Hamas, Hezbollah and the terror group double standard - by Sean Durns

Like Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups, Hezbollah calls for the destruction of the Jewish state. And like them, Hezbollah is often described as merely a “militant group” as opposed to the more accurate “terrorist organization.”

Sean Durns..
JNS.org..
01 May '19..

Many members of the Western press seem to have two standards for covering terrorist groups: one for those whose primary target is Israel, and another for everyone else. An examination of recent news coverage proves it.

Few examples better highlight the media’s double standard on terrorist groups than reporting on the so-called “March of Return,” which began in the spring of 2018, and has waxed and waned in intensity ever since. Although many commentators incorrectly characterized the “march” as a grassroots “protest” by Palestinians at the Israel-Gaza border, in reality, Hamas—the U.S.-designated terror group that rules the Gaza Strip—orchestrated it for propaganda purposes.

Armed Hamas operatives, as well as those from other Palestinian terrorist organizations, including the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) and others were interspersed among unarmed Palestinian civilians attempting to break into Israel.

Israeli authorities responded with a mixture of live fire and non-lethal munitions; the former targeting terror leaders and those perpetrating violent acts, and the latter, including tear gas and rubber rounds, aimed at dispersing the thousands who had gathered at the border under the auspices of Hamas and other terror organizations.

Hamas and the other Palestinian terror groups involved hoped to put international pressure on Israel to end or reduce a blockade that Jerusalem had initiated to curtail the flow of arms to the terror group. Hamas also wanted increased international aid to fill its coffers. To achieve these objectives—and to elicit widespread condemnation of the Jewish state—Hamas sacrificed its own people. Terrorists used mirrors and burned tires to obscure the vision of IDF snipers who were specifically targeting the terror leaders hiding among civilians. And children and the disabled were bused in with the hope that they’d catch an errant bullet and perhaps make for a good headline.

IDF targeting proved superior, however, and detailed analyses by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Information Center soon showed that a majority of the Palestinians killed during the “Great Return March” were affiliated with terrorist groups. Hamas itself acknowledged as much.

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.