A few days after the release of Lebanese Samir Kuntar from three decades in an Israeli prison, Palestinians bloggers are reminded that when it is the word of an Israeli against that of an Arab, the Israeli's will always be the ones to be considered.
Jews Sans Frontiers [1] refutes the allegations and says that Kuntar did not smash the skull of an Israeli four year old:
“Why no mention of forensic evidence regarding the distance from which Danny Haran was shot? And why would Quntar, under fire, for whom the hostages represent his best chance to survive, kill them? And how did BOTH he AND his mate find the time, while police was closing in upon him with guns ablaze, to hit the girl repeatedly, and in few view of the police? And finally why were the police shooting in the direction of Quntar, knowing that he had or might have had hostages with him?… In the end, it comes down to Kuntar's word against the word of unidentified police officers and a physician who works for the Israeli government. Quntar seems to have had no reason to lie. The police who botched their mission and might have been responsible for the death of the hostages did have a reason to lie. He was then convicted in an Israeli kangaroo court that makes the Guantanamo justice system look good in comparison, and the whole trial was so convincing that it was made “top secret.” This looks so far as a tale spun out of facile assumptions, potential lies, and blatant lies–and of course the willful credulity of journalists and commentators… Whatever Quntar did however, Israel has no moral authority to judge him. Killing children is effectively legal in Israel as long as the child is Palestinian.”
American Palestinian Terry Scot [2] draws attention to more unbalanced reporting.
While Nahariya, Israel, reports that “Thousands of Israelis prayed and cried at funerals Thursday for two soldiers whose return from Lebanon in black coffins touched off a nationwide wave of anguish,” Terry Scot points out the unabashed irony of it all:
“My heart breaks for that nation of sensitive souls that is so anguished over the dead bodies of state soldier-terrorists “Udi and Eldad”. What noble cherishing of human life, what sensitivity and empathy that the entire world must be made to watch the drama of this funeral while just a few kilometers down the road an entire nation is systematically brutalized and massacred. Alas, you never hear the first names of “Palestinian Terrorists” in Gaza, Nablus, Jenin or the rest of occupied Palestine. The cronnies at AP and other new agencies continue to validate the bitter reality that an Israeli life is worth more than a thousand Arab lives by placing such phoney news as front page stories on the AP wire. Where are those truth-seeking journalists and editors when it comes time to documenting the coffins of slain Palestinians (please, let's just call them non-Jews, because being an Israeli is not sufficient for exalted status, you have to be a Jew).”
Terry Scot [2] then links us to the website Cross Cultural Understanding [3] to remind us of the death of Ayah Al Najjar, the eight year old Palestinian girl that was killed by an Israeli Air land Rocket:
“The body of 8-year-old Aya al-Najjar was mutilated on Thursday afternoon by a rocket fired from an Israeli airplane while she was playing in the garden outside her house in the village of Khuza'a in the southern Gaza Strip. The little girl had just finished her school exams and went home eager to play as she had no more revision to do. She asked her mother if it was ok for her to play in the garden and the mother agreed. An apache helicopter hovered over the place, Aya looked at it and carried on playing. Neither her nor her mother expected to be the target of a rocket fired from the apache. It seems, however, that Zionist hate for everything Palestinian has no limits as Aya was hit directly with the rocket causing her young body to be shredded into little pieces. Aya was not the first Palestinian child to be targeted by the IOF and will not be the last; Muhammad al-Dora, Iman al-Hams and Iman Hijjo are but three names, of Palestinian children killed by the IOF, in a list of about 1000 Palestinian children killed by the IOF since the start of the Aqsa intifada out of a total of 5000 Palestinians killed during the same period. Earlier, Palestinian resistance fighters fired a home made missile at an Israeli colony in retaliation to an IOF incursion into the Gaza Strip during which the troops bulldozed tracts of land and uprooted trees. The attack resulted in the death of one Israeli settler and the wounding of three others, according to Israeli sources.”
Terry Scot finally states the obvious when he writes:
“I challenge the brave journalists of the free and not-so-free press to be equitable in their reporting of the news of deaths of Arab and Jew alike.”