I started this blog not because I had something to say but because what is said about Israel in news outlets that I used to look to for information, even those I used to revere (the New York Times), now present such distorted and delegitimizing coverage of Israel that I find myself dreading every mention of Israel in the mainstream news. So, my small response is to blog information -- most of it non-controversial -- on various Israel events as they come along.
Right now, the Jerusalem Post is the home page on my computer, so it was there that I first saw that Congresswoman Gabrille Giffords had been shot (and also learned that she is Jewish--a detail included in the headlines only in the Jewish State). I immediately switched to American news sources to see what had happened. As I began watching the reports, I began to get that same feeling of dread I get whenever Israel bursts into the news: First there is the tragedy -- a nine year old is killed, a judge, a grandmother, and the young congresswoman is critically injured. And then there is the over-the-top and irresponsible reaction--already prepared in advance of the tragic event. In this case there was the Sheriff of Pima County holding forth on national television saying we don't know anything at all about the killer, Jared Loughner, but Arizona does have a lot of bigoted people and they listen to talk radio that gets them all stirred up. He really said that. So did the The New York Times a bit more eloquently. Soon the major networks were showing Sarah Palin's map of voting districts targeted for getting out the vote--and taking the term, target, literally.
The killer is a scary, untreated mental case, whose unintelligible statements on YouTube indicate only that he is a scary untreated mental case.
"Massacre--followed by libel" is how Charles Krauthammer describes it. The pattern of political twisting of events that I'm used to following in news about Israel showed up in full force after the tragedy in Tucson.
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