Radical Islam Is In Da House, Big Time

This, all smiles in the picture above, is Ingrid Mattson. Dear Ingrid is such a BFF with the Obamas, that she gets to speak at new US president’s inaugural prayer service.
One thing we forgot to mention is that Mattson, is the president of the Islamic Society of North America- a Muslim organization which federal prosecutors in the United States say has ties to Hamas.

But hey, don’t let the facts confuse you, you didn’t make this mistake during the elections, why start now, right?
And by the way, I did not hear a word about this issue in the media (With the exception of Fox news of-course…) They are too busy with the Inauguration… Again those facts… Who has time for this now….

Really?? Seriously?? Waltzes with Terrorists??

Welcome to this week’s feature of “Really?? Seriously??” brought to you by yours truly. This week we explore the way in which news on the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas is being broadcast by a few major news channels.

The following is not an epiphany.

It occurred to me this morning that the same media centers who fault Israel for not engaging in a peaceful 2-way dialogue with Hamas are not exactly innocent of presenting their audiences with an entirely objective, impartial view on the conflict and that in fact their view lends itself to continuing resentment and animosity towards Israelis, perpetuating the cycle of war. Is the news to blame for what’s going on? Most likely, not. However, their interpretation of critical events contributes to the collective consciousness of the mass public.

Case-in-point: When my sister watched the local news this past week as they broadcast Palestinians protesting war crimes, you wouldn’t know that across the street (and had the cameraman panned the camera or the clip not gotten cut in production), there were Jewish protesters also reacting to what’s going on. The same type of occurrence happened on my local news and I happen to know that there was a Jewish protest because my sister-in-law was there.

The point is is that the story that’s getting portrayed on the news is one that paints a classic good vs. evil picture of what’s going on in the Middle East. There’s no attempt at digging deeper - just a reinforcement of the superficial platitudes that seem to speak to people because as long as someone else is force-feeding them a line like, “60 Palestinians for every 1 Israeli” which everyone from my hairdresser to my husband got fed this week, then why strain our brains?

Don’t worry about this post ending on too much of a didactic note. I’m getting to the headlines that speak volumes to substantiate the concerns I’ve outlined above. I’ll let you decide after the jump if these headlines aren’t without their loaded, emotional persuasion.

More after the jump… Read More…