This morning I came found an article screaming out at me from Yahoo News with a headline that proclaimed that the UN had denounced Israel's destruction of a Palestinian village. When I read the article, I learned that Israeli police had evicted residents from seven homes built on some land near the Jordan River in the West Bank. The evictions came after court proceedings in which the judge ruled that the homes had been illegally built without the required building permits and ordered them demolished. The group that built the homes had the right to oppose the demolition order in the court proceedings, but lost. For Yahoo News, however, removal of illegally constructed buildings was the destruction of a Palestinian village. So are the editors brain dead?
Then there is the story of Scarlett Johansson and Soda Stream. For those of you who may have missed it, ScarJo is appearing in an ad for Soda Stream during the Super Bowl. In fact, she has become a celebrity spokesperson for the maker of carbonation machines. For nearly a decade, Johansson has also been a spokesperson for Oxfam and has raised millions for that organization. Nevertheless, Oxfam denounced Johansson for helping to keep Palestinians in "poverty" and servitude. If you wonder how a job selling soda machines did that, let me explain. Soda Stream is an Israeli company that has fifteen factories located around the world. One of those plants is in an eastern part of Jerusalem, one of those neighborhoods that get called "settlements" even though they are really just neighborhoods of Jerusalem. The plant employs 750 people of whom 250 are Israelis and 500 are Palestinians. That's all, nothing more! So providing 500 jobs for Palestinians is keeping them in "poverty". Providing 500 Palestinian families with an income on which to base their lives is keeping them in "servitude".
The truth is that Oxfam has no idea what it is talking about. Some of the workers at the Soda Stream plant were interviewed and they said that they opposed what Oxfam had said. The workers said that they had much better jobs than they had held before the plant was built, and they were thankful for those jobs. But let's go back to Yahoo News which is the focus of this post. The yahoos at Yahoo News actually printed articles that denounced ScarJo for acting as a spokesperson for Soda Stream. Once again, I ask: are the editors at Yahoo News brain dead?
Finally, we have another story of terrible persecution of Palestinians. This time those doing the persecution are Moslems, the Shiite Moslems of the Assad forces in Syria and their Iranian allies. This time, the issue is not seven illegal building torn down after court proceedings. This time, the issue is the intentional mass starvation of 18,000 Palestinians at the Yarmouk Camp in Damascus Syria. The siege of Yarmouk whose resident, by the way, are not fighting in the civil war, has been going on for many months. The death toll from starvation alone has now gotten to over 100. Do you know how many times Yahoo News has mentioned this atrocity in articles during that time? My research shows the answer is three times. There were at least 20 articles about how ScarJo contributed to the poverty of Palestinians by working for a company that gave jobs to 500 Palestinians. There were multiple articles about the supposed destruction of a Palestinian village which was actually tearing down seven illegal buildings after court proceedings. But when it comes to a war crime like the intentional starvation of nearly 20,000 people, we got three articles in six months. Without a doubt, the editors at Yahoo News are hypocrites who care about Palestinians when they can blame Israelis but who are afraid to mention intentional slow killing of the same Palestinians when the perpetrators are Syrian and Iranian Moslems.
Then there is the story of Scarlett Johansson and Soda Stream. For those of you who may have missed it, ScarJo is appearing in an ad for Soda Stream during the Super Bowl. In fact, she has become a celebrity spokesperson for the maker of carbonation machines. For nearly a decade, Johansson has also been a spokesperson for Oxfam and has raised millions for that organization. Nevertheless, Oxfam denounced Johansson for helping to keep Palestinians in "poverty" and servitude. If you wonder how a job selling soda machines did that, let me explain. Soda Stream is an Israeli company that has fifteen factories located around the world. One of those plants is in an eastern part of Jerusalem, one of those neighborhoods that get called "settlements" even though they are really just neighborhoods of Jerusalem. The plant employs 750 people of whom 250 are Israelis and 500 are Palestinians. That's all, nothing more! So providing 500 jobs for Palestinians is keeping them in "poverty". Providing 500 Palestinian families with an income on which to base their lives is keeping them in "servitude".
The truth is that Oxfam has no idea what it is talking about. Some of the workers at the Soda Stream plant were interviewed and they said that they opposed what Oxfam had said. The workers said that they had much better jobs than they had held before the plant was built, and they were thankful for those jobs. But let's go back to Yahoo News which is the focus of this post. The yahoos at Yahoo News actually printed articles that denounced ScarJo for acting as a spokesperson for Soda Stream. Once again, I ask: are the editors at Yahoo News brain dead?
Finally, we have another story of terrible persecution of Palestinians. This time those doing the persecution are Moslems, the Shiite Moslems of the Assad forces in Syria and their Iranian allies. This time, the issue is not seven illegal building torn down after court proceedings. This time, the issue is the intentional mass starvation of 18,000 Palestinians at the Yarmouk Camp in Damascus Syria. The siege of Yarmouk whose resident, by the way, are not fighting in the civil war, has been going on for many months. The death toll from starvation alone has now gotten to over 100. Do you know how many times Yahoo News has mentioned this atrocity in articles during that time? My research shows the answer is three times. There were at least 20 articles about how ScarJo contributed to the poverty of Palestinians by working for a company that gave jobs to 500 Palestinians. There were multiple articles about the supposed destruction of a Palestinian village which was actually tearing down seven illegal buildings after court proceedings. But when it comes to a war crime like the intentional starvation of nearly 20,000 people, we got three articles in six months. Without a doubt, the editors at Yahoo News are hypocrites who care about Palestinians when they can blame Israelis but who are afraid to mention intentional slow killing of the same Palestinians when the perpetrators are Syrian and Iranian Moslems.
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