The Baltimore Sun: A Zionist Shill?

On Aug. 10, 2003, "The Baltimore Sun," the only daily in town, published an unsigned editorial (I’m not making this up) entitled, "Sharon’s Peacemaking." It labeled the architect of the 1982 serial bombing of Beirut, Lebanon; the 1982 Sabra and Shatila Massacres; and of the IDF’s rampage at Jenin, in 2001, "a willing warrior and reluctant peacemaker!"

Meanwhile, "peacemaker" Sharon, on Aug. 12, threatened to again attack Lebanon, (and Syria, too, for good measure), and to launch a preemptive raid against Iran, in order to destroy its alleged Nuke facilities.

Since Sharon became Israel’s Prime Minister, on March 7, 2001, the Israelis have killed over 2,000 Palestinians, which includes about 400 children (Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group). During this same period, they have also "targeted" for assassination, over 100 Palestinians.

When the latter kind of homicidal activity was carried out in Central America by government-sanctioned gangs, the practice was roundly condemned. The "Sun" called it "running a death squad." However, the "Sun" never uses that term of opprobrium in describing Sharon’s terrorist methods. I wonder, why?

Sharon’s extreme provocations make some ponder. Is he deliberately stirring up trouble with other Arab states to divert U.S. attention away from: The fading "Roadmap?" His defiant building of the Apartheid Wall? And/or the fact that Israel has done little or nothing to "normalize" conditions on the ground for the Palestinians? Take your pick!

On Aug. 13, 2003, "The Baltimore Sun" revealed a second blow to its haughty motto that it delivers, "Light for All." There was a shocking photo on its front page, showing an Israeli woman. She was reclining, in a stressed out state, on an ambulance stretcher, with her infant child by her side.

The woman had been wounded, on Aug. 12, in a suicide blast at a mall, in the town of Rosh Haayin, near Tel Aviv. It was an AP photo. It naturally generated sympathy for the woman, her child, and also for the Israelis, the occupying power in that ongoing deadly conflict between the indigenous Palestinian people and their Israeli colonizers.

Question: Where are the photos on the front page of the LIght-for-All "Baltimore Sun" of the Palestinian victims of state-sponsored Israeli terrorism? Why haven’t we ever seen any of them in that place?

Author Liz Curtis revealed in "Ireland and the Propaganda War," (1984, Pluto Press), how the UK’s propaganda machine cleverly distorted, censored and/or misled the British public about what was really happening in the British occupied north of Ireland. Curtis put it this way, "We hear of bombs in Strabane, of buses burnt in Belfast. But what do we ever hear about the experiences, feelings and hopes of the Irish people."

Curtis’ argument could be made today about the Palestinians living under the brutal Israeli yoke. The Zionist Propaganda Machine, like the British one, is distorting the truth about what is occurring in the Occupied Territories. They do this, in their media outlets, by falsely stereotyping the Palestinians as terrorists and the Israelis as their victims. (See Kevin MacDonald’s "Culture of Critique" for details on the awesome power, in the U.S., of a clique of Media Moguls, who are rabidly pro-Israel.)

If "The Baltimore Sun" reports or editorializes on the Middle East news, in a consistently biased manner that unfairly favors the Israeli position, then it, too, risks being accused of shilling for the Zionists. Few will forget how, in an editorial on Nov. 13, 2002, the "Sun" mocked the Baltimore City Council for holding hearings opposing the war in Iraq.

Since 1948, there have been hundreds of thousands of Palestinian victims of the Israelis (Palestineremembered.com). Where are the photos of the Palestinians victims of the IDF’s rampage at Jenin? Where are the photos of the Palestinians, who have been tortured by the Israelis? Where are the photos of Israel’s detention camps? Where are the photos of the Israeli bulldozer destroying the homes of innocent Palestinians? Why aren’t those kinds of photos ever seen on the "Sun’s" front page?

For instance, when the Israelis murdered, via an IDF bulldozer, the American peace activist, Rachel Corrie, on March 16, 2003, in Rafah, a refugee camp, in Gaza, no photo of the victim appeared in the "Sun." Why? Aren’t American and Palestinian victims of Israeli terror equal to the same kind of front page coverage as Israeli victims of terrorism? Is one victim less human than the other? Why the disparate treatment?

The "Sun’s" cited tendency to favor Israel is the nub of an ongoing problem. Let’s call it, "The Propaganda War." The Israelis are winning that war in Baltimore, and throughout the U.S. And, the "Baltimore Sun," among other print media outlets, is contributing to that problem.

In any event, the U.S. taxpayers are subsidizing Israel’s belligerence. Try $3 trillion, since 1948! It’s time for the "Baltimore Sun" to give its readers the Middle East news straight, without any pro Zionist slant.

And, finally: If Sharon is a "peacemaker," as the "Sun" claims, than the odious Neocon Richard Perle, is St. Francis of Assisi!