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By Harvey Oberfeld
July 6th, 2015
For news junkies, watching … and trying to understand … the chaos that unfolds every day/week/month/year in the Middle East can be quite a challenge.
So much of it today looks identical to what happened yesterday/last week/last month. And let’s face it: much of the media come at it all very superficially … showing the bombings du jour; the latest atrocities; and, the increasing numbers of civilian casualties …without any real probing of for evidence of cause and effect .. because the sources go back a thousand years..
Last week, though, there WAS an opportunity to see and report exactly what was behind a major new front by ISIS … against Egypt in the Sinai … and almost ALL the Western media COVERED IT UP.
It began with the single largest attack on Egyptian forces in the Sinai since the country reclaimed the area in its peace treaty with Israel: in one strike alone, 30 Egyptian soldiers were slaughtered by terrorists identifying themselves as ISIS supporters.
There have long been skirmishes there with the current Egyptian military regime … but NEVER anything using sophisticated heavy weapons, rockets, artillery and massive amounts of firepower … carried out with impunity at three Sinai cities … with 70 Egyptians killed, before military forces destroyed the attackers.
The Sinai is a remote, mostly barren dessert region, with severely restricted access, enforced by several military checkpoints on every road by Egypt’s iron-gripped military dictatorship… easy to see the obvious question: HOW/WHERE did so many large weapons/shells/armaments get into the area so far away from Egyptian cities and trading centers?
An Egyptian General had a clear explanation: they came in FROM GAZA through the many smuggling tunnels linking the area to Egypt’s Sinai!
But try to find that explanation on the CBC National, BBC World News, Al Jazeera or ANY of the other major left-wing PRO-HAMAS world newscasts!! They virtually ignored or only made oblique reference to what was a MAJOR revelation of new sourcing, new support and new supply routes for ISIS … provided by HAMAS in Gaza.
The same tunnels that were used when the Muslim Brotherhood were in charge in Cairo to ship tons of weapons and ammunition into Gaza to help Hamas and the other terrorist groups operating there against Israel, were now being used by Hamas and other terrorists to deliver ISIS fighters, heavy weapons and explosives INTO Egypt to fight against the Egyptian military and its highly secular regime.
THAT’S WHY we saw Egyptian forces demolishing ALL homes/buildings (no need to get a warrant or care about UN protests there!) within five kilometres of the Gaza border … uncovering dozens of sophisticated smuggling tunnels in the process.
Why didn’t our media report or even question how the ISIS fighters got into the Sinai or where they obtained with all that sophisticated heavy weapons/armaments?
Because the TRUTH runs counter to their long-held and promoted anti-Israel narrative: that Gaza has nothing; that the people are still enduring terrible suffering; and that the blockade of ships bound for Gaza MUST be lifted so they can get much needed food, medical and building supplies … which is all they seek. Simply NOT true!
It’s a total crock … hundreds of thousands of tons of food, medicine, consumer goods (including building materials) have flowed from Egypt and from Israel and through the port of Ashdod to GAZA … supervised by the UN …. but that has not fit into the anti-Israel (and more recently the anti-Egypt) left-wing media propaganda campaign … so they chose NOT to cover that. Or how Hamas steals much of the goods/supplies destined for the Gazan people … uses it to build new tunnels, weapons …or sells it on the black market to raise cash for weaponry, smuggled in from Iran.
In fact, just two weeks ago, the anti-Israel media once more delivered lots of unquestioning coverage of another ship, filled with leftist activists, trying to deliver goods to the Gaza …calling for the free flow of ANYTHING into Gaza through a Gazan port. I didn’t see a single “journalist” ask them about whether they thought Hamas would bring in more sophisticated Iranian rockets/weaponry to start another war against Israel or to use against Egypt if there was no blockade?
And now, NOT to cover the truth of Sinai either ….because it proves that many of those imported metal supplies, obtained with billions in foreign assistance , are 0nce again being turned into weapons for/by Hamas and now for ISIS too, instead of being used to rebuild Gaza.
So it all gets covered superficially … almost unprofessionally: when three rockets were fired late last week from Sinai into Israel …the media could not ignore that … but NONE of them reported WHERE they originated …from Gaza.
And of course, without full information, it makes it almost impossible for most people to understand WHY the Palestinian Authority two days ago arrested more than 100 Hamas supporters in the West Bank (so much for the Palestinian unity authority!) and warn that more arrests are coming.
More is to come … but don’t expect OUR media to tell you exactly WHY and WHAT is actually going on in the Sinai/Gaza/West Bank … because it doesn’t fit THEIR agenda or dedicated pro-Hamas narrative.
Harv Oberfeld
Sorry, Harv. But anti-Israel, or anti-palestine, rants always sound like there’s an agenda behind them. Yours is no different. It’s a BS show over there from both sides.
Thanks for bringing us the truth.
The liberal mainstream media (particularly CBC, BBC, Al-Jazeera and the American alphabet nets) have always hated the truth and always seek to cover it up to fit their biased narratives, particularly where Israel and its issues with the so-called “Palestinians” and Hamas are concerned. This is why legitimate journalists have to be on watch at all times to expose the dishonesty of left-wing media and make it accountable for its lies, fact-twisting and fabrication of fiction masquerading as “news”.