and longer range missiles on military and civilian targets in Israel. The rockets have no internal guidance system and needed to rely on spotters or media coverage of their strikes to increase their accuracy.
This kind of activity earned the channel a lawsuit, filed by the Israel Law Center in the U.S., accusing Al-Jazeera of facilitating the deaths of Israeli and American victims of the war. Judge Kimba Wood dismissed the suit, claiming that the victims had failed to show Al-Jazeera had the specific intention of aiding Hezbollah.
Since its inception, however, Al-Jazeera has functioned as a mouthpiece for terrorist organizations, including but not limited to al-Qaeda. Tayseer Alouni, the channel’s Afghanistan correspondent during the 9/11 attacks, was apprehended by U.S. military authorities and turned over to Spain, his native country, where he was prosecuted, convicted, and jailed as an agent of al-Qaeda. Al-Jazeera defended him and paid his legal fees.
There is no need whatsoever for conservatives to marginalize those we disagree with on the other side of the aisle by referring to them as stupid or ridiculous because they keep going out of their way to do it for us.
The ongoing battles over debt, spending, taxes and the way some perceive that we should be conducting the process of governing this great nation have, if nothing, served as a perfect illustration of what is wrong with modern American Democrats. The Tea Party people driving the debate are now continually being referred to has terrorists and hijackers by leftists far outside of the cackling horde of usual suspects at MSNBC. And why? Because they had the audacity to demand that the representatives in a representative republic actually, you know, represent them.
The liberal penchant for referring to everything but terrorism as terrorism continues to mystify. And their blind spot for the common thread in real terrorism is dangerous. One can only assume that it will get worse now that Anders Breivik has given them someone to double the number of occupants in the Tim McVeigh pool of statistical anomalies they use to excuse the blind spot. The triumph of the everybody-gets-a-trophy reluctance to hurt feelings over national security is quite nauseating.
It was truly striking that Rep. Gabby Giffords returned to Congress yesterday after the Democrats and their media mouthpieces had just spent weeks defiling the “new tone” that President Finger-Wagger and his minions spent so much time lecturing us about in the wake of her tragic shooting. Jonah Goldberg addressed this latest disconnect on the part of our less-than-esteemed opponents earlier.Let us get to the heart of just what it is that has the professional American Left acting up right now.
This isn’t really about their fetish-level obsession with taxation or their enduring hatred for wealthy people who aren’t named Kennedy, Boxer, Kerry or Soros. What we have been witnessing is a full-blown meltdown over their loss of control over the narrative and the power that gives them over the common folk.
American Progressives (big “P”) are, at heart, devout elitists. It is a political philosophy that believes that a chosen few know what is best for the great unwashed. That’s why Democrats are always talking about “fighting” for you. You see, you’re simply too weak, stupid, disenfranchised and SO not riding on a corporate jet today to be fighting for yourself.
The media should be destroying Joe Biden right now. There should be a countdown clock on his resignation.
The Vice-President of the United States of America said that tea party Republicans “acted like terrorists” during the recent budget and debt ceiling discussions.
Where’s the “wall to wall” stories, live shots, commentary and demand of accountability here?
Terrorists.
This administration doesn’t call terrorists, terrorists.
Biden has denied making the comments, but Politico is sticking by its story, they also say Pennsylvania Democrat Mike Doyle used the same phrase.
In this post 9/11 world it’s unthinkable that the White House would so blatantly attack its own citizens by using that phrase. Terrorists killed my son’s high school language teacher on the Flight 77 that was forced in to the Pentagon. I drive by the memorial for Barbara Edwards at least 2 or 3 times a day and there is not a time that I go by that I do not recall those horrific attacks of that day.
Personal note here to Biden: I can get creative with words, Joe, but unlike you, I am not a plagiarist. I can think of a lot of things to call you right now, and if you ever have the pleasure of meeting me, I will use them. For now, you can use your imagination. You are not worth getting into a pissing match with.
These are fellow American that Joe Biden is calling terrorists. You and me. In using that phrase towards Republicans in Congress, Biden uses it against each of us who called for Representatives who would vote for fiscal responsibility in Washington DC and not blow our money and lead to Homeland Insecurity.
Personal note to the media: Where the hell are you on this? You patronize by your silence. I’m waiting for one of you to refer to this a just another Biden “gaffe.” Enablers. You have made careers out of trying to destroy Michelle Bachman and Sarah Palin, but you will find no story here. Speak truth to power. You don’t get much more powerful than the White House. Bob Woodward, where are you?
The New York Times downplayed the arrest of an AWOL Muslim soldier charged in connection with a plot to attack Fort Hood soldiers. The newspaper all but ignored the role Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo’s religious faith may have played in the alleged plot.
