Reporter, heal thyself

McClatchy’s terror apologist Jerusalem Bureau Chief Dion Nissenbaum writes about Israel’s military response to the Hamas threat against its citizens by writing:

The Gaza Strip has had its fair share of bad days over the years, from the spark for the first Palestinian uprising to the razing of Rafah to the Hamas takeover.

So to say that Saturday was the deadliest day in decades for Palestinians is saying something.

Israel is in the midst of carrying out its own version of “shock and awe” by dropping more than 100 tons of bombs on Gaza that have killed more than 250 people, injured hundreds more and set off a volatile new phase of the conflict with Hamas.

Some perspective please. What’s going on in the Congo?

A Ugandan rebel group known for its horrific cruelties has massacred 189 people and kidnapped at least 20 children over three days in northeastern Congo, U.N. officials reported Monday.

The cultlike Lord’s Resistance Army carried out the attacks on three villages between Thursday and Saturday, according to Ivo Brandau, a spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Congolese capital, Kinshasa.

The group killed 40 people in the small town of Faradje on Thursday, and over the next two days, it attacked the villages of Doruma, where rebels massacred 89 people, and neighboring Gurba, where 60 were killed, Brandau said, citing reports that the United Nations received from local authorities.

(h/t Meryl)

In Iraq:

At least 670 Kurdish militants have been killed by Turkish forces in counter-terrorism operations this year, the country’s General Staff said on Thursday.

The largest numbers of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) separatists were killed in February and May – 250 and 179, respectively – mostly in the course of Turkish army air raids in northern Iraq, where PKK camps are based.

(h/t Meryl again)

So yes a lot of people have been killed by Israel, but as Ralph Peter points out,

Israel’s attack aircraft appear to have accomplished that part of the mission. As I write, some 300 terrorist dead have been reported in Gaza, while the propaganda-savvy information office of Hamas has strug- gled to prove that 20 civilians died.

Given the fact that Hamas adheres to the terrorist practice of locating command sites, arsenals and training facilities in heavily populated areas, the results suggest that the IDF – supported by first-rate intelligence work – may have executed the most accurate wave of airstrikes in history, with a 15-to-1 terrorist-to-civilian kill ratio.

So despite the cynical tactic that Hamas has adopted of placing its infrastructure in civilian neighborhoods, Israel has minimized civilian deaths as much as possible. The only people who are outraged are Hamas and their various mouthpieces like Nissenbaum.

Given Nissenbaum’s role as a spokesman for Hamas then, his later complaint about Israel doesn’t much move me.

But, as the BBC’s Jo Floto noted last month after Israel first barred journalists from entering Gaza, Israel has joined a notorious and small list of countries preventing reporters from doing their job.

Israel, which prides itself on being the healthiest democracy in the Middle East, joins North Korea, Zimbabwe and Burma in denying media access to a major story.

It’s a cheap shot. First of all, even he acknowledges that he has stringers in Gaza. But again, given Nissenbaum’s history of flacking for terrorists, his “freedom of the press” argument carries no weight with me. If he were serious about reporting I might take his complaints about the closure seriously. But since he abuses his position by defending terrorists who kill Jews rather than reporting, he’s in no position to question the motives of the Israeli government or compare it to the worst tyrannies in the world.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.