[Peace-discuss] Chomsky: "The...outrage over the Shalit kidnapping was cynical fraud."

[Chuck Minne]

The full interview is at: http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2006-08/08chomsky.cfm   
  Q: You claim that the world media refuses to link between what's going on in the occupied territories and in Lebanon?      Chomsky: "Yes, but that is the least of the charges that should be leveled against the world media, and the intellectual communities generally. One of many far more severe charges is brought up in the opening paragraph of the Berger letter.      "Recall the facts. On June 25, Cpl. Gilad Shalit was captured, eliciting huge cries of outrage worldwide, continuing daily at a high pitch, and a sharp escalation in Israeli attacks in Gaza, supported on the grounds that capture of a soldier is a grave crime for which the population must be punished.      One day before, on June 24, Israeli forces kidnapped two Gaza civilians, Osama and Mustafa Muamar, by any standards a far more severe crime than capture of a soldier. The Muamar kidnappings were certainly known to the major world media. They were reported at once in the English-language Israeli press,
 basically IDF handouts. And there were a few brief, scattered and dismissive reports in several newspapers around the US.      Very revealingly, there was no comment, no follow-up, and no call for military or terrorist attacks against Israel. A Google search will quickly reveal the relative significance in the West of the kidnapping of civilians by the IDF and the capture of an Israeli soldier a day later.      "The paired events, a day apart, demonstrate with harsh clarity that the show of outrage over the Shalit kidnapping was cynical fraud. They reveal that by Western moral standards, kidnapping of civilians is just fine if it is done by "our side," but capture of a soldier on "our side" a day later is a despicable crime that requires severe punishment of the population.
   
  Continued at:  http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2006-08/08chomsky.cfm







 		
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