The Oregonian Gazes Into the Blood on its Own Hands
author: Matilda
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I walked past a news stand this morning, to see that the front page of the Oregonian is smattered with the innocent blood being poured out over Lebanon. In the photograph, a man is walking through rubble, an expression of intense despair on his face, and a dead child in his arms. A child.
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And on the radio, I heard a horror story from the front lines over there. I heard an eye witness describe all the little children lovingly laid out upon the ground. All dead. She described one little baby, whom she said still had a pacifier pinned to his dusty little shirt. Oh my God.
Oh my God.
Another eye witness had a hard time not spitting out his wrath as he described the scene in Tyre, where the bodies had been taken. Little children with matted hair, still wearing their little pajamas. They had bled from their noses and died in the rubble under the American-made Israeli planes. Planes not even dignified with pilots to watch where their bombs fell. These were carefully guided, remote control planes. Unmanned. No one there to even feel remorse for what was done. Just double-talking politicians and word spin. And little dead babies on the ground.
And back here at home, a mosaic of tear stained faces and broken buildings and pain is taken out of context and paved over with word vomit. The attack upon babies in Lebanon is blamed, absurdly, upon the Lebanese themselves. Hezbollah is to blame, we are told. Not Israel. Not the nation that flew drones into the night to drop bombs upon the babies in this makeshift shelter. Not the hands that pushed the buttons and pulled the triggers. Not Israel, but Hezbollah. Israel has "soldiers," while Hezbollah, like Palestine, has "gunmen" and "guerillas" and "terrorists." Israel defends its "right to exist" by killing babies and blowing up hospitals in Lebanon, while the Lebanese people are "terrorists" if they fight back.
Yes, the truth of the massacre is obscured behind lies, distortions, and irrelevancies. Americans are asked to forget that only days ago, Israel knowingly attacked and murdered unarmed UN peacekeepers. And we have already forgotten that Qana, the town in which the massacre occurred, was a scene of another bloody attack a decade ago, where Israeli forces intentionally killed more than a hundred people in a UN shelter. For God's sake. Will we allow this to continue? Now, we are asked to understand that this is, after all, war. And war will have casualties. And if Hezbollah would just stop defending their nation and give in to Israeli terror, this would all be over. Yes, the Israelis had to know that this house was full of children, but it doesn't matter because, you know, there might have been terrorists in the neighborhood. Hezbollah rockets are not defending Lebanese villages from Israeli predations, they are threatening the peace-loving Israelis across the borders. The babies had to die because otherwise, Hezbollah might have fired rockets and threatened Israel. So it's all understandable. Go back to sleep. That is what we are asked to swallow as we watch from afar while Arab men carry off little bundles that used to be children, tears running down their faces.
Lebanon is awash in the blood of innocents. And we are taken by surprise because the Oregonian, indeed all the corporate media, has been telling us lies about the situation over there. They have consistently supported the Israeli agenda, and have consistently demonized the inhabitants of the entire Arab world. Even in this lastest bloody chapter, the Oregonian implied that this was all Hezbollah's doing. That they had crossed the border and kidnapped two Israeli soldiers in a "bloody raid." What they failed to inform the world, even though the facts were there for them to see, was that this "border raid" actually took place deep within Lebanon. Hezbollah was merely defending its own nation, its own people, its own "right to exist." But we were not told this by the Oregonian. We had to learn the truth elsewhere.
And so this blood is upon the hands of the corporate media as surely as upon the Israelis. Because they manufacture consent for this sort of thing. They brainwash the masses into mute acceptance of the insane butchery meted out by Israel. And then they cry some crocodile tears over the inevitable results of their spin, and use the photograph of endless pain to sell a few more papers. Shame.
Yesterday, there were 37 children who played in what was left of their little town. They had toys and pacifiers and finger foods, just like your children. And they had a future. Until last night, when the planes came. And now, they are dead. Isn't it time we stop supporting Israel? Isn't it time we look past the facile headlines and the self-serving agendas of the corporate media and see what's really happening over there? Isn't it time we stop it?
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