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This is how a civilization dies

from The Media War Against Israel by Melanie Phillips

The western media are no longer merely producing questionable professional practices in reporting a war. They are now active participants in it — and on the wrong side of history.

The level of anti-Israel, anti-American madness has reached such a pitch in Britain that any similar expression of alarm at the manifestly blatant mendacity in the reporting of the Middle East has simply become unthinkable.

In short, much of the most incendiary media coverage of this war seems to have been either staged or fabricated. The big question is why the western media would perpetrate such institutionalised mendacity. Many ancillary reasons come to mind. There is the reliance upon corrupted news and picture agencies which employ Arab propagandists as stringers and cameramen. There is the herd mentality of the media which decides collectively what the story is. There is the journalists’ fear for their personal safety if they report the truth about terrorist outfits. There is the difficulty of discovering the truth from undemocratic regimes and terrorist organisations. There is the language barrier; there is professional laziness; there is the naïve inability to acknowledge the depths of human evil and depravity; there is the moral inversion of the left which believes that western truth-tellers automatically tell lies, while third world liars automatically tell the truth.

But the big answer is that the western media transmit the lies of Hezbollah because they want to believe them. And that’s because the Big Lie these media tell — and have themselves been told — about Israel and its place in history and in the world today has achieved the status of unchallengeable truth. The plain fact is that western journalists were sent to cover the war being waged against Israel from Lebanon as a war being waged by Israel against Lebanon. And that’s because that’s how editors think of the Middle East: that the whole ghastly mess is driven by Israel’s actions, and that therefore it is only Israel’s aggression which is the story to be covered. Thus history is inverted, half a century of Jewish victimisation is erased from public consciousness, victims are turned into aggressors and genocidal mass murderers turned into victims, and ignorance and prejudice stalk England’s once staunch and stalwart land...

...that thousands of rockets were fired at northern Israel, hundreds every day, many times more than were daily fired at Britain during the Blitz — that’s why none of this was reported in Britain (where as a result such facts, when now related, are received with open-mouthed astonishment) because journalists were told to ignore it all since that wasn’t the story their editors wanted. Israel’s victimisation simply was not, could not, be the story. The only story was Israel’s aggression. But that story is a Big Lie. So a host of lies were transmitted to support it.

...The mainstream media must now be regarded as active accessories to the war being waged against the free world and therefore as a fifth column in that world – an enemy within.

Fourth, the impact of the lies and distortions transmitted by the mainstream media in inflaming the already pathological hatred of the west within the Arab and Muslim world is incalculable.

Fifth, the mainstream media’s vilification, demonisation and delegitimisation of Israel, based on outright fabrications and malevolent distortions, is imperilling the very existence of the country that is the front line of defence of the free world.

Sixth, that vilification is also imperilling the safety and well-being of Jewish communities around the world, subject now to the double victimisation of attack by Islamists and attack by non-Muslims for belonging to a Jewish people that refuses to submit passively to a second attempt at genocidal slaughter and instead fights to defend itself.

To date, as far as I can determine, not one mainstream editor or proprietor has acknowledged this corruption of the western media. The scale of this corruption now threatens to have a lethal impact on the course of human history. Hatred now drives not just the jihadists but their western dupes, too. Truth and freedom are indivisible. The deconstruction of the former inevitably presages the destruction of the latter. This is the way a civilisation dies.

Iraq- Big Oil & War-Industry Cronyism? Or Jewish Conspiracy?

'Was the Invasion of Iraq a Jewish or a Big Oil Conspiracy?' by Greg Palast in Tikkun Magazine:

Bush world is divided in two: neocons on one side, and the Establishment (which includes the oil companies and the Saudis) on the other. The plan the Establishment created, crafted by Houston oil men, called for locking up Iraq’s oil with agreements between a new state oil company under "profit-sharing agreements" with "IOCs" (International Oil Companies). The combine could "enhance [Iraq’s] government’s relationship with OPEC," it read, by holding the line on quotas and thereby upholding high prices.

So there you have it. Wolfowitz and his neocon clique—bookish, foolish, vainglorious—had their asses kicked utterly, finally, and convincingly by the powers of petroleum, the Houston-Riyadh Big Oil axis.

Between the neocons and Big Oil, it wasn’t much of a contest. The end-game was crushing, final. The Israelites had lost again in the land of Babylon.

What if the Heathrow Bombers Had Succeeded?

Heathrow's 8/27 would have been far different than 9/11.

Far from editorializing that "We are all British now," the American media might well have reacted to 8/27 by saying, "The British are all suspects now." The Atlantic would have drastically widened...

Moreover, whereas 9/11 united Americans (albeit ephemerally), Britain would have been torn apart by 8/27. According to a YouGov poll published in Friday's Daily Telegraph, nearly one in five people believe that "a large proportion of British Muslims feel no sense of loyalty to this country and are prepared to
condone or even carry out acts of terrorism." Five years ago, only 32% of those polled said they felt "threatened" by Islam; today, that figure is 53%. The feeling of alienation is decidedly mutual. A recent Pew global survey found that 81% of British Muslims consider themselves to be Muslims first and British
second. (Only Pakistan, at 87%, has a higher percentage of people who put their religion ahead of their nationality.)...

Last week, New York Magazine asked a diverse group of journalists to answer the question: "What if 9/11 never happened?" It inspired some fascinating answers. But the question "What if 8/27 had happened?" is much more important — because sooner or later something like it is bound to happen for real.

Britain 'is now biggest security threat to US'

Kashmir on the Thames. London Broil. Bergen & Cruickshank in The New Republic:

The danger to the United States of the nexus between British Pakistanis, Al Qaeda, and Kashmir is becoming clear...

According to The Daily Telegraph, In March 2006, British citizen Mohammed Ajmal Khan was a frequent
visitor to the United States and talked about attacking U.S. synagogues.
American prosecutors say Khan was in touch with a group of Virginia militants also tied to LeT...

Of more concern, then, is the likelihood that British Pakistanis will continue to target Americans--both
in the United States and abroad....Great Britain must step up efforts to identify its own citizens who attend Kashmiri or Al Qaeda training camps in Pakistan...

Unfortunately, there are limits to what the British government can do alone. It will need help from moderate Muslims, some of whom are waking up to the threat posed by the radicals in their midst.

"These people are ill," says Ghulam Rabbani, the imam of the mosque adjoining the Fitness Centre, where the Saviour Sect held meetings. "I say very categorically and very clearly that they are misguided and they don't know the basics of Islam."

Rabbani faces a steep challenge: According to a recent poll, a full quarter of British Muslims
consider the 2005 London bombings justified. And anyone who doubts how dangerous the intersection of such sentiments, Al Qaeda, and Kashmiri militants can be should consider what became of Omar Sheikh, the former London School of Economics student who won his freedom on New Year's Eve in 1999: Two years later, he was under arrest for orchestrating the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

(Related story: The Telegraph's perspective on this report, 'Britain 'is now biggest security threat to US': http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/08/29/wsecurity29.xml&pPage=/core/Matt/pcMatt.jhtml

Israel Warned of Global Repercussions Against Jews

World Jewish Congress leaders from the US and Europe met Sunday with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and others Israeli officials for "marathon consultations" following a sharp rise in anti-Semitism in the Diaspora sparked by the military conflagration in Lebanon.

In a press release, the WJC stated that "the war in Lebanon is affecting Jewish communities worldwide. According to data collected over recent weeks in the offices of the WJC, it appears that a drastic deterioration has occurred in the security of dozens of small Jewish communities around the world.

"Additionally, heads of Jewish communities have recently alerted leaders of the WJC to a new wave of anti-Semitic incidents around the world, making it apparent that many Jews feel insecure, isolated and abandoned."

(Click title to read more).