Let’s do a quick comparison of AP’s number-crunching.
Thousands Mourn Rabin, 10 Years Later
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) – Tens of thousands of Israelis packed the Tel Aviv square where Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated 10 years ago to mourn the former prime minister and express hope that his memory would spur new peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.[…] Many mourners had been here 10 years earlier, watching Rabin speak in the square that now carries his name. Organizers said 200,000 people attended the rally on Saturday – two days before the anniversary of Rabin’s death on the Jewish calendar.
Thousands Attend Arafat Memorial in Gaza
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip Nov 11, 2005 — Several thousand people joined a rally of the ruling Fatah movement on Thursday to mark the first anniversary of the death of longtime Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Because, of course, we must have the numerical moral equivalence, even though Arafat’s memorial service drew fewer than 2,000 people, and, well, he was a mass-murdering Jew-killer who made the suicide bomb attack what it is today. Nobody showed up? Doesn’t matter, we’ll just pretend nobody showed up to mourn Rabin. So yeah, let’s give the anniversary of Arafat’s death from AIDS the same prominence as the anniversary of the murder of a man who truly tried to create peace between Israelis and Arabs.
And just for kicks and giggles, Reuters manages to blame Israel for everything in its article.
“Had Rabin not been killed, there would be peace today and there would never have been any uprising,” said Mordechai Yarkoni, 58.
But that isn’t enough for Reuters. There’s still more:
The demonstration marked a vast contrast to the modest memorials Palestinians held in Gaza and the West Bank city of Ramallah this week to mark the first anniversary of the death of Arafat, which were not attended by top foreign leaders.
Israel and the United States accused Arafat, who died from unknown causes in a French hospital in November 2004, of fomenting violence, which he had always denied.
Oh, well, there you have it. He denied fomenting violence, therefore, he did not do it. All those suicide bombers were products of someone else.
Have I mentioned lately how much I hate the media?
Pingback: Drawing The Line » Blog Archive » Darwin or Intelligent Design?
Reuters had a story by Arafat-whore Wafa Amr. Not even worth mocking.
The world needs a button to push that, when some critical mass is reached, will cause the underwear of some editor to burst into flames.
Yarkoni is wrong. Had Rabin lived and remained PM it would not have made a whit of difference to the eventual outbreak of the Oslo War. Arafat planned the Oslo Agreement, and told Edward Said this, only as a Treaty of Hudabiya, a temporary truce to gain increased power for the PLO until, at a time of its own choosing, it could once again unleash war against Israel. That is why the terrorism continued, increasing in strength, throughout the period 1994-2000. That is why Arafat, faced with the choice of making peace on generaous terms, doing nothing, or unleashing the Oslo War, chose the latter in response to Barak’s offer. All the appeasement changed nothing, and would have changed nothing even if Rabin had been doing it. The only possible change would have been if Rabin had realized the futility of the whole thing and cut off the PA, but I doubt he would have been able to do that.
According to IMRA,
Which is still a lot more than 2,000, but I think Reuters’ lead paragraph was just going by the police estimates.
Pingback: Soccer Dad