by davidrobertlewis -

Medialternatives War Newsroom Questionnaire

A journalist complains about your newspapers overly vigorous support of the War. What is the correct response?

a) Promise to crush and slaughter all resistance from the lower echelons until the seventh generation.

b) Harangue said journalist for not reading up on the business tactics of Atilla the Hun.

c) Fire without warning and dock pay with no option of redress thereby guaranteeing severe penalties for such action.

d) Publish defamatory reports accusing the journalist of being a sissy.

e) Send your horde of macho gunslinging war correspondents into battle, and then hope your skillful redefinition of War as a Peaceful yet somewhat Violent Undertaking, goes unnoticed by the public.

f) Promote journalist to OP-EDs while fending off criticism from the Pentagon.

g) Cosy up to the perpetrators of violence in the hope they will reward your company with advertising.

h) Deny everything and engage in rebuttals like: What journalist? There’s no such journalist.

by davidrobertlewis -

Gaza, the war against children

THIS is a war against children being conducted by adults on both sides of the conflict. Over the weekend, we heard of a BBC reporter in Gaza whose 11 month old baby child was killed by incoming IDF fire. A baby injured in Kiryat Malachi, where three people were killed after Palestinian militants fired rockets at the Israeli town, is one of many pictures of children wounded  in the conflict which continues to take its toll on infants.

The Middle East conflict is no longer a news story about conflicting national identities. It is an ongoing and tragic tale of infanticide and the psychological maiming of future generations who are no more responsible for the conflict, than today’s generation are responsible for the Second World War.

The brutality with which the Israeli propaganda machine is meeting the naked hatred of Hamas al-Qassam brigades who in turn ring out the now familiar chant of ‘Death to Israel” is really turning the war into an offense against the human spirit. Where is the humanity left on both sides, these brutes who see fit to sacrifice each others children for political gain as if there is some form of moral equivocation, my child for your child, my eyes for your eyes?

In South Africa, where images of children massacred by the apartheid state became common place, we often had cause to remark that an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. For all the slaughter, our Freedom Struggle never stooped to this level of brutality. The only legitimate targets were the state. Care was always taken to avoid civilian causalities.

We therefore need to stand firm in our commitment to peace for future generations by saying no to war and military aggression. No to missiles, rockets, drones, combat aircraft, tanks, collateral damage, siege, bomb vests, landmines, barbed wire and hatred.