Lack of context

The mainstream media, particularly wire services like the AP, do not report the news. They parrot it. Funny how they bend all over themselves to justify suicide bombings, “insurgencies,” and other Muslim violence, but take at face value the most ridiculous, non-contextual statements from so-called leaders of nations.

Keep in mind that in most daily newspapers’ “World News” sections, four or five paragraphs are all you get from the major stories. And look at the fourth paragraph in this AP piece, the latest on the Danish cartoon protests.

Cartoon Protests Deadly in Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – International peacekeepers clashed Tuesday with Afghans protesting drawings of the Prophet Muhammad, leaving three demonstrators dead and prompting NATO to send reinforcements to a remote northern city.

Senior Afghan officials said al-Qaida and the Taliban could be exploiting anger over the cartoons to incite violence, which spread to at least six cities in a second day of bloody unrest in Afghanistan.

Demonstrations rumbled on around the Muslim world, and the political repercussions deepened, with Iran suspending all trade and economic ties with Denmark, where the drawings were first published. The Danish prime minister called the protests a global crisis and appealed for calm.

In a new turn, a prominent Iranian newspaper, Hamshahri, invited artists to enter a Holocaust cartoon competition, saying it wanted to see if freedom of expression – the banner under which many Western publications reprinted the prophet drawings – also applied to Holocaust images.

The drawings – including one depicting the prophet wearing a turban shaped as a bomb – have touched a raw nerve among Muslims. Islam is interpreted to forbid any illustrations of Muhammad for fear they could lead to idolatry.

Notice how the AP explains why the cartoons are offensive to Muslims. They do not bother to explain a similarly important fact — the one that Jews had absolutely nothing to do with the publication of the cartoons. The fact that the Iranians plan to hold a Holocaust cartoon contest is utterly irrelevant to the issues at hand. But not to the AP, which will turn itself into pretzels trying to explain how the issues are similar.

They use the phrase “in a new turn” to describe this ridiculous notion. This is not a new turn to the story, it is an attempt by the Iranians to turn Muslim protests of the Western values of freedom of speech into something hateful about Jews. The fact that many European nations have laws against Holocaust denial is not hypocrisy; some of these same nations have laws against “defaming” a religion. This also ignores the context of exactly why European nations — the nations that conducted the Holocaust — have laws against Holocaust denial. It is because these nations saw firsthand the destruction of European Jewry — were, in fact, a willing part of it — and laws were enacted to prevent it from happening again.

This is the context that the AP ignores, as well as the simple fact that cartoons about the Holocaust and cartoons showing Mohammed are two completely different issues. Look how the Islamists conflate the two: They pretend to raise the Holocaust to the level of religion (in spite of the fact that they insist it never happened), and if Western newspapers don’t reprint the cartoons, it doesn’t matter — the Islamists will claim that there is no free speech, only anti-Muslim sentiment, and the media will parrot their claims without context.

That the depiction of Mohammed, which is proscribed in Islam, has nothing to do with the publishing, or refusal to publish, anti-Semitic cartoons, will not even enter the debate. (And we know the cartoons will be full of Jew-hatred; the entire Muslim world is filled to the brim with it.) I challenge the Iranians to find me a religion which proscribes portraying Jews in a negative fashion, or doubting the Holocaust.

Also overlooked is the fact that there is no free press in Iran, and so this “prominent Iranian newspaper” is marching under the orders of Iran’s mullahcracy, which has already stated that the publication of the Danish cartoons is a “conspiracy by Zionists who were angry because of the victory of Hamas.”

As Lynn B. pointed out in the comments here, the cartoons were published months before Hamas won the elections.

You would think the AP fact-checker might have caught that little issue. Unless, of course, the Muslim “protests” were planned months ago, as Walid Phares argues.

Most of the rest of the article deals with the “protests” in Afghanistan, though I would call protesters armed with automatic rifles, well, attackers. And 2,000 people converging on an army base, the leaders of whom had rifles and grenades, an attack, not a protest. But the AP, as the saying is, couldn’t find its own ass with both hands. Not even if you gave the editors a map.

And they wonder why I no longer trust anything I read in the mainstream media. Funny how sure I am that most newspapers will happily print the Holocaust cartoons, even as they continue to insist they will not offend Muslims by publishing the Mohammed cartoons.

I do believe it’s time to use up some bandwidth and publish the cartoons myself.

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