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Opinion — Terrorists rely on propaganda
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By Leo Adler, The Suburban
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| Hassan Nasrallah’s Hezbollah has no regard for children. |
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The headlines over the past month have been dominated with pictures and words depicting the plight of babies and other children. One does not have to be a public relations guru to know that such photos attract immediate attention and sympathy.
Terrorist groups, knowing of the West’s sensitivities towards children, are quick to exploit any tragedies by exhibiting bodies (witness the photo-ops staged by Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza of “mass funerals”).
On the other hand, the recruitment and training of children and the glorification of suicide bombings in schools, mosques and public forums by these and other Islamist terrorist organizations, goes largely unreported or, even worse, ignored by many governments, NGOs, social agencies and others supposedly dedicated to protecting children.
A perfect example of how the “PR Spin” goes into high gear is the recent call by two of the three MPs (Liberal, NDP, Bloc) who went to Lebanon on a “fact-finding” tour and are now calling upon Canada to rescind its designation of Hezbollah as a terrorist group.
This, despite the terrorists’ well-documented (and self-admitted) placing of rocket-launchers, missiles, storage facilities, ammunition and bunkers in the midst of civilian homes and civilian facilities, thereby making civilian deaths unavoidable (or as Prof. Alan Dershowitz described it: “Islamist terrorists have mastered the harsh arithmetic of pain...Palestinian casualties play in their favour and Israeli casualties play in their favour.”) Once again there is virtually no outcry from those whose mission it is to save the lives of civilians, nor from the MPs travelling in Lebanon.
The Israelis, not being prepared to use their grief over the deaths of their children as a propaganda tool, have therefore come to be tarred as “baby-killers” despite their best efforts to prevent the needless killing of all civilians of all ages. Indeed, Israel’s attitude of respecting the dead has boomeranged against them, as “out of sight, out of mind” has come to mean that many non-Israelis are unaware of the total extent of the casualties suffered by Israelis of all faiths and backgrounds.
Perhaps the most accurate depiction of the difference in attitudes between the terrorists and the Israelis is in a cartoon which depicts a terrorist located behind a baby carriage, shooting at an Israeli soldier who is positioned in front of a baby carriage.
However, lest there be anyone who still believes that the callous, cold, manipulative, calculating abuse of children is not part of a world-wide terrorist philosophy, then the latest news item should dispel any such delusions. I refer to the recent Globe and Mail report that “A husband-and-wife team of suicide bombers allegedly planned to sacrifice their own baby by hiding liquid explosives in the infant’s milk and blowing up a passenger plane...”
It should now be clear to all (except those MPs that blithely accept the propaganda served up to them in “tours” of Lebanon) that Islamist terrorists are motivated to commit mass murder and are absolutely not above sacrificing themselves and/or their children and babies to achieve their goal.
In their desire to export their battle around the world, these terrorists have stooped to tactics that were previously reserved for maniacs and madmen and authors of “snuff pornography.”
Will all of us in the West now recognize that Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and the multitude of other similar terrorist groups have absolutely no regard for the lives of youngsters and that even babies are, to them, nothing more than artillery shells?
For the sake of our children, I hope so.
Leo Adler is director of National Affairs of the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies in Toronto. |
2006-08-23 09:13:32
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