Just to add to Jonah’s observation on Reuters below, Louise Bagshawe, the chick-lit author and Conservative MP, wrote a piece for the London Telegraph wondering why she hadn’t heard about the Fogel murders until she read my Corner post “Dead Jews is no news.” Where, she asks, is the BBC coverage?
As I said in my post, there are circles of depravity: The relatively small number of people willing to decapitate a baby; the larger number of Palestinians happy to celebrate the decapitation of a baby; and the massed ranks of Western media anxious to obscure the truth about the nature of the event. The comments below Miss Bagshawe’s column provide a glimpse of a fourth circle — the large numbers of Westerners who, even when confronted with the reality of what happened, are nevertheless eager to rationalize it as a legitimate response to a legitimate grievance.
For all the frictions between the aging, fading natives of Europe and their young, assertive Muslim populations, on this one issue at least there is remarkable comity.
Everyone should go look at the photo at the top of MP Bagshawe's column, which shows five shrouded corpses awaiting burial. Notice how tiny one of them is.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRemember, all of these people in these various circles claim to be morally superior to The Right
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI was listening to the BBC yesterday, after the bomb blew up that bus in Jereusalem. The BBC put it in the context of "renewed hostilities between Israel and the Palestinians."
I might have thought that terrorists had blown up a bunch of civilians, which is unjustifiable, but no, the BBC has it down as renewed hostilities between both sides. Equal blame and all that.
They also fretted that with the US occupied with Lybia, that Israel might retaliate without being noticed and scolded by the US.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe media is sickening.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt is a strange world indeed that views the American military's efforts to free millions of Iraqis as war crimes, while considering the beheading of an innocent child a reasonable response to an international boundary dispute.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLike the chicken and the egg, it's hard to tell which came first - the third or fourth circle (the propoganda or the European embrace). But also like the chicken and the egg, it doesn't really matter because it's all symbiotic now.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think you need to switch the third and fourth circles. I find the excusing by the public to be far worse. At least the media simply ignored the killings - they didn't take to the airwaves to defend the actions of terrorists. Those in the general public who would take to the comments section to excuse and justify and defend are right up there with the Palestinians who celebrated the deaths in the streets.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseQuote from the story:
"[The BBC stated]...it was important to report on the settlements to put the murder in context."
The decapitation of a three-month-old baby has a context? I'd like to hear the Beeb's explanation of what sort of context that might be.
People look back at history and wonder how the Holocaust could have happened. Looking at the "nothing to see here" attitude the news media have toward this kind of wanton butchery, it's no big mystery.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'd agree with reldim in the general case, that, all things being equal, the active rationalization of evil is worse than passively ignoring it.
But all things aren't equal. Journalists and news agencies claim as their profession the reporting of newsworthy events, they claim to be serving a vital role as the sentries on the walls of society.
When THEY bury a story like this, they are actively engaged in shirking their jobs and responsibilities. Their reporting the monstrous details and then trying to rationalize the murders would actually be better, because even that would lead -- if unintentionally -- to the very thing they seek to prevent with their silence: a realization of what we're facing.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDenroy, the media ARE sickening.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe left's denial when it comes to Islamist terror is not only pathological, it is also suicidal.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI submit that the 4 circles of Mr. Steyn’s Depravity Venn Diagram overlap at the intersection of “Don’t like Jews.” There’s a difference in the degree between the person willing to translate that hatred into cutting a baby’s head of because it’s a Jewish baby, and the web commenter rationalizing cutting a Jewish baby’s head off, but both the murder and the rationalization stem from the same Jew hatred. The danger of the rationalizes and moral equivocators is that they help normalize hatred of Jews, which makes murdering Jews more acceptable. The main streaming of Anti-Semitism didn’t occur because one day a million people woke up and decided they hated Jews, it was the result of decades of individuals rationalizing Jew hatred.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJust once, I wish the Isrealis would try a wildly disproportionate response. They try so hard to be measured and proportionate and cautious so that a world that hates them for who they are will somehow not hate them so much.
I guarantee if Isreal lobbed 100 artillery shells for every one mortar and assassinated five Palestinian leaders for every child killed by a terrorist attack the shenanigans from the Palestinians would stop. They would wail and whine and their water carriers in the Western Media would too. But don't they already do that?
Come on Isreal. Try it just once.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSomewhere in those circles of hell are a number of Daily Kos commenters. The Sunday after the Itamar massacre, I went on Kos to see what kind of coverage, if any, there was. There were only two articles, both critical of Israel. The comments were even more putrid.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe fatality in the Jerusalem bombing yesterday was a British national. You would think that would be worthy news in the eyes of the BBC. Even dead Jewish Brits in no news.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWe know that BBC thinks of Settlers as lowlifes deserving no sympathy whatsoever. But it worse than that.
Imagine that while defending you family's life against an armed robbery you accidentally killed the criminal's kid he took along for a ride. You'd be devastated. It's not your fault the kid was there, but it's a tragedy regardless. Most likely you will serve the time anyway.
If you drive over a dog that ran out on the road, you will be all in tears for days.
But Palestinians not simply defended the killing, they celebrated it! And so many Telegraph posters were justifying it.
And it was not just a murder. The baby was beheaded! It's beyond mind-bugling that we even need to explain stuff like this. But because its about The Joooos, it's OK.
When Jews are accused of talking too much about the Holocaust, being too sensitive and outright silly with all that "Never again" stuff - a case come along that proves all Jewish worries. A presumably civilized people twist themselves into pretzels to shrug off the celebration of a baby's beheading. And we wonder how one can be gentle with a puppy and enjoy Mozart while taking a deserved rest from another hard day operating a gas chamber.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDon't leave out the bizarre fact that a majority of diaspora Jews are among the staunchest leftists supporting the Palestinians and rationalizing their crimes against Jewish Israeli civilians. No one has been able to explain this betrayal properly. Do diaspora Jews really feel less kinship with their Israeli brethren than with the people trying to murder them who have despised and always will despise Jews no matter their location? They act that way...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAs usual, Jenna has it exactly right.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI have to agree with Dave from Tampa. Israel needs to put the survival of their people higher on their priority list. Put the surrounding countries on notice that they will be held responsible for terrorist acts launched from their territory and then proceed to respond appropriately. Sometimes I think I'm more of a Zionist than any Israeli and I'm not Jewish.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNY Times=BBC. Same coverup.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNicholas D. Kristof reminds us to apologize to the Islamic World. I apologize to the Islamic World for grimacing at the decapitation of an Israeli infant by your hands.