Thursday, February 5, 2009
Excellent report back from Sderot, Israel by the invaluable Michael Yon. Want to know what makes Michael Yon different? Read this:
...It makes no sense to risk life and limb only to allow people who intentionally target children to talk through my pen. Not until they stop the terrorism. Those members of the press who transmute Hamas's crocodile tears into ink only exacerbate the disease.
Recently, I traveled about a thousand miles around Afghanistan, without military, to learn more about the country. Taking chances for good people is one thing, but taking chances to talk with Hamas terrorist leaders, whom I would not believe anyway, is just not smart. Their propaganda is widely available.
One can roam Israel at will, write as one wishes, without reprisal. The choice is easy: the Israelis won't kill the messenger, even when journalists mercilessly rip into them...
Such a sensible man. More:
...They are isolated and imprisoned. But it's not only Israel who's done this. The Gaza Strip borders Egypt, and Egypt has done the same. The terrorists are tunneling like rats and the Egyptians and Israelis are trying to locate and destroy the tunnels under their respective fence lines. Who wants the Palestinians? If the Palestinians truly were a peaceful lot, victims only of Israel, one might think that they would have free entry into Egypt. But they do not.
Michael Yon is great as always.
It's true that interviews that "transmute Hamas's crocodile tears into ink" without any criticism or analysis are useless (and harmful), but all interviews are not that way. Interviewers who quietly analyze and who, in their finished article, cut through the BS that these propagandists are shoveling can produce some valuable information.
"Shmoozing with terrorists" is one example. Anderson Cooper and Michael Totten's exposes of Hezbollah's media manipulations are another.
Yon is totally right that the situation in Gaza is too dangerous, with Hamas' record of kidnapping journalists, but Hezbollah hasn't kidnapped any Western journalists for a long time. Of course, you never know when they'll change their minds about that..