Israel is Under Attack

As a Jewish/Israeli blogger, I feel compelled to add my voice to the frantic pleas of the Jewish blogosphere:

Don’t listen to them! Here’s what’s really going on!

By “them,” I am referring to the media, everyone from mainstream CNN and New York Times to pro-Palestinian tweeters.

By “what’s going on,” I am referring to the news that Israel is once again under rocket attack from Palestinians in Gaza. More than 200 have been fired since Saturday, striking southern Israel, including the cities of Ashdod, Ashkelon, Sderot and reaching as far as Gedera and Beer Sheva.

Families are running for cover in their sealed rooms, sometimes with only a few seconds warning. Schools in the region are closed, so kids are home all day, and that means literallyhome. No parent is taking their kid to the park or running errands when rockets are exploding overhead.

Yet, wearingly, the media outside of Israel continues to document Israel’s “aggression” while dutifully ignoring the provocation. Headlines announcing Israel’s airstrikes into Gaza, the number of “militants” (terrorists, but you know, tomato, tomahto) killed and pictures of funerals in Gaza scream at us from newspapers and websites, while there is little or no mention of the unending rocket barrage slamming Israel. (And there is certainly no mention of how the Israeli airstrikes are carefully targeted to hit known rocket launching sites, sparing civilian areas, while the Gaza rockets are targeted to simply maim, kill or destroy whatever they can.)

And as if shady semantics weren’t bad enough, some creative tweeters posted outright lies. A picture of a little Palestinian girl covered in blood, with the caption lamenting her death at the hands of the Israeli Air Force, went viral.

Then the truth came out. Okay, it is, sadly, a picture of a fatally injured girl. But her death was not due to an Israeli airstrike. It happened (a few years ago) when she fell off a swing (and no, she was not being pushed off the swing by an Israeli soldier, either).

Of course, while the sensationalistic picture sped through the blogosphere at the speed of a click, becoming the top tweet for #Gaza, the truth was shared at a more sluggish pace. The Israel Defense Force blog posted the true story, and Reuters even published an apology for the mistaken caption. But how many people will seek the truth? Or care, if they find it?

Unfortunately, the supersonic speed at which bald-faced lies can be disseminated is frightening. When what matters is not fact-checking but how quickly can you post, share and tweet, things like “truth” don’t just get lost in the shuffle, they are downright trampled.

But the good men and women of the Jewish and Israeli blogosphere are out there in full force, publishing the truth, explaining that the “Israeli aggression” is not unprovoked hostility, but a besieged country protecting its people at all costs.

So I am here, trying to do my part. If your main news source is coming from CNN: “Israeli Airstrikes Hits Gaza for the Fourth Day” or the New York Times: “Israeli Airstrikes Kill Militants in Gaza” or the BBC: “New Israeli Airstrikes Leave 4 Dead” (Bad Israelis! Bad! Bad!), then you need to get some new news sources.

Here’s just a small list of English websites that carry straight news from inside Israel—read them and share them with friends, families, coworkers. We can’t fight rocket fire (that’s the job of the Iron Dome) but we can fight blatantly biased, slanted, one-sided news coverage
by shouting the truth from the Twittertops.

Israel Defense Force blog

Ynet

Times of Israel