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December 6, 2008
Exclusive: Disgrace – Mumbai Media Machinations
Hypocrisy drips heavy from the broadcast towers of the Western media. The tragedies in Mumbai set in stark relief the variation in media labels for those that kill Jews in Israel and those that kill innocents of other creeds in other places.
You will note that "militants" hardly exist in this horror, but "terrorists" abound. Will someone please stand up and explain to me the difference between a "militant" suicide bomber who incinerates a bus full of women and children in Jerusalem, and the Mumbai "terrorists?"
Why it is “militants” who blow up schools and study centers in Israel and execute its students, while “terrorists” are those who attack hotels in India? (Terrorists Paralyze India's Business Capital)
My powers of discernment are clearly lacking – will the media please clarify for me whether Israeli victims are different, are less innocent, than the victims in India? If "terrorists" are those who intentionally seek out the murder of civilians, is there something less “civil” about Israelis riding a bus to work, or studying at a school, or eating at a street-side restaurant?
Even when some of the victims are Jews, whether in Israel or Mumbai, the distinction emerges. Why are terrorists called terrorists in India, Beslan, Madrid, London and Bali – and not in Israel?
Perhaps the difference has nothing to do with the victims, but concerns the perpetrators instead. Are the 'terrorists' less sincere or less passionate than the 'militants' - or vice versa? And yet, strikingly, all of these perpetrators are extremist Muslim Jihadists.
Interestingly, now that the rampage in Mumbai is receding from the media's spotlight, attributions of blame are emerging. The "terrorists" are no longer amorphous, anonymous murderers; shocking no-one, they are now being identified as Pakistani and/or Muslim militants.
I have not yet seen a cogent differentiation between what constitutes a "militant" and what constitutes a "terrorist." Is it only I who remains confused? Or is it possible that this double standard thrives on sympathies, not fact; arises out of prejudice, not truth; that it is the product of agenda driven politics and less than honest journalism?
Hide the Jews
"Americans, Britons and Israelis are being targeted by the terrorists" according to a proliferation of news reports (see also The Hunted).
You may (sadly) note that Jews are not anywhere noted as specifically "being targeted" in the news headlines. Yet it was the Jewish Chabad House - a religious center and community group set-up for all varieties of Jewish visitors - that was targeted. There are in fact more than 3300 such Chabad-Lubavitch institutions around the world. The center is apolitical with no formal association with Israel.
Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Sikh, Bahai and Buddhist centers were not targeted.
The victims executed at the Chabad House were Jews, including Rabbi Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka. What did their Jewishness have to do with Kashmir, with India-Pakistan relations, or with Muslim separatist ambitions? Or even, for that matter, with the "liberation of Palestine?" Jews were the target, not the Israeli Consulate.
The answer remains chilling: nothing. The fact is that the Jews are the only ethnic or religious group that is consistently targeted by terrorists worldwide, irrespective of where they live, how religious or irreligious they are, or how patriotic or apolitical they may be. Whether they are children or elderly, Jews remain the world's most sought-after terrorist trophies because they happen to share the same invisible genetic source, the same historical inheritance.
Yet the media chooses to ignore what these brainwashed terrorists are making clear and evident in their every action - that it is the Jews who are the preferred target. The Mumbai terrorists' separation of Jews (or Americans or Britons, for that matter) from the rest of the hostages for execution is a grim reminder of the Holocaust, of the Entebbe hijacking, and the Munich Olympic massacre. And such reminders are not to be ignored.
The Importance of Getting It Right
The media's coverage of these horrors need not be suffused with appeasement. Victims should not be confused with perpetrators: all the murders are all needless tragedies. All those who did the killing are equally indefensible. Only when the media (and Western societies in general) see – starkly – that difference, will we be able to successfully protect our freedom and our liberty.
Obfuscating the truth may be politically correct or simply incompetent reporting, but it does little to explain the mindset of these killers or the intentions of their handlers. And until we understand this, the immovable intentions of these Islamic radicals, our answer to their challenge will remain tenuous and out of reach.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Leslie Sacks is an art dealer and gallerist in Los Angeles. Feedback: editorialdirector@familysecuritymatters.org.
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