Abdo was arrested in Killeen, Texas, near Fort Hood. He was found with weapons, explosive, and jihadist materials. Sources said he was attempting to purchase more weapons at the same gun store where Maj. Nidal Hasan purchased weapons allegedly used to gun down 13 people and would 30 others in a 2009 terrorist attack at the military base.
But the New York Times downplayed Abdo and Hasan’s Muslim faith – and ultimately the entire story.
The foiled plot appeared on page A-11 of the newspaper’s print edition. The word “Muslim” was mentioned once – in paragraph nine of the 13-paragraph story. The newspaper’s top national story was a feature piece about a boy who is following his dream to be a circus clown. That story had 28 paragraphs.
Here is how the AP describes the video below: “Mobs set two churches on fire in western Cairo on Sunday as clashes broke out between Muslims and Christians, killing up to 12 people and injuring more than 200.”
“Clashes between Muslims and Christians” makes it sound like a scene from “West Side Story” with two sides causing equal amounts of trouble. But there were no Mosques burned in the clashes, only Christian Churches. (more…)
It was bound to happen. As the dust settles on the news that Osama Bin Laden was killed by a team of Navy SEALS in a raid months in the making, the media spotlight is focusing on the President and what this victory means both to his sagging poll numbers and his image as a commander-in-chief. The short answer: how can this not be good for him politically?
Had this mission gone pear-shaped as did Jimmy Carter’s disastrous raid to re-take our Iranian hostages, as CIC, Obama would have been culpable. So then he must be given the credit for this stunning success.
But even his bodyguard of acolytes in the mainstream media are somewhat muted so far as to what this success really portends for their chosen one in the 2012 election. And, as with all military operations of such in-depth planning and complexity, the truth as to who deserves the credit for the success will be dispersed throughout all those who had a hand in its execution, from the intelligence gatherers to the troops firing the rounds and all support personnel in between.
One issue that could pop up though, that the President may prefer be lost in the euphoria, is how exactly did we get the information that pinpointed Osama’s location in the first place? This preliminary report from Adam Goldman of the AP poses an interesting conundrum for Obama’s more left-leaning base going forward.
Try to remember how you felt on the days after the horrible events of September 11, 2001. I remember our country experiencing something close to Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s famous stages of grief. Except instead of “acceptance” being the final stage, our nation swelled with an enormous sense of patriotism and resolve best represented by the bi-partisan members of Congress singing “God Bless America” on the steps of the Capitol, President George W. Bush’s rallying rescue workers on a pile of rubble, and flags being flown on almost every porch in America. Do you remember those days and those feelings? Now, ask yourself: What kind of person would instead take the occasion of the day after the attack to lead a rally condemning America and holding the terrorist murderers up as martyred heroes?
Van Jones is that kind of person.
In a recently discovered video, the former White House appointee and current hero of the liberal elite and de-facto Huffington Post/AOL editorial director is seen telling the adoring crowd, “It’s the bombs that the government has been dropping around the world that are now blowing up inside the U.S. borders.” He said this after a whole host of speakers from the radical fringe fringe denounced our country and her policies and hijacked the tragedy to justify unloading a laundry list of cliched, left-wing reasons to blame America for the acts perpetrated by radical Islamist totalitarian terrorists.
Remember, this rally was taking place while the bodies of 3,000 Americans were still smoldering in the rubble of the World Trade Center and American heroes were putting their lives at risk at ground zero in a massive humanitarian effort. What kind of monsters would use this occasion to turn Americans against one another?
It’s no wonder that this man is embraced and honored by groups like the once-relevant, now-radical NAACP and was given the high honor of holding a Presidential appointment in the first year of the Obama Presidency. He speaks the revolutionary “blame America first” rhetoric of Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright and Malik Zulu Shabazz. (more…)
There is an attack against Israeli Jews happening on Facebook but the social media site refuses to shut the incitement down. Its called the Third Palestinian Intifada, and the site is almost totally in Arabic. The ‘Third Palestinian Intifada’, urges its readers to copy the link, place it in their profiles and publish it on all pictures, videos and pages – everywhere they can. An alert announces that a march to “Palestine” will begin from neighboring countries on May 15 and soon after, “Palestine will be liberated and we will be freed. Our goal now is to reach millions of subscribers on this page before May.”
The page also includes hateful language calling for its supporters supporters to build on the previous two murderous previous intifadas in which Arab terrorists murdered and wounded thousands of Israeli civilians and caused the death and injury of thousands of innocent Palestinians.
The second intifada is also called the Oslo War as it took place after the Oslo process broke down and Yasser Arafat walked a way from a peace deal which would have given him a Palestinian State and 98% of his demands.
The Facebook page directs readers to supplementary content on other sites such as Twitter and You Tube. And ends with a warning to Facebook. “If Facebook Blocks this page..All Muslims Will Boycott Facebook Forever.”
In one of the rare cases of his caring about Jewish Issues instead of the progressive agenda, the ADL’s Abe Foxman blasted the Third Intifada site and Facebook:
“This Facebook page constitutes an appalling abuse of technology to promote terrorist violence,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. “Although the managers of this group claim to be calling for peaceful demonstrations, the Third Intifada pages include calls for followers to build on the previous two intifadas. We should not be so naïve to believe that a campaign for a ‘Third Intifada’ does not portend renewed violence, especially in the current climate that has seen a dramatic increase in rocket attacks from Gaza, the brutal murder of the Fogel family in the West Bank, and a terrorist bombing in Jerusalem.”
…..”We are disappointed that Facebook has rejected our request to remove this site, which is in clear violation of their terms of service,” said Mr. Foxman. “We are especially disappointed in this case because in the past there has often been understanding and sensitivity from Facebook when we have brought violations of its own rules to its attention. We urge Facebook to reconsider its decision and remove this site, which by its very title incites violence.”
An email campaign to pressure the popular social networking site into removing the page has been mounted by pro-Israel groups as well as private individuals. All have expressed increasing concern over the potential danger to Israeli citizens that may result from the page, which clearly promotes violence against Jews in Israel. As of tonight the site has revived almost 348,000 “likes”
Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein wrote in a letter e- mailed to media yesterday. “As Facebook’s CEO and founder you are obviously aware of the site’s great potential to rally the masses around good causes, and we are all thankful for that,” Edelstein said. “However, such potential comes hand in hand with the ability to cause great harm such as in the case of the wild incitement displayed on the above-mentioned page.”
There are other sites Facebook should look at also as The Third Intifada site is not the only Anti-Semitic or Israel directed hate site on Facebook as shown by this video from my former writing home Aish HaTorah.
The social media site answered NO:
“While some kinds of comments and content may be upsetting for someone - criticism of a certain culture, country, religion, lifestyle, or political ideology, for example — that alone is not a reason to remove the discussion,” Debbie Frost, a spokeswoman for Facebook, said in an e-mailed statement.
“We strongly believe that Facebook users have the ability to express their opinions, and we don’t typically take down content, groups or Pages that speak out against countries, religions, political entities, or ideas,” she said.
Facebook is being disingenuous, This is not a site which disagrees with Israel’s positions. It is a site that calls for the destruction of Israel,and the murder of Jewish Israelis.
The internet is all about “freedom of ideas” I get that. And in most cases I agree. But there is also a built in responsibility for sites to guard themselves from becoming purveyors of hate. It is the reason why I do not allow comments to be published on The Lid until they are reviewed. Sadly Facebook does not believe it has this responsibility, and they cannot differentiate between opinion and incitement.
UPDATE:
The controversial Facebook group calling for a Third Intifada was taken down early Tuesday morning, however it was reposted sometime early Wednesday. It is not known whether Tuesday’s interruption of service was due to Facebook (as they made no statement) a hack attack, or the subterfuge by those involved with the intifada page. Big Journalism will keep and eye on it and report back to you.
Almost three weeks ago two terrorists walked into a residential home in a small community and, in cold blood, slaughtered five people. In a world mostly inured to violence and death this act was a watershed moment to many people throughout the world. The point that drew such outrage from many was the age of some of the victims. Elad aged four and Hadas, three months were amongst those who lost their lives.
The media coverage has been, in many cases, predictable. Main stream media outlets refusing to label the act as terrorism, referring to the perpetrators as “intruders” instead of terrorists, attempting to be “balanced” and calling the subsequent Israeli plans to build in Judea and Samaria the reason there is no progress between Israel and the Palestinians. With that, there was an even broader injustice done. An injustice that was not limited to the liberal side of the media world.
What would the world have said if only the parents, Udi and Ruth, had been killed? Of course, the media, by labeling the victims, not as civilians or even Israelis, but as settlers gives the impression that at worst they deserved what they got and at best it was their own fault for being where they shouldn’t be. If one were to take even that into mind, what else would happen? It would be a blip on everyone’s news radar. It wouldn’t even make the front pages of most newspapers. It still would have meant two people murdered in cold blood, it still would have meant six orphans, it still would have meant ideological terror run rampant amongst innocents.
In Great Britain, the historic cradle of liberty and sanctum of freedom of expression, it appears that you can no longer refer to Arab depravity in the slaughter of an Israeli family — including a three month-old baby — as they slept without someone going to the police to get you arrested for racism.
This is what happened to me. I wrote on my blog about the ‘the moral depravity of the Arabs’ who had murdered Udi and Ruth Fogel and their three children, 11-year-old Yoav, four-year-old Elad and three-month-old Hadas in their home in the Samarian neighbourhood of Itamar, near Nablus, by cutting their throats while most of them were asleep.
I also pointed the finger for this atrocity at the ‘savagery’ of the Palestinian Authority, whose educational materials along with the mosques and TV stations under its control incite frenzied hatred of Jews; which teaches its children that the highest aspiration is to murder Israelis; and which glorifies those who perpetrate such unspeakable acts by naming squares and public places after them.
Next thing I knew was that the Guardian ran a story saying I was being investigated by the UK Press Complaints Commission, which had received two complaints about my remarks – and I had also been reported to the Bedfordshire police for racism.
This came as something of a surprise. If I was indeed being investigated, no-one had seen fit to tell me about it. Indeed, at time of writing I still have not heard whether either of these bodies is investigating these complaints at all.
Stranger still was the involvement of the Bedfordshire police. I do not live in Bedfordshire, an area north of London. I have never had anything to do with the place. What could my remarks about the Itamar massacre possibly have to do with Bedfordshire?
A clue lay in the involvement in the Guardian story of a prominent British Muslim activist named Inayat Bunglawala. It was he who had reported me to the Bedfordshire police – and he lives in Bedfordshire.
It would appear that having taken exception to my blog, Bunglawala went to his local police force to complain about my views and expected them to take action against me as a result.
His complaint was that I had made a ‘generalised racist outburst against Arabs as a whole’. But this was ridiculous. I was obviously referring specifically to the perpetrators of the Itamar massacre and to the Palestinian Authority which incites such deeds Bunglawala claimed that if anyone had referred to the ‘moral depravity of the Jews’ and described them as being ‘savages’ they would face prosecution for racist hate speech.
Does one really have to spell this out? Jews don’t go round murdering innocents in cold blood and cutting the throats of three-month old babies. And this was not a one-off. The Arab and Muslim world glorifies the killing of Jews.
Sweets are routinely handed round in rejoicing at the murder of Israeli civilians. And from Arab and Muslim society pours an unstoppable torrent of deranged, Nazi-style vilification of Jews which fuels the genocidal hysteria behind such attacks.
On Saturday, a man broke into the home of an Israeli settler family and murdered them all with a knife. There were three children in the home including an infant girl. A three year old boy still had a pulse when rescuers arrived but could not be resuscitated. Israel announced it was looking for the terrorist responsible and began a major house to house search for the perpetrator.
CNN covered the attack but refused to call this grisly crime what it was:
Notice the scare quotes around the phrase “terror attack.” And the story itself stuck with that approach:
Five members of an Israeli family were killed in the West Bank early Saturday morning in what the Israeli military is calling a ‘terror attack.’
Apparently CNN wants to leave open the possibility that this grisly murder was a random crime or a robbery gone bad? Now Israel is demanding an apology.
On Friday night, in the Israeli town of Itamar, two Palestinian terrorists broke into a house and murdered five members of the family who lived there. We are talking about the slaughter, in cold blood, of a father, a mother, and three children, including slitting the throat of a three-month-old baby girl.
The Fogel family
In response Israelis did not take to the streets attacking Palestinian passersby. Nor did they burn cars, break windows, loot, or the usual response we see from the Arab street. No, what the Israeli government did is a thousand times worse. Or at least it is in the eyes of the vaunted New York Times.
In the eyes of the New York Times this is a sin of gargantuan proportions. A newspaper that isn’t even able to describe the act of killing innocent children as terror sees the building of houses as the main impetus to the non-existent “Peace Process.”
“Israel said Sunday it has approved building hundreds of settler homes after five members of an Israeli family — including three children — were knifed to death as they slept in a West Bank settlement over the weekend.
The attack and the government’s response threatened to drive Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking even further out of reach. Israel, which blames the attack on Palestinian militants, is liable to set aside an emerging peace initiative it planned to propose, while the planned construction of new settler homes deepened Palestinian mistrust.”
Of course, killing children doesn’t deepen Israeli mistrust, or shouldn’t because clearly Israel is the only side culpable in the ongoing conflict.
That isn’t enough, of course, for the New York Times; it has to go out of its way to demonize those killed while absolving the killers of guilt. The family killed is referred to as “some of Israel’s most radical settlers,” yet the animals who killed them are members of a mostly defunct militant group that sometimes takes credit for attacks they didn’t commit.
On my Twitter account, I follow a few hundred mainstream media-types (keep the enemy closer, right?), and unless I've missed it (and I hope I have), not a single one has spoken out in defense of Roland Martin. Not one. How scary is that. The politically correct Groupthink...
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