"Israel-Hamas war" - Nonsense

In an article on December 20, 2014, CBC refers to what they call the "Israel-Hamas war" to name the violent conflict in Israel/Palestine in the summer of 2014.

If this is not a propagandist misuse of language, I don't know what is.

First of all, if it had been a conflict between political parties, it could have been named the "Likud-Hamas war". But saying it was a conflict between a state "Israel" on one side, and a political entity "Hamas" on the other, is intentionally misleading. THE FACT is that it was a conflict between the state of Israel and the captive state of Palestine, and in reality, between the people of Israel and the people of Palestine. THE FACT is that Israel attacked and butchered the PEOPLE OF PALESTINE, not Hamas.

Secondly, the use of the word "war" is intentionally misleading, unless it is being used euphemistically like in the "war on drugs", which is not the case here. The situation was far too unbalanced to call it a war. It was a campaign of suppression against an occupied territory. Perhaps it can be called a "war" when you first occupy a place, but afterwards, when you just try to keep the occupied people in their submission, it is not called a war anymore. It can be called a "pacification", or a "repression" or a "subjugation" campaign. It is not a war, especially when the captive people are virtually helpless.

This was a caption to a photograph in the article:

The Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip in the summer left tens of thousands of people homeless. 

Here is a paragraph from the article:

Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls Gaza, fought a 50-day war this summer. In that war, Hamas launched thousands of rockets and mortars toward Israel, which carried out an aerial campaign and a ground invasion.

Note how the whole passage seeks to hide the inequality and brutality of what Israel did in Gaza, by calling the mass bombing of a tiny enclave of captive people "an aerial campaign". How sweet. But the CBC did not fail to mention the "thousands of rockets" (almost 100% ineffective), launched against Israel. Certainly this could have been balanced by noting the "tens of thousands" of effective munitions which were rained on Gaza.

It is simply amazing to me that CBC can be so brazenly and dishonestly protective of Israel and yet, when this is pointed out to the CBC Ombudsman, she cannot see it.

But I have seen this "cognitive dissonance" phenomenon so many times before. Individuals can be liberal, and intelligent, and clear-sighted about dozens of distant issues, but when something comes close to home, they can do a complete back flip and become totally illiberal and blind. If a cherished belief is challenged, they literally cannot see or believe any evidence to the contrary, not matter how conclusive.

This has certainly been the case with the majority of North American Jewish people. Many of them have been in the forefront of battles for human rights, for peace, and against racism. Jewish people were prominent in the Black Liberation movement; in anti-racist struggles; in the Labour Movement for worker's rights; in the Feminist Movement; and in the ant-war movements at the time of Vietnam. However these same liberal, progressive people literally cannot see the injustices done to Palestinians, and the racism, war crimes and human rights violations of Israel. They badly want to believe that Jews are the good guys; that Jews can only be victims, never victimizers, so they see only what they want to see and believe only what they want to believe. This is not unique to Jewish people. I have recently seen this same phenomenon in my Ukrainian friends who have been carried away from their long-held liberal principles by recent events in that country.

When my complaint to the CBC Ombudsman was handled by two individuals only, both of whom were Jewish, I tried to point out that perhaps a more neutral party (ie. someone not subject to this cognitive dissonance phenomenon) should be allowed to examine my complaint. In typical Zionist fashion, I was accused of being an anti-Semite for even suggesting this.

In fact, when I suggested that the CBC Ombudsman's failure to handle my complaint fairly was possibly based on this cognitive dissonance phenomenon, I was actually being very generous. I was suggesting that they were not aware of how unfair they were being.

But actually there could be a more sinister reason for the way they blew off my complaint, and that is that they knew exactly what they were doing. That they were consciously working for Israel, and they intend to mislead Canadians as part of an effort to protect Israel. I did not, and would not, declare that such sinister and unethical motives were behind the unfair handling of my complaint by the Ombudsman, but when I see on a daily and ongoing basis how imbalanced CBC reporting is on the Israel/Palestine issue, I have to keep asking myself:

CBC, who are you working for?