Israeli Daily Propaganda Service at NYT: Isabel Kershner in Action

Today, it is the turn of Isabel Kershner from the Israeli propaganda service at the NYT office in Israel. Look at the headline: this is like a newspaper covering the Nazi invasion of Poland with the headline "Hitler steps up diplomacy". And when you read the article you realize that they are talking about Israeli propaganda efforts but praiseworthy propaganda is often called "diplomacy" or "public diplomacy". "Israel broadened the scope of its air offensive against the Hamas infrastructure in Gaza on Thursday." Look at this sentence. This language now justifies wholesale the bombing and destruction of civilian infra-structure by labeling it as "Hamas infrastructure." So the water and electricity and water treatment facilities are "Hamas infra-structures" and their bombing and destruction are justifiable by NYT standards. And next time Israel bombs Lebanon, the New York Times will label them as "Hizbullah infrastructures". Now the dance around the destruction of a civilian building in which a Hamas leading lived, was quite cute. There were several sentences to justify the killing not only of the man (Kershner talks about links to Hamas' military wing without providing sources for information, and notice that any information on the Israelis have to be sourced, while information that is favorable to Israel does not have to be sourced) but also of his family. "While hundreds of thousands of Gazans have received warnings in the form of telephone messages or fliers that their buildings are Israeli targets, Major Leibovich said she could not give details or specify whether Mr. Rayyan’s family had been warned." So here the New York Times has a new policy, any civilian who receives advanced warning from Israeli terrorists is not really a civilian victims if he/she is killed. So the New York Times' correspondent was implying that the children who died may have received messages of warning on their cellphones (as all Palestinian babies carry cellphones), and are consequently responsible for their own deaths. Now the New York Times moves to the Mother of All Attacks (which is not the Israeli terrorist attack on Gaza but the Hamas' missiles on Israel): "On Thursday, a rocket fired from Gaza struck an apartment building in the major port city of Ashdod, about 20 miles north of the Palestinian territory, causing extensive damage but no serious injuries." So even when there are no "serious injuries" they add editorial comments (like "extensive damage") to cause the reader to sympathize with poor Israelis. How does Kershner define extensive damage? Was Gaza extensive damaged in the last week, or does the word not apply to Palestinian sites anymore? And then the new term "symbols of government": "Earlier on Thursday, Israeli warplanes and naval forces bombed Hamas security installations, militants’ houses and tunnels used for smuggling weapons, as well as symbols of the government like the legislative building — a Gaza landmark — and the Ministry of Justice, the Israeli military said." Symbols of government also include bakeries, schools, mosques, universities, and ambulances. And then Kershner asks the reader not to have any sympathy for the Palestinian civilian victims becasue her Israeli sources put the civilian death civlian death toll (which exludes civilian Palestinian males becuase all are listed as combatants, even by UN estimates of civilian deaths) at mere 10 percent: "Medical officials in Gaza said the number of Palestinians killed in the Israeli bombardment had topped 400. While many of the dead were Hamas security personnel, the United Nations said, a quarter of those killed were civilians. Some Israeli officials have put the number of Palestinian civilians killed at closer to 10 percent." And if Goebbels said in his diary that propaganda is "repition, constant repitition" the New York Times proves that dictum daily with their reptitious references of justification of Israeli terrorism: "Israel’s stated goal for its operation is to halt the rocket fire from Gaza and to create a new security situation in southern Israel, where three civilians and a soldier have been killed in rocket attacks in the past six days." Notice that none of the New York Times' account list the number of Palestinians killed and injured during the period of so-called cease-fire.