Maine Owl

Rachel and Richard Engel very disappointing, omit crucial context

I guess it's official. When the top progressive cable news host is unable to utter words like "blockade," "refugees," or "settlers" in describing both the recent and more extended history of the region, there really is not to be any evenhanded news channel reporting the Israel-Palestine situation. At one point Rachel Maddow suggests there is an actual "war" with opposing lines rather than a lopsided, high-tech Israeli aerial bombardment of civilian areas where "militants" supposedly are "hiding"--blended into the population. Engel sort of corrects that misimpression.

That's about all I'm going to say about Maddow's sadly uninformed "Wide world of scary" segment. I know Engel knows a heck of a lot more than he let on. I don't know about Rachel. Judge for yourself by watching HERE.

Meanwhile, there was some decent alternative media on Monday for those interested in a wider range of reporting and opinion. Here are a few links with brief quotes.

Democracy Now!

DR. MOUSSA EL-HADDAD (from Gaza): If this is not a holocaust, I don?t know what holocaust is.... As I speak to you now, I can hear them up in the sky, the pilotless jets and the warplanes, F-16s and God knows what. The warships in the sea are also attacking from the sea. And attacking who? Hamas? They are not attacking Hamas; they are attacking the people, the civilians. The civilians?I mean, I?m looking at the street right now, the main street of Gaza, Omar al-Mukhtar, and hardly you can see anyone walking there, because every single person is afraid.

The Palestine Chronicle: Gaza and Israel: Interview with Amira Hass

TPC: How's life in Gaza?

HASS: It's a big prison, and it has been so for the last 18 years, because this policy is not new, it's only accumulative. Just imagine that you are confined to a place and not allowed to leave . . . ever. When you are in prison, you know you have five years, 20 years, you have a date. Even if it's forever, but it's clear. Here people don't know how long will this last and this is, I think, the main feature that dictates people's lives, and the feeling of despair and being suffocated. Nobody can really live like this. The life of a human being in the sense of building expectations, making plans, building a future, is all confined to this place. Then, of course, the fact that so many people cannot work, because Israel controls the economy by having a closure, and the Palestinian Authority helps Israel by ordering people in Ministries and not giving them work, they get the salary but don't work. So, many people don't work and feel useless, they feel nobody needs them and it also adds to the kind of despair and the feeling of being not alive, but vegetating. These are the main features, but there are also environmental hazards because of the closure and the water problem. People live in a permanent fear of existence, a very basic fear of existence. This is very much stronger than the issue of food, because there is food, very often not healthy and not nutritious, there's problem of malnutrition, but the main issue is being in prison.

Counterpunch is loaded. Read THIS one first and then find the rest in the sidebar:

Before Our Very Eyes
Israel's Attempted Endgame in Gaza
By JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN

The bombings were timed to cause the maximum number of "enemy" casualties. They occurred at approximately 11:20am on a bustling Saturday morning, just as schools were changing shifts and many children were either leaving for home or coming to afternoon classes; when offices were filled with their employees, and streets busy with the late morning crowds out getting lunch or on quick errands of one sort or another. The day before, Israel had opened some of the crossings into Gaza to let in another trickle of humanitarian aid. 'See how generous we are to our enemy!' they exclaim with straight faces to the international media. Each time Gaza reaches the brink of starvation and ruin, they let in just enough food and supplies to silence potential critics. Then the next round begins. It is hardly surprising. After all, this policy was outlined publicly by Dov Weisglass not so long ago when he promised that Israel would put Gaza on a punishing "starvation diet" until it saw reason and evicted its democratically elected government. Many people, including members of the Hamas government, believed that reopening the crossings to international aid signaled another brief lull in military activity, as it usually had, while the IDF General staff prepared its next offensive. In this way were the people and government of Gaza unprepared for the next day's slaughter.

You'll also want to listen to KPFA's Flashpoints for Monday as well. And while PBS hosts Ifill and Suarez naturally were as craven towards Israel as all regular U.S. journalists are, before the Israeli Ambassador was given the last word, the segment at least had a Palestinian representative allowed to say, "These cease-fires were always broken by continuous incursions by Israel and assassinations of Palestinian activists and other Palestinian nationalists."