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The Media's Obsession and Bias with Israel
Is the Media influenced by antisemitism?
November 16, 2012 - Audio, 10.25 MIN
(Links at bottom of page to download free viewers.)
This Wednesday evening, the top two stories on the BBC’s news site were; "Israel Kills Hamas Military Chief" and "UN Admits It Failed Sri Lankans". These two reports may seem entirely unconnected, but together they demonstrate the fulfillment of God’s word and signal that Christ will indeed establish his rule upon the earth.
Hello this is Nick Barnes with The Bible in the News.
In early 2009, the Sri Lankan civil war came to its bloody climax. It was a humanitarian catastrophe, with around 40,000 dying in those final months of the conflict, mostly Tamil civilians. The government forces were determined to crush the Tamil rebellion, and after designating “Safe Zones” for civilians to escape the fighting, they went on to heavily shell those very areas.
The UN did nothing and its report on this subject admits…
“UN agencies, including the Security Council and Human Rights Council, had failed at every level to meet their responsibilities in the last months of the civil war in Sri Lanka.
In particular it highlighted the organisation's reluctance to publish casualty figures and its decision to withdraw staff from the war zone, as well as its failure to report evidence of widespread government shelling.”
This indifference, to the plight of Tamil civilians, on the part of the United Nations, replicated in the media, in the Red Cross, and the international community in general, was not due to lack of knowledge at the time – this information was widely available – it was due to their fixation with the perceived faults of one nation.
For on the 27th Dec 2008, after suffering a 6 week barrage of some 800 projectiles, Israel’s government decided that it had no option but to launch Cast Lead, an operation which destroyed weapons and reduced the terrorist capability of Hamas and so restored quiet to Israel’s south – at least for a time. But inevitably in wars, and especially where military targets are deliberately sited in high density, population centres, people are killed. And consequently, in addition to 800 militants, around 400 civilians lost their lives.
However, even when Cast Lead was over, Sri Lanka continued to be ignored. Its weekly civilian death toll, was four times that of the entire Cast Lead operation, and this massacre continued week in and week out for another four months after quiet returned to Israel.
And even when the Sri Lankan government’s victory was complete, some 300,000 Tamil civilians were rounded up and detained them in “welfare villages”. The conditions in these camps were so insanitary, that months after hostilities ended, around 1400 internees were still dying each week. Yet the world remained indifferent.
For the western media and the UN were still obsessed with Gaza, and the ongoing Goldstone Report, which alleged that Israel had possibly committed crimes against humanity. Needless to say, there is no Goldstone Report for Sri Lanka, nor is their government similarly charged with crimes against humanity and genocide.
Of course, the Bible does not present Israel as a righteous nation, through its history. There are a few high points, but generally Israel is presented as a people who want to imitate the nations around them.
In 1Samuel 8v19 we read
…the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay; but we will have a king over us; That we also may be like all the nations;
And the modern state of Israel is no different. It has chosen to emulate the liberal, western, democracies. It craves acceptance amongst the nations, but God said
Jer 12:9 Mine heritage is unto me as a speckled bird, the birds round about are against her;
And in Deuteronomy 28v37
…thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword, among all nations
And in Eze 35v5 that they would suffer a
…perpetual hatred
And all down the centuries the Jew has been hated. He has been persecuted; he has been a
reproach and a proverb, a taunt and a curse,
And while, today, political correctness disguises that loathing, there is no rational explanation for the nations’ bizarre obsession with Israel, except that God said that it would be so. Israel behaves much as any other liberal, western style, democracy, would behave in similar circumstances, and yet the nations are determined to censure her at every turn.
And so we find that in recent years, a huge proportion of United Nations business, concerns Israel. Over ¾ of United Nations, General Assembly, country-specific, resolutions relate to the Israel, and 100% of UN Human Rights Council resolutions relate to Israel.
When it comes to refugees, the UN has two bodies – one for Palestinians (UNWRA) and the other for the rest of world (UNHCR). And while the budget for UNWRA, is smaller UNHCR, it is in the same order of magnitude.
On Wednesday night, the U.N. Security Council held an emergency meeting to discuss Israeli strikes against the Gaza Strip. In contrast, according to the UN’s own report, the UN
did not hold a single formal meeting on the Sri Lankan conflict in its final months in the Security Council, Human Rights Council or the General Assembly.
And likewise, it is interesting to note, that since 1981, every single Emergency Special Sessions, of the UN General Assembly, has been about Israel and the Palestinians. No other humanitarian emergency has warranted it in 31 years; the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, and genocide in Rwanda & Darfur, not to mention the civil war in Sri Lanka, were not serious enough to justify Emergency Special Sessions, but, of course, a local planning decision, for a housing estate in Jerusalem, was!
And the reality is that conflicts are occurring all over the world, right now – and for intensity Israel doesn’t even make the top ten. The ongoing Syrian crisis has claimed more lives in the last two years, than the entire Arab-Israeli conflict since 1948 including all of the terrorism.
And while Israel’s operation “Pillar of Defence” is top news again today, the crescendo of rocket attacks, over the last three weeks, which lead inevitably to this situation, together with last Saturday’s anti-tank missile attack, received scant attention at the time.
This anti-Israel bias, this persecution of this tiny, war torn, country, surrounded by its enemies, is just a continuation of the anti-Semitism of millennia. And it is the perpetual hatred that will ultimately bring the nations in war against Israel.
In Zech 12v3 we read
I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.
In Zech 14v2-3 we read
I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle… Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle.
And as Operation Pillar of Defense proceeds – and no doubt Israel will be vilified at every turn – we can be sure that the day of Christ’s appearing, with his saints, to avenge his people, is nearing.
Join us again next week, God willing, for the Bible in the News.
Sources:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20331872
Telegraph Reports on Hamas Chief Hit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_Israel,_2012
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_military_conflicts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel,_Palestine,_and_the_United_Nations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kvaUmIB87-M
UN Failures Report says [UN] member states did not hold a single formal meeting on the conflict in its final months in the Security Council, Human Rights Council or the General Assembly.
Bible in the News provides a weekly analysis of world politics and events
in the light of Bible prophecy — the Bible in the News!
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