Terrorists, Militants & Media Oh My...& An Important House Vote – October 17th, 2023
- Do Jewish Lives Matter? If anyone has had any doubts about whether institutionalized bias and bigotry directed at Jewish people still prevalently exists, they need look no further than the evolution of news coverage of over the past week and treatment of the subject by the largest online media platform most recently. Largely gone from most news media accounts of the unfolding events are references to Hamas as terrorists, which they’ve not only been since two Saturday’s ago when they carried out the largest and most heinous attacks we’ve seen against Jews since the Holocaust, but actually 1997 when the United States first designated them as a terrorist organization. At most, with most news outlets you’ll hear references to Hamas “militants” in recent days. News organizations have largely made these editorial decisions behind closed doors, conveying this to their news staff and expecting compliance within their ranks. The impact is a chilling effect for reporters who dare use the “T” word at these establishments. While entirely off base, one news outlet at least came public with their justification for this characterization – the BBC. As the World Affairs Editor has stated: Terrorism is a loaded word, which people use about an outfit they disapprove of morally. It's simply not the BBC's job to tell people who to support and who to condemn - who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. Now, principally in journalism this is true. Objective journalism doesn’t pick winners and losers or tell people how they should think about a story. The difference in this instance that makes the overt BBC and the covert cowards in most other news organizations entirely wrong is that facts and language matter. The definition of International terrorism is this: Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups who are inspired by, or associated with, designated foreign terrorist organizations or nations (state-sponsored). Can we all agree that the burning, decapitating, raping, shooting and torturing of masses of people qualifies as a violent, criminal act? Ok, good. Then, by definition, not opinion, that makes those involved in carrying out those atrocities terrorists. So, what about Hamas itself? Well, it just so happens to entirely meet the second part of the definition as it’s been a designated terrorist organization since October 8th of 1997. Now, what’s the definition of militant? It’s one that’s engaged in warfