I read with extreme disgust this morning that Joe ‘The Plumber’ Wurzelbacher is going to Israel to cover the current conflict in Gaza. I thought his 15 minutes were up? But it’s always nice to see someone with the best intentions of reporting completely objectively:
It’s very tragic, but at the same time what are the Israeli people supposed to do.
And speaking of reporting objectively, I always find it so interesting to compare the headlines and reports on CNN in the US versus BBC and the Guardian in the UK. There is an undeniable (and not wholly surprising) bias towards Israel on the part of CNN. BBC seems to be fairly objective and neutral while Guardian can be objective or slightly Palestinian-leaning. The best (or worst, really) this week has been the BBC headline along the lines of ‘Israeli strike kills 40 at UN school’ while CNN reported that a strike had hit near a school and killed several. Granted, it was later reported that a strike had indeed hit near another school and killed three but it’s the fact that CNN didn’t even report on the first, main UN school tragedy.
I think it is very hard to get any kind of objective perspective on Israeli-Palestinian conflicts in the US. Israel is one of America’s staunchest ally and vice versa but often average Americans and also its leaders cannot see the forest for the trees, to turn a phrase. Anything Palestine does is terrorism while Israel is only defending itself. Would this be the same idea of ‘defending oneself’ put to such good use in Iraq? Both Israel and Palestine are at fault and continue to be so. Neither is blameless and until America wakes up and realises this any peace they help broker in the region will be useless. They cannot continue to support Israel unreservedly and expect Palestine to accept it.