Dead Palestinian Human Beings Don't Count Unless They're "Important"

The western establishment media (like BBC, NPR, and all the U.S. commercial broadcast media) have been reporting Israel's "victory" (by their and Israel's lights) in killing three more Hamas leaders. Unmentioned are nine other Palestinians butchered with U.S. -supplied aerial bombs, including seven members of a single family. (Wiping out whole families has been a favorite Israeli tactic in its latest assault on the Gaza concentration camp.)

With maximum cynicism, Binyamin Netanyahu almost daily claims that Israel does all it can to avoid "civilian" casualties (yet somehow 80% of the dead, by the UN's reckoning, have been non-combatants- and the death toll is over 2,000 now including almost 500 children; another 1,000 or so kids have been maimed for life), while out of the other side of his mouth blaming Hamas for the Palestinian deaths, even saying on U.S. television (to Wolf Blitzer on CNN, who happens to be Jewish) that Hamas WANTS Israel to kill Palestinian children. No one in the U.S. establishment media takes exception to this depraved nonsense. In fact, many parrot the Israeli "talking points" (a euphemism for propaganda).

The four young boys deliberately murdered on a beach by an Israeli gunboat, in full view of international journalists in a hotel fronting the beach (the Israelis waited until the journalists who had been kicking around a football with the boys left the beach) is simply never mentioned, for obvious reasons. Instead we are daily fed a diet of Israeli propaganda.

Then there was the sinister way the Israeli drove Palestinians into UN refuges, telling them their homes and neighborhoods would be bombed. Turns out this was just a way to kill more of them, as Israel bombed at least 7 UN centers. One UN center was bombed after the UN gave the Israelis its location 17 times. Another was bombed after Israel was reminded of its location 33 times. UN personnel have also been killed in the bombardment. Meanwhile, Israel and its various media and political agents are accusing the UN of anti-Semitism. (The best defense is a good offense, see? Don't even deny anything, don't explain, don't defend, just attack the "accuser," in this case anyone who raises an objection or speaks the truth.)

From Obama on down, the U.S. political establishment predictably acted as loyal puppets to Israel and repeated the Israeli line that Israel "has the right to defend itself." "Defend itself" meaning destroying 40,000 homes, bombing hospitals, bombing homes for the disabled, bombing UN targets, etc. At first Israel kept blaring the lines that Hamas was "firing rockets" from the thousands of bombed targets. Or maybe "storing" rockets in 40,000 homes, and in the power plant, and in the water purification sites (8 water workers were killed by the Israelis trying to restore potable water to the populace), and Hamas was using all those civilians Israel was bombing as "human shields." After while, they didn't even bother saying those things. The U.S. media fell in line, repeating all those sick alibis for a murderous attack on a captive population.

Obama did find one thing "barbaric." That was the alleged capture of an Israeli soldier, a lieutenant who was part of the invasion force. Capturing an enemy invader is "barbaric," to Obama, if it's an Israeli soldier. Bizarre. Turns out the "capture" was an Israeli hoax, just as "looking for three kidnapped teenagers" for two weeks, when the Israeli knew all along they were killed on the day they were seized, was a hoax. The lieutenant had been killed in combat.

Well, I guess having the blood of thousands of Palestinians on their fingertips is small beer for the U.S. government and media. After all, they have the deaths of millions on their hands already, in places like Vietnam, and Laos, and Cambodia, and Indonesia, and Guatemala, and Argentina, and Chile, and El Salvador, and Nicaragua- the list unfortunately goes on too long to list without jading the reader.