Friday, November 16, 2012

Where Do The Media Run To?

| Nov 16, 2012


Aldeira Hotel
Ground floor lobby
When the missiles from Gaza are raining down on Tel Aviv and the rest of Israel where is the safest place for a darling luvvie international journalist to run to?
Why “Concentration Camp” Gaza City of course!
They know the IDF knows how to “bullseye a wump rat” and carefully pick targets while Hamas is lucky if it can pick out a city.
They are confident while the bombs may fall within meters of their pampered, luxury accomodation, the IDF wouldn’t be stupid enough or incompetant enough to blow up the entire world’s media (though don’t think a few of us in a darker moment haven’t dreamed this).

Luckily we’ve already featured the Al-Diera hotel in our “Taste of Concentration Camp Gaza” feature here at Israellycool! Maybe that’s how they found the place?
No, its definitely safer than say, Ashdod or Ashkelon or even Rishon LeZion or Tel Aviv now that all of those massive cities have taken indiscriminate incoming fire.
So as we can see from their twitter and facebook musings, the media all scurry off to Gaza and write “human interest” pieces on the poor schlubs who Hamas are murdering. Yes, Hamas murder eveyone killed in Gaza, didn’t you know that?
Here’s Jodi Rudoren of the New York Times from her Facebook page:
Aldeira Hotel
Hotel room
At the Al-Deira Hotel in Gaza City, the lights keep going on and off, and we’ve heard about a dozen F-16 strikes over the last six hours, most not seemingly terribly close, though the terrace restaurant is off limits, just in case. Hamas triumphantly declared that it had downed an Israeli drone, which the IDF denied. A blogger staying here excitedly reported that the ground invasion had begun, which the IDF also debunked.
We only spent a few hours on the streets today, since I got here so late. It was dark and empty, mostly, really “a ghost city,” as our cab driver put it. We visited a marketplace in the older part of town, normally bustling on a Thursday afternoon but today most of the shops were shuttered. There were a few vegetable sellers, and a kiosk doing brisk business in battery-operated radios and lights, since the electricity is sporadic. Some kids kicked a soccer ball in the street. My favorite quote (tomorrow’s kicker today!) was from the owner of a sweet shop, Mohammed Elmzaner, who said, “Who will think of eating sweets in these bitter circumstances?”
Aldeira Hotel
Hotel restaurant
She goes on to rave about a very “.. perceptive and human piece by Harriet Sherwood of the Guardian, a friend who is staying at the same hotel here. I can learn a lot from her.”
Dear Lord spare me. True to her form as a Palestinian propagandist Harriet’s piece (I’m not linking) is full of heart rending details and dead babies with just enough Israeli viewpoint to keep the Press Complaints people in the UK off her back.
For a thought on the “indiscriminate nature” of the IDF fighting a war I like to refer back to a great article in the Wall Street Journal after the last operation in Gaza:
If Israel had been guilty of indiscriminate violence against Palestinians, the ratio of male-to-female fatalities would not have been 35-1.
So Jodi and Harriet can sleep soundly in their beds knowing that at 35-1 the odds are forever in their favour. Unlike my twitter friends under fire. BTW, after yesterday’s alarm we had a quiet night in Tel Aviv.
So what wrong with all this… oh let me count the ways.
  1. Gaza is a military theocratic dictatorship (though I suspect the leaders are rather well hidden at this time). No journalist is free to write what they want or go where they want.
  2. The military censor in Israel has restrictions on operational details, don’t even think its similar to the control Hamas exert on foreign press.
  3. If it all goes to hell in a hand basket, these people will be taken prisoner as Hamas has done before both with foreign journalists (remember Alan Johnston anyone?).
  4. Whose kids are going to have to rescue these muppets if that happens? Yes, ours.
  5. A very large number of casulaties in the Gaza strip come from misfirings of rockets and rockets shot at Israel that fall short. “Work accidents” are another popular source of death. What happens if a fate like this befalls our precious Journalists?
  6. What will they possibly know about the suffering back here in Israel and the feelings of the people. You know they’ll just read effing Ha’aretz and trot out their usual lies.
Sometimes I really wish the IDF’s aim wasn’t so good.
And this link is just for Jodi and Harriet to look at: this is what used to be allowed to happen on a beach in Gaza before Israel let the savages run it. I’m sure you’re both delighted this kind of wicked exploitation of women is no longer allowed.

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