Florida Rabbi Calls the Gaza Massacre a Biblical Prophesy [Media Bias & Distortion]

*Link to complete coverage of Gaza Massacre on MM*

*Pls DIGG post by clicking here*

Ahmed Bedier, Human Rights Activist and Florida radio-host (I interviewed him at/about MANA) forwarded his NBC interview to me yesterday. What I found especially intriguing in the video (see below), other than Ahmed’s solid performance, were the comments of the Rabbi Eli Lazer, a University Professor.

Rabbi Lazer calls the Gaza massacre part of “Islam’s war against those who don’t believe in their religion”. Because, according to him, the Bible’s prophesies are true [I believe he is referring to the Old Testament]. In essence, the Rabbi is calling this attack part of a holy war.

This interview with the Rabbi is important in its implications and also once again reemphasizes the double-standards of the media. My questions to the Rabbi and the media would be the following:

1. First of all, I don’t get it. Israel massacred nearly 400 Palestinians so far, most of them civilians (yes, police-officers under a Hamas government are still civilians according to all international laws), and Hamas’s rockets have killed a total of 16 Israelis in 3 years (make sure you read this HuffPo post for the “true story behind this war”), yet this is “Islam’s war on Israel??” I mean, does the Rabbi think that Americans are so stupid that we will buy this rubbish cop-out as an excuse for massacre?
2. Which prophesies is the Rabbi referring to? And since Muslims are not explicitly mentioned in the Testaments, what does Rabbi Eli’s reading and other Orthodox Rabbis’ readings of the Old Testament consider Muslims as?
3. While the world harps over so-called radical verses in the Quran, why does the Bible get a free-pass? I have heard this question answered many times this way, “no one takes the Bible literally”. Wrong! You have a Rabbi in America, a Professor, who takes it quite literally. What about all those extremist Jewish settlers in Palestine, what are they taught in school? Why haven’t we put their books and literature up for public scrutiny, as the jihad-hunters spend day and night going through Islamic literature? Where is UK’s Channel 4’s hit-job on extremist Jewish literature that talks about the “greater Israel”?
4. What is the difference between this Rabbi and the so-called “Muslim radicals”, who sees the world as a war between Islam and the rest of the world. Aren’t they the two sides of the same extremist coin?
5. Imagine if an Imam or a Muslim university Professor IN AMERICA had come on TV and opened a Qur’an to justify carnage in the name of holy war? Just because there is a j-word one side, and a mitzvah war on the other, there is no consequence for the latter?
6. While Hamas’s “Islamist roots” reverberate through every media article (as if having Islamist roots makes you a justified target for murder) why isn’t the role of extremist, orthodox Jews (especially among the settler movement in Israel) who as a majority don’t want Palestinians to have their own land not an important issue? In fact, politics of the right-religious vote in Israel is what many consider as one of the driving forces for this massacre. Don’t get me wrong, there are anti-Zionism Orthodox Jews who are against Israel’s injustice, but they form a small minority by all accounts. So, once again, its not the religion, but the ones who are exploiting it for their political and territorial purposes.

On a related note of knowledge of facts, the following website is a must-have on all blogrolls and links for fair-minded bloggers and websites:

If Americans Knew: What every American needs to know about Israel/Palestine

I urge everyone to donate to this website, even a few dollars. There are few “opinions” on this site; rather the site is full of statistics and hard-facts, something which Israel can run away but cannot hide from. Let facts REVERBERATE, not the lies and distortions of the Israeli media campaign.

Also, it is important for all fair-minded individuals to understand how the Israeli PR machine works by taking quality time to see the video below (it’s lengthy but every minute is worth it). Finally, you will have real, hard data and facts to explain how the media bias works to back up what most already know. I mean, just pick up any AP article, and you will hardly ever see mention of an Israeli attack, except that it is stated (sometimes a dozen times) that it is in retaliation or response to a Palestinian crime. NEVER is Israel a “first-mover” in injustice, it is always portrayed as the innocent victim, RETURNING fire, never starting it. If we really want to play this game, then we’ll have to remind everyone that the occupation ALWAYS comes first, by all accounts. So, if there is an ultimate first-mover of injustice and violence, it is indeed the Israelis.

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land provides a striking comparison of U.S. and international media coverage of the crisis in the Middle East, zeroing in on how structural distortions in U.S. coverage have reinforced false perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This pivotal documentary exposes how the foreign policy interests of American political elites–oil, and a need to have a secure military base in the region, among others–work in combination with Israeli public relations strategies to exercise a powerful influence over how news from the region is reported.

Please see this video (below Ahmed’s NBC interview) and spread the word.

Rabbi calls it a religious war.

[youtube 9zLcIIuBfwU]

Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land: Media & the Israel-Palestine Conflict, produced by Media Foundation – www.c2ore.com

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