Manna from heaven for Hamas

Allan Wolman

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words and aren’t Hamas milking the free PR tide streaming from all the leading newscasts and papers! The Palestinian discourse could not have found a better, more efficient and cheaper PR campaign than the images flashed across our screens and in newsprint.

What could possibly garner more sympathy (and hatred at the same time) than the TV cameras focusing on a little child swathed in bloodstained bandages lying in a hospital bed – an image screened every half hour for more than a day on CNN and other images of the dead and wounded continuously paraded in front of the cameras.

CNN’s Ben Weideman describes a “missile of some sort hits a hospital in Gaza”. He claims that he saw this with his “own eyes” – while cameras follow him everywhere and while we see footage of a scene inside that hospital (devoid of any damage), yet he saw an attack on a hospital with his” own eyes”, something his cameraman missed?

So, show us the proof Ben! Also much of the footage that we see could well be “stock footage” doctored from other conflicts in say Syria – who would be the wiser?

The wreckage of the tragic downing of Air Malaysia MH17 that killed almost 300 people including 80 children lay scattered across Ukrainian farm fields where most of the bodies have been decomposing in the sun.

Camera crews were on the scene almost from the time of the disaster and had a free hand to shoot whatever they wanted. We need to question why no dead bodies of these hapless victims ever made it to our screens or newspapers? Why not even a body ba  – after all this has been THE news story for days?

Could the reason be out of respect for the victims of this outrage? Could it be that the media is sensitive to the feelings of their loved ones? Could it be that there is a line in the sand that the press won’t cross?

There must surely be a reason why no bodies of this outrage, that had the world up in arms (were shown), but no shortage of dead Palestinians paraded in front of our ultra-sensitive press!

Perhaps the civilised world is responsive to and has a respect for the victims of MH17 -where life is sacrosanct. Death on the other hand is the currency that the Palestinians trade in and the world’s press is complicit in this trade.

Rosebank, Johannesburg