Earlier today I was refereed to this piece of video by some Twitterers
I blogged about it, albeit with a link somehow screwed up by my smartphone, but had no time to comment upon it.
Now I have watched the video a few more times I feel a little lost as to what to say.
Is the BBC interviewer, Mishal Husain, really suggesting that the most important issue is not the number of rockets being fired at towns in Southern Israel but how many people these rockets have killed. The fact that Israel has built bomb shelters, invested in alert systems and of course devised and built the defensive system Iron Dom, to minimise civilian deaths is ignored. The fact that were it not for these systems many more Israelis would have been killed is deemed irrelevant.
What is also ignored by this BBC reporter and others is that the Israeli body count isn’t low because Hamas is trying to minimise Israeli casualties. In fact the opposite is true, Hamas’s want to kill as many Israelis as possible. Without the defensive measures I outlined above, the Israeli body count would be much higher - would that be more acceptable to Mishal Husain?
Mishal Husain seems to believe that constantly living in fear of rockets, having 15 seconds to run for a shelter is an acceptable way to live, I disagree.
By way of contrast listen to Mishal Husain's tone, a few days ago, when she interviewed Diana Buttu, a former legal adviser to the PLO. She doesn't challenge Ms Buttu's claim that Israel is occupying Gaza. Yes she asks some simple questions that challenge the standard Palestinian position but there is no hectoring tone, none of the aggression that was in the interview with the Israeli journalist.
As my old English teacher used to request - "Compare and contrast"
I blogged about it, albeit with a link somehow screwed up by my smartphone, but had no time to comment upon it.
Now I have watched the video a few more times I feel a little lost as to what to say.
Is the BBC interviewer, Mishal Husain, really suggesting that the most important issue is not the number of rockets being fired at towns in Southern Israel but how many people these rockets have killed. The fact that Israel has built bomb shelters, invested in alert systems and of course devised and built the defensive system Iron Dom, to minimise civilian deaths is ignored. The fact that were it not for these systems many more Israelis would have been killed is deemed irrelevant.
What is also ignored by this BBC reporter and others is that the Israeli body count isn’t low because Hamas is trying to minimise Israeli casualties. In fact the opposite is true, Hamas’s want to kill as many Israelis as possible. Without the defensive measures I outlined above, the Israeli body count would be much higher - would that be more acceptable to Mishal Husain?
Mishal Husain seems to believe that constantly living in fear of rockets, having 15 seconds to run for a shelter is an acceptable way to live, I disagree.
By way of contrast listen to Mishal Husain's tone, a few days ago, when she interviewed Diana Buttu, a former legal adviser to the PLO. She doesn't challenge Ms Buttu's claim that Israel is occupying Gaza. Yes she asks some simple questions that challenge the standard Palestinian position but there is no hectoring tone, none of the aggression that was in the interview with the Israeli journalist.
As my old English teacher used to request - "Compare and contrast"
1 comment:
I still would though!
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