When Israel is Bombed, Where is the Outrage, or the Reporting?
Israel is once again the target of rockets that reached southern Israel from Gaza this month, July 2011.
Thousands of rockets have been fired from Gaza at southern Israel during the past decade. Hundreds of these have been fired since the supposed ceasefire of 2009. As Israeli Ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor told the Security Council, “290 rockets and mortar shells were fired towards Israel so far in 2011, aimed at civilians, including children. ‘We sustain two attacks a day (on average). This is the daily reality.’ “
Between 75 to 94 percent of the children of Sderot in southern Israel show symptoms of post-traumatic stress, says Natal, the Israel Center for Victims of Terror and War. Yet many of these attacks are given little or no media attention unless an actual death results, such as the murder in April of 2011, of 16-year old Daniel Viflic, who was riding in a school bus when a missile from Gaza struck. Parents living in Sderot describe their fear of driving with more than one child in the car at a time; if the sirens go off giving the 15 second warning of an incoming rocket, they do not want to choose which child to save.
Noam Bedein of the Sderot Media Center, in an attempt to rectify the seeming indifference of the mainstream media to the ongoing bombing of Israel from Gaza, has written an Open Letter to the Mainstream Media dated July 15, 2011.
There, he writes,
Seven rockets, missiles and mortars have been launched from Gaza towards the western Negev’s communities over the last few days…The disproportional coverage of these rocket launchings and explosions is found in a dry, terse report on mainstream media that takes a few seconds of news time. The issue is barely mentioned by the msm…We at the Sderot Media Center urge you to emphasize these strikes more emphatically, to describe them as illegitimate and criminal examples of warfare against innocent civilians.
The letter goes on,
It is crucial to mention each time how many rockets have been launched against Israel since the last ceasefire of January 18, 2009.
As of today July 15th 2011, there have been 788 rocket launchings from Gaza aimed at the southern residents of Israel. This has to be brought home again and again so the world will know.
Would any fair-minded person expect a country to live at the receiving end of rockets from a neighbor, and is the launching of such rockets newsworthy only when they achieve their deadly goal? The intermittent, bland reports of rockets falling in southern Israel do not begin to capture the enormity of the harm done to those residents of southern Israel who have been living as the victims of continuous rocket fire for a decade.
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