Does Ed O’Loughlin have way too much time on his hands or what? Wasn’t he supposed to have left his post in the Middle East and gone somewhere else where he could report on genuine issues of global importance? Maybe he should spend some quality time in Darfur, where people keep getting murdered while the world looks on (and journalists have no opportunity to speak out)?
His latest piece scrapes the barrel of journalistic integrity, with the provocative headline “Israel muzzles voice of peace“. From the headline, and indeed from the article itself, you would get the impression that the Israeli government was running a program of repressing organisations that promoted peace and reconciliation with the Palestinians.
In fact, this is far from the case. The pacifist organisation Peace Now (Shalom Achshav) recently celebrated its 30th anniversary. Strangely, Ed chose not to report on that. He does regularly report on the activities of other “human rights advocate” organisations like B’Tselem, who, like Ed, seem to spend all of their time searching for alleged human rights abuses committed by Israel.
However, just a few kilometers away in the West Bank and Gaza, repression of the population occurs regularly as a matter of government policy, and remains unreported. Corrupt “governments” in both regions have embezzled the millions of dollars poured in by countries all over the world supporting Palestinian “self-determination” and directed them to their own personal interests instead of building infrastructure and basic services for their citizens.
Israel is not the one muzzling peace. The real muzzling going on is the repression of demonstrations against corruption with the muzzle of a gun. The real muzzling is the continued selective reporting by Ed O’Loughlin that paints whatever picture he wants. Any free thinking individual who relies on more than just The Age to find out what is going on in the Middle East can get a much better and more balanced idea of what is really going on.
Well said.