The war in Gaza viewed from Greece

The average Greek person who takes his clues and information only from the mass media probably believes that Israel, one sunny morning, decided it was bored, or that it wanted to check out new weapons, or that they wanted to celebrate the holiday season and decided: Hey, let’s go bomb the Palestinian women and children!!!

I do not watch or read a lot of the media here, because it makes me too sick. Almost nowhere is the Israeli side presented, almost nowhere can you see mention of the thousands of rockets that were falling in southern Israel for the last 8 years, endangering and making the life of the civilians miserable (not even talking about the material damage), almost nowhere do you read that the Hamas tactics is to hide in schools, hospitals and amongst civilians, while Israel makes every effort to strike with precision and avoid as much as possible civilian casualties. (I’m not even talking about the anti-Semitic occasional insinuations or allusions of the media).

The following cartoon, first published in the Washington post, makes the point:

Why is the media just giving rough counts of the Palestinian dead, without mentioning what is the proportion of armed men? People would then learn that at least ¾ of the victims are terrorists or fighters (whatever you want to call them).

I wonder if people really believe that Israel targets civilians intentionally, and if they realize that on the other hand, Hamas does target civilians, very intentionally… 

Anyhow, when fed with so much one sided views of the news and powerful images, I am not surprised at the outcome (or is there also another underlying reason for these demonstrations?).  Watch the following clip of the violent protests outside of the Israeli embassy in Athens, last week.

 On a different note, I wonder how many of these people are out in the streets demonstrating against any other human rights violations (in their eyes), how much they really care about the world suffering at large and where are they when it’s time to denounce other countries with wars and conflicts, besides for Israel (and the USA)…

A few interesting links:

- "How do I explain Israel's actions?" - by Aaron Moss

- "Some more journalistic bias, please?  - by Naftoli Siverberg

- In French: "Gaza, une riposte excessive?" , by Andre Glucksmann

Check out also the war in Gaza section of our website.

Last (but not least), I opened a second blog called JewTube, which will feature a collection of Jewish related Youtube videos. So far, they are mainly about the conflict in Gaza and the Israeli side...