Ed O’Loughlin invariably includes some Palestinian propaganda into his supposedly objective reports. Today (‘Reshuffle to give Arafat more power’ 29/9) is no exception.
1) “Last Friday Mr Sharon said he was determined to ‘remove’ his elected Palestinian counterpart even at the cost of violence.” Suddenly Arafat is an elected Prime Minister?
I understood that Arafat’s title is Chairman, not President, Prime Minister or Sultan. I also recall that aside from gross irregularities in the original Palestinian vote in 1996 (a few Palestinian news editors who raised the issue have disappeared from the scene after casting such aspersions), his term ended in 1999.
At that time, he decided that elections were no longer necessary as his people were like children to him and a father is not subject to the vote of his children. At least Saddam went through the fiction of going to the people.
2) “There was more violence over the weekend when a 30-year-old man and a seven-month-old girl were killed by a Palestinian gunman who infiltrated a Jewish settlement in the West Bank on Friday night and opened fire on a party celebrating the Jewish New Year. Israeli troops at the settlement shot him dead.”
The Jerusalem Post adds a little ‘colour’ to the incident. Does everyone remember the ‘Goodwill’ gesture by Israel to release Palestinians who had not actually committed any terrorist acts on the proviso that they promise to desist in the future? Guess where this fellow who targeted a religious family meal spent the past year? In prison, until he was recently released after promising to be a good boy.
Underlines the value of agreements, eh?
Obviously that bit of information was insufficiently important to be included in an article.
