Hostilities Resumed? A manageable Irritant? Canny Pragmatists?

On Friday the Mail & Guardian (M&G) ran a comment-report on Israel’s recent decision to treat Gaza as an “enemy entity.” (The report comes from their sister newspaper the UK Guardian.)

The title of the report made me laugh – “Hostilities Resumed.”

Are they for real? Hostilities have been resumed because Israel has decided to treat Gaza as an enemy entity? What about the events that have forced Israel into making this announcement? This really is the point – they do not interpret Palestinian violence targeting Israelis as a hostile act. Perhaps they even support it.

Two choice quotes from the report follow.

“Palestinian rocket attacks, mostly on the Negev town of Sderot, have become a manageable irritant…”

“The irony is that Hamas, which often displays a canny pragmatism…”

A manageable irritant? Canny pragmatists?

The Guardian justifies their description of the incessant Kassam rocket attacks as a manageable irritant because only 12 people have thus far been killed from the rocket fire. They miss the point completely. Perhaps their reluctance to label anything as ‘terrorism’ has inhibited their ability to analyse the effects of terror, which is primarily the psychology of fear. A fear that can cripple a small town like Sderot. How exactly is the rocket fire manageable? The report fails to provide any alternative suggestions to solve this ‘manageable irritant’. (See Sderot under fire - photo tour.)

As for Hamas, it's ironic how liberals at the Guardian, who generally have a disdain for organised religion, rush to the defence of committed ideological Islamic fundamentalists. By their very definition, a fundamentalist cannot be pragmatic.

Here, I have a personal disappointment with the M&G in particular. The M&G is at the forefront of the push for press freedom in South Africa, often battling issues out with our State in the courts. So why then, are they so willing to overlook the human rights violations perpetrated by Hamas, which include violating press freedom in Gaza?

Just last month the Associated Press reported on a Hamas crackdown in Gaza. Is this canny pragmatism?

In Jebaliya, Hamas security forces ordered journalists to stop filming. "If a single picture is shown on TV, you know what will happen," one security man said, drawing his finger across his throat. Another tried to take a photographer's camera. "I identified myself as a journalist and showed him my card, my press card," Muhammad Abu Sido, a cameraman for a Palestinian news service said. "But they kept on beating me and took the camera." The Foreign Press Association, which represents the foreign media in Israel and the Palestinian territories, condemned the Hamas actions against news-gatherers, calling them "premeditated harassment". "We have received a steady stream of reports describing physical intimidation and arrests of journalists," it said in a statement. "These incidents have occurred in different places and at different times suggesting a coordinated policy by Hamas security forces."

Comments

[Hard Rain]

The "false lexicon of political clichés" strikes again...

[Mediocrates-x]

I can appreciate the disgust but I am coming to the conclusion that picking apart the media is a hopeless task. And fool with a keyboard can and does spout the most wicked hatespeech and there is practically no limit to what they can get published let alone believed. Apparently we don't control ALL of the media.

[Hard Rain]

"Apparently we don't control ALL of the media."

Yeah, obviously not, Mediocrates. But then again I guess it -must- be part of the greater conspiracy of evil crab people, after all...