Saturday, March 1, 2008

The Unicycle of Violence and Terrorism

After years of claiming there is no "cycle of violence," primerprez finally concedes there is a cycle of violence - but it's a unicycle.

There's just one party creating the unicycle - the Palestinian Arabs.

As has been pointed out, if the Arabs had no guns there would be no war, while if Israel had no guns there would be no Israel.

As Hamas and other Arab terror groups have ratcheted up their terror spree, misleading articles keep making it appear there's symmetry between the Arab terror and the Israeli defensive measures. This does a disservice to the public.

We excerpt from four separate items appearing in major Connecticut newspapers on Thursday and Friday.

Each of the items misleadingly treat Arab terrorism (while scrupulously avoiding the use of that accurate terminology) and Israeli defensive actions as if they were equivalent. There would be no need for Israeli defensive actions, and there would be no injuries or deaths, were it not for Arab terrorism.

There was one sentence which appeared in The Connecticut Post which inadvertantly demonstrated a bit of reality:


"Associated Press pictures showed rockets streaking into the sky from a densely populated area of northern Gaza."


This highlighte the fact that Arab terrorists operate from "densely populated" areas, making it impossible to defend against their attacks without endangering nearby residents. All the resultant casualties are the moral responsibility of the terrorists.

Almost lost in the articles were the ten Grad and Kassam rockets that hit Ashkelon on Thursday. Ashkelon, with 110,000 residents, is comparable in size to each of the Connecticut cities in which the articles appeared. It's doubtful Connecticut's response would be as mild as Israel's has been were any of its major cities to be hit by ten missiles in a single day.

Here are some excerpts from the articles. Primerprez encourages letters to newspapers pointing out the asymmetric nature of the unicycle of violence.





From The Connecticut Post:

Gaza City, Gaza Strip (AP) - Israeli aircraft blasted Hamas government offices and metal shops late Wednesday, killing a baby and wounding more than 30 people in a retaliatory strike after a militant rocket killed an Israeli college student.

The bloodshed fed worries about a new outbreak of heavy fighting between the Israeli army and militants in the Gaza Strip.



Palestinian health officials said a 6-month old baby was killed by shrapnel in the late night airstrike in Gaza City and about 30 residents of nearby buildings suffered wounds. A few minutes later, Israeli aircraft hit two metal workshops.

[Other sources noted infants inadvertantly killed when Kassams aimed at Israel fell short.]


In all, militants fired at least 40 rockets at Israel on Wednesday; the military said, many more than the average of daily barrages that have disrupted life in the region. Associated Press pictures showed rockets streaking into the sky from a densely populated area of northern Gaza.

[It is not just that the Arabs target Israeli civilians; it is that they deliberately operate from within residential areas, using civilians as shields.]





The Hartford Courant published a photo with the following caption.

Upsurge in Mideast Fighting

Ariel Schalit / AP - A man inspects the damage to an apartment in Ashkelon, Israel, Thursday, after it was hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip by Palestinian militants. Israeli aircraft struck a series of targets throughout the Gaza Strip Thursday, killing more than a dozen Palestinians - including four youths and the son of a hard-line Hamas leader. Palestinian gunmen fired 45 rockets and mortar shells into southern Israel, and Israel warned that the use of more sophisticated rockets by Hamas could trigger a full-scale invasion.

[What country other than Israel would countenance such terror and not defend its people?]





From The Waterbury Republican-American:

Violence escalates in Mideast; Israeli airstrikes kill at least 20 Palestinians

By Ibrahim Barzak and Karin Laub
Associated Press

Gaza City, Gaza Strip - A bloody spike in Israel-Hamas fighting put the Israeli city of Ashkelon and its 110,000 residents at the center of an intensifying militant rocket barrage Thursday - and Israel's defense minister warned he would invade Gaza, if necessary, to halt the attacks.

Israel launched nearly a dozen airstrikes, killing 20 Palestinians, Gaza hospital offi cials said. The attacks included a not-so-veiled warning to Gaza's Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh - a missile strike on a guard post outside his home. Hamas leaders have been in hiding in recent weeks, though Israel has so far only targeted militants, not Hamas politicians.

The dead Thursday included members of rocket squads, as well as five children, ranging in age from 8 to 12, who their relatives said were playing soccer when they were killed in a missile strike.

[When terrorists launch rockets from civilian areas, children get caught in the crossfire.]


Israel has been reluctant to invade Gaza, amid concerns of getting bogged down there, but Defense Minister Ehud Barak told his security chiefs Thurs day that an offensive is a defi nite option. The major ground operation is real and tangible. We are not afraid of it, Barak said, according to a participant who spoke on condition of anonymity because the top-lev el session was held in secrecy.

[This article continues in an artificial "evenhanded" way, creating a phony moral equivalence between the terrorism of Hamas and Israel's legitimate, indeed minimal, defensive measures.]


Several Grad rockets slammed into Ashkelon, 11 miles north of Gaza, on Thurs day, including one that hit an apartment building, slicing through the roof and three floors below, and another that landed near a school, wounding a 17-year-old girl.

[This is some of the aftereffects of Egypt's letting Hamas completely destroy the border between Egypt and Hamastan.]





From The New Haven Register:

Israel threatens to invade Gaza

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) - A bloody spike in Israeli-Hamas fighting put the Israeli city of Ashkelon and its 110,000 residents at the center of an intensifying militant rocket barrage Thursday - and Israel's defense minister warned he would invade Gaza, if necessary, to halt the attacks.

Israel launched nearly a dozen airstrikes, killing 20 Palestinians, Gaza hospital officials said. The attacks included a not-soveiled warning to Gaza's Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh - a missile strike on a guard post outside his home. Hamas leaders have been in hiding in recent weeks, though Israel has so far only targeted militants, not Hamas politicians.

The dead included members of rocket squads, as well as five children, ranging in age from 8 to 12, who their relatives said were playing soccer when they were killed in a missile strike.

Israel has been reluctant to invade Gaza, amid concerns of getting bogged down there, but Defense Minister Ehud Barak told his security chiefs Thursday that an offensive is a definite option.

[This is another version of the same misleading article published in The Waterbury Republican-American.

All these articles were from the Associated Press and appeared, in different configurations, all around America.

Write, write, write. Point out the asymmetry of the conflict.]

1 comment:

KGS said...

This is one of the reasons why I make Primer-Connecticut my daily digest of required reading.

Primer Prez is able to sniff out a story and tell in a way that's not only original, but makes it really hit home with amazing clarity.

How refreshing!

The unicycle spins itself into a dizzying pattern until the direction can no longer be determined. It pretty much sums up the Palestinians thus far, and their pathetic "national" movement.