On March 12, 2011, five members of the Fogel family
were slaughtered inside their home in the West Bank settlement of
Itamar. Three of the five family members killed were children
including a three-month-old girl named Hadas. The media attention
about this act of terrorism has been scant. This certainly isn’t
the fault of conservatives who have shown no hesitation in drawing
attention to the sheer evil of this wanton act of barbarism.
Dennis Prager,
Bret Stephens of the Wall Street
Journal and
Jeff Jacoby of the Boston
Globe have all written eloquently about what happened
to the Fogel family, and Glenn
Beck devoted a segment on his show to the events
in Itamar. Now one could certainly make the case that much of the
world’s attention has been drawn towards Japan where a 9.0
earthquake led to a tsunami which led to a crisis in several of its
nuclear reactors. The world’s attention has also been drawn to
Libya where a UN-sanctioned military campaign has now begun. Both
of these events are certainly worthy of our
concern.
Yet I don’t think it entirely explains the scarcity of
attention to this story by the mainstream media. There must remain
a suspicion that because the Fogels were Jewish settlers they were
deemed unworthy of sympathy. How else can one explain CNN’s
decision to put quotation marks around the
phrase “terror attack” as if to suggest that it wasn’t? Melanie
Phillips of the U.K. Spectator
lambasted CNN and other mainstream media
outlets on both sides of the Atlantic for the dubious quality of
their reporting:
Overwhelmingly, the media have either ignored or
downplayed the atrocity — or worse, effectively blamed the victims
for bringing it on themselves, describing them as ‘hard-line
settlers’ or extremists. Given that three of the victims were
children, one a baby of three months whose throat was cut, such a
response is utterly degraded.
But Phillips went further than that. Directing her
comments towards the New York Times she
wrote:
[I]t’s not the Arab massacre of a Jewish family which has
jeopardised “peace prospects” — because the Israelis will quite
rightly never trust any agreement with such savages — but instead
Israeli policy on building more homes, on land to which it is
legally and morally entitled, which is responsible instead for
making peace elusive.
Because Phillips used the word “savages” to describe
Palestinians she is now on the receiving end of a
complaint filed by Inayat Bunglawala,
chairman of Muslims4UK, to the U.K. Press Complaints
Commission:
If you insert the word “Jew” or “Jewish” where she has
referred to Arabs then I am sure she would have no doubt that those
words would be antisemitic. Just as she abhors antisemitism it is
important that she maintains the same vigorous anti-racist stance
against Arabs. It is just unacceptable to use that kind of
language.
But let’s consider the source. As Mark Steyn
reminds us, this is the same man who praised
Osama bin Laden as “a freedom fighter.” With that in mind now let
us consider
what else he has to say about the murder of
the Fogel family:
The killings were indeed tragic. Though one does
wonder why on earth the Jewish settlers thought it a sensible move
to build their homes in illegally occupied Palestinian
land.
In other words, Bunglawala thinks the Fogels got what was
coming to them for living in “illegally occupied Palestinian land.”
Needless to say, Bunglawala’s cries of racism are disingenuous.
Where is the racism of which he speaks? Phillips is judging
Palestinians solely by their public behavior. Besides when is the
last time Jews broke into the home of a Palestinian family and slit
the throat of an infant girl? Answer: Never. Why? Because a moral
people know that slitting the throat of an infant girl is an act of
savagery. And as long as moral people accept that slitting the
throat of an infant girl is an act of savagery then so too are
public displays in celebration of that savagery. Only an immoral
people would go out into the streets and hand
out candy after a family has been murdered in
their own home. And as long as Palestinians insist on exhibiting
this kind of behavior after innocent civilians are murdered in cold
blood whether it be in the West Bank or in the World Trade Center,
then Phillips is absolutely correct in calling them savages. For
savages, murder is as easy as handing out candy.
