By INNA ROGATCHI, ROGATCHI FOUNDATION—
As Israel and the Jewish world in the Diaspora are holding their breath and carrying their prayers for three teenagers kidnapped by Hamas near Hebron a few days ago, the coverage of the developing the story by two scions of the world media, CNN and BBC has been marked by the utterly shameful punctuation of moral low. Both companies have put a word ‘kidnapped’ in a quote marks while reporting on the drama in Israel.
That could be the end of story as it is completely self-revealing and fully self-attesting. But enough is enough. The Hamas terrorists did abduct not even soldiers, this time. They did attack unarmed teenagers, yeshiva students. This is what happens when patented and self-justifying criminals and terrorists are allowed into a government.
But we were hearing only fanfares and seeing those over-sugar-like smiles of the dead-trusted friend of Hamas in Europe Ms Ashton promising and to work with the new government and encouraging such work; we were getting more encouragement of the sort – and not a single reprimand, or very well justified worries – from the other leaders of the European Union and its abominating policy of appeasing terrorists infinitely.
We were getting the same softest of the soft response to the new Palestinian government-of-united-terror from the Washington Hill, not surprisingly so given the current occupiers of the Hill, but not less outrageous either. It is too much, really, when the supposedly-most-powerful nation in the world seeing no problem in openly terrorist organisation entering a governmental body, doubly so in such highly and permanently explosive region as the Middle-East.
The world knows that the one among kidnapped boys is the American citizen. Did we hear an adequate reaction to the crime and concerns regarding the safety of its citizen by the US Administration, so far? We did not. We only were informed in a clearly lowered tone’ way that the US State Secretary was talking with Mahmud Abbas, and that the ‘State Department is working closely with the Israeli and Palestinian authorities and hopes for soon re-unification the boys with their families”.
During many decades, and under the reign of many US Administrations, there had been not such weak and in-articulated reaction of the US state on the fact of kidnapping of the US citizen, as we saw it now with regard of kidnapping of Naftali Frenkel, and two young Israelis Gilad Shaar and Eylad Yifrach . At the same time, the world was witnessing in a dumb bewilderment the recent exchange of five senior Taliban terrorists for the US army deserter – which had been carried on, we all were explained by the US President, “in the best national interests of the USA”. So, such are the understanding, priorities and policies of this administration at the moment. This is not America we used to know and rely on at the times of the crises, sadly, and very alarmingly, too.
The UN General Secretary and the Spanish Minister for Foreign Affairs did express their deep concern over the unfolding drama with the kidnapping of the young boys in Hebron. We have not heard neither personal statement of the US President, so far, and this is the third day of the critical situation at the moment; nor did we hear statement from the European Union and its leadership. It is a weekend, of course.
Maybe, one should not over-react on the absolutely shameless coverage of the kidnapping crime and crisis in Israel by both CNN and BCC who simultaneously has put ‘kidnapped’ in a quote marks. We all know their utterly biased stand towards Israel, and there is nothing new in it – apart of a record-breaking shame of quoting, and thus doubting, the nature of the terrorist attack against two 16-years old boys and 19-years old youth.
Who do they think they are, those cowardic and utterly dishonest editors and the program supervisors of the both giants of the media world who did think that they outsmarted us all, in that insulting way of bringing the news out?
There is no surprise in the code of behaviour for both of them, clearly; but the actions must be taken in this screaming out case. The state of Israel should ban the activities of the both CNN and BBC from the territory of Israel until the full public apologies of both of them and provided guarantees by their bosses of conducting the professional duties of their journalists and editors in a civilised and responsible, un-biased way.
The public in Israel and those people world-wide who do feel indignant about the shameful conduct of two major TV channels, should address with the open public petition to the leadership of the CNN and BCC demanding to discipline the editors personally responsible for quoting their conscience and compromising their channels in a shameful act, and to maintain a life-crises coverage to be done in correspondence with a commonly accepted norms of human moral, not following the way of barbarians who celebrate with fireworks, music, dances and candies, and such a happy laugh as we all are privileged to see from the CNN and BBC reports from happy Gaza and West Bank celebrating abduction of three young boys.
I have not noticed any of a quote marks in the CNN and BBC coverage of those ‘celebrations’. It is only the conscience in the big media holdings head-quarters has become quote-marked, and has become a hostage of their mental surrender to the terrorism.
Dr INNA ROGATCHI is the author and senior international affairs adviser to the number of institutions. She is co-founder and president of The Rogatchi Foundation – www.rogatchi.org