It’s fascinating, really, to see how many editors across the world change news stories to make Palestinian terrorists look better than they are. Take this AP story, for instance, sent out hours ago with the following headline:
Hamas Militiamen Beat Protesters in Gaza
This is where I could use Lexis-Nexis, because a Google News search shows exactly seven stories with those words (or slight variations) in the headline. It’s in the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian (surprisingly), the San Diego Source, the WaPo, ABC News (see above), the San Jose Mercury News, and two other small papers.
When you search Google News using the words “Hamas beat,” you still find very few instances of Hamas beating the crap out of protesters in Gaza.
Security men for Gaza’s Hamas rulers clubbed and slammed rifle butts into opponents staging a rare protest Monday, seizing the cameras of journalists covering the event and raiding media offices to prevent news footage from getting out.
The Islamic militant group claims it is willing to tolerate dissent, but the crackdown was the latest in a series of moves to squash opposing voices, including breaking up private parties Friday and Monday where people were singing songs of the rival Fatah movement.
What was it the people were protesting, exactly?
Buses carrying protesters were halted by Hamas guards who beat passengers, driving them away and confiscating Fatah flags. However, about 300 people got past the militia cordon and demonstrated for 20 minutes, shouting “We want freedom. We want to raise our voice!”
Security officers arrested several demonstrators and then confiscated equipment from news photographers and cameramen trying to cover the arrests, including an Associated Press still camera.
Hamas squads also raided the Gaza offices of media organizations, looking for material from the rally. Staffers at satellite broadcaster Al-Arabiyya said the militiamen seized a camera and videotape at their office.
Once again, may I point out that no journalists’ unions are sending out urgent press releases regarding the Hamas treatment of their fellow journalists. In fact, there isn’t even a breaking news on Reporters Without Borders’ website. But you can find this three-day-old story about a Palestinian journalist wounded—ostensibly by Israel, though the IDF said they could not confirm that—while covering a gunbattle between Hamas and the IDF.
I anxiously await their report on this incident. Or these two:
On Friday, rifle-toting militiamen roared up to a bachelor party where revelers were dancing to Fatah songs. Video showed the Hamas men firing in the air to break up the celebration, clubbing guests, hurling chairs around and leaving one man lying unconscious.
The images were repeatedly broadcast on Fatah-affiliated Palestine TV. The cameraman who took the footage, from the local Gaza Ramattan news agency, was detained and questioned by Hamas for several hours.
On Monday, the Executive Force was in action again, breaking up the wedding of a Fatah activist and holing five guests for several hours.
One of those detained, Zaid Salem, said wedding participants were singing Fatah songs but did not break a Hamas ban on celebratory gunfire and were not charged with any wrongdoing.
Not that I expect anything to happen. Hamastan has been established, though there are reports that Fatah fighters are slipping into Gaza and preparing to take it back. It would be nice to believe they can do it, but Fatah has proven its incompetence many times over.
as Hamas tries to turn Gaza into an ideal Islamic state, complete with beheadings, torture chambers, cutting off the fingers of smokers, bans on music and kite flying, and other delightful practices we have seen in Afghanistan, Fallujah, Baquabah, and elsehere in places where the Islamofascists rule, will the people of Gaza decide they don’t like living in a religious utopia? Or will they, in the usual Palestinian Arab manner, decide that any oppression is worth putting up with so long as the oppressors lead them in killing Jews? My suspicion is the latter.
Right. I remember the gang fights we used to have when they sang Republican songs at a wedding reception in our Democratic neighborhood.
No? No, not really …
That’s a lot of their problem, their tenuous grasp on a wider reality. They live lives so constricted by the turgid slogans of their thug governments, they have no way to appreciate the rewards of a more diverse existence.