The peaceful people of Gaza, who got what they wanted two years ago—all “settlers” out of Gaza, Palestinian self-rule, and Israeli soldiers out of the Gaza Strip—have fired over 2,000 rockets into Israel in 2007. We can make it a new slogan: 2007 in 2007!
Tel Aviv/Gaza – Palestinian militants have fired over 2000 rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the year, an Israeli spokeswoman said Tuesday.
Only on Tuesday militants fired a total of 21 homemade Qassam rockets and mortars into Israeli territory, the spokeswoman said.
It looks like the Israelis are finally starting to try to fight back in the press. The AP has picked up the information as well:
This year, Gazan militants have fired 2,000 rockets and mortars, the army said. The rockets have killed a total of 12 people in recent years and cause widespread panic in southern Israeli border towns.
But it’s not high enough up in the article (in the first three to five paragraphs) to make it into your local paper’s “World News” section. And of course, it’s followed by this caveat:
Israel blames Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza, for allowing the attacks, even though the group has not been directly involved in most of the rocket launchings.
By the way, once again, please note that Israeli spokespeople are almost never identified. The first article, from Deutsche Presse-Agentur, the German version of AP, does not identify any Israeli spokespeople.
Now, we do know that the wire services can count. The AP has kept a running tally of the deaths of American military personnel in Iraq, as well as a tally of the worst suicide bomb attacks, a rough count of the Iraqi death toll, and of course, the number of Palestinians killed.
The army confirmed the strike, saying the militants were preparing to fire mortar shells toward southern Israel.
The attack brings to about 30 the number of militants that Israel has killed in the past 10 days.
And yet, the AP cannot manage to count the number of rockets and mortars that rain down on Israel in a near-daily basis, even though plain, ordinary bloggers can. Nor does the AP find the 2,000 rockets fired into Israel significant enough to merit a story of its own.
But they will absolutely let us know how many Palestinians the IDF killed, often without even using the weasel-worded “militant” modifier.
What anti-Israel media bias?