Instead of the “Israel is killing Christmas” stories this year, the news services are serving up a plate of “Bethlehem is going like gangbusters, BUT—Gaza really sucks, d00dz.”
Christmas in Bethlehem festive, Gaza violent
Christians celebrated Bethlehem’s merriest Christmas in eight years Wednesday, with hotels booked solid, Manger Square bustling with families and Israeli and Palestinian forces cooperating to make things run smoothly.The festivities in the West Bank town contrasted sharply with Hamas-run Gaza. While revelers in Bethlehem launched pink fireworks from a rooftop, militants fired more than 80 rockets and mortar shells at Israeli towns and villages, sending people scrambling for bomb shelters.
The latest attacks, and an Israeli air strike on rocket-firers that killed one person and wounded two, appeared to have buried an unwieldy six-month cease-fire that expired last week.
But 45 miles away, outside the Church of the Nativity, the traditional birthplace of Jesus, good-natured crowds of pilgrims and townspeople gathered ahead of the midnight Catholic mass that is the holiday’s highlight.
While Gaza teeters on the brink of a major crisis following the end of a six-month truce between Israel and Hamas Islamists in control of the strip, a decline in violence in the West Bank has tempted back tourists who no longer fear gun battles in the streets.
Israel attributes this partly to the barrier it is building in and around the occupied West Bank. For Bethlehem, the barrier takes the form of a daunting concrete wall 4 meters (13 feet) high with watchtowers.
Tourism collapsed here when a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation began in 2000. But this Christmas, the Palestinian tourism minister says, hotel occupancy is rising.
And in a stellar example of a writer denying the evidence of his own facts, Reuters adds this paragraph to the above story:
Palestinians say the Israeli barrier is a major obstacle to peace that cripples trade and turns off foreign tourists.
Crowds gathered around nightfall outside Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, the traditional birthplace of Jesus, ahead of the midnight Catholic mass that is the holiday’s highlight. A dozen pilgrims from India, Canada, Britain, the U.S. and other countries sung impromptu renditions of Christmas carols.
“Jesus was the prince of peace, and he can bring that peace to you. We pray for you,” David Bogenrief, a 57-year-old trumpet player from Sioux City, Iowa, told a gaggle of local children who gathered to listen.
Not long afterward, Israeli aircraft over southern Gaza targeted militants firing rockets, killing one and wounding two others.
The AP also offers Hamas propaganda about how the rockets aren’t really all that dangerous.
The situation is dramatically different in Gaza, controlled by the Islamic militant group Hamas which seized the territory by force in June last year. An Israeli blockade prevents Gazans from leaving the territory and causes shortages of fuel and basic supplies.
The missiles fired from Gaza are inaccurate and Israelis are well drilled in taking cover, so no one was injured Wednesday, though dozens were treated for shock.
Right. I love the way the AP offers up more explanation of why the rockets aren’t dangerous, and yet drops the following information (which was in one of their editions earlier today). The lack of casualties is due to luck and the hand of God.
The lives of three children – aged four, five and eight – were saved Wednesday, as a Grad missile fired from northern Gaza hit their home, moments after they managed to run into the fortified room of the house.
Arie Lazar, the children’s father, told Ynet that “this was definitely a miracle. Were suffered a direct hit to the house. We were in the living room when the Color Red alert sounded and the kids ran right in the fortified room.
So while aren’t getting “Israel is killing Christmas” stories the way we did last year, and the year before that, and the year before that, and the year before that (really, go check my archives around Dec. 23-25th each year. You’ll see), we are still getting the usual anti-Israel media drek.
Merry Christmas from the mainstream media, hey?
So how many AP or Reuters reporters and editors must have a fortified room in their homes so that the family can take cover in the few seconds between a warning of incoming rockets and when the rockets hit? My guess is zero, and if they had the brains the Lord gave a zebra mussel they would take note of that “fortified room” fact. It is a glaring example of the real nature of the Palestinian Arabs’ war on Israel. As the rockets start to come from all directions, with Israel withdrawals from the West Bank as demanded by the Euros, the UN, the various Arab states, and even the USA, and with the unleashing of Hezbollah, Israelis are all going to have to have a fortified room in their homes, unless something drastic is done to stop the rocket fire.
But the existence of fortified rooms is a fact, and reporters and editors are not professionally trained or inclined by their characters to notice such uncomfortable facts, understand them, and explain them to their readers. Rather than “afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted” they are, in Israel’s case, afflicting the threatened and comforting the threateners.
If the media had their way, Israel will be cut up into 13 teritories with all the Jews segragated in Tel Aviv and bombed into anihilation by Iran. Happy New Year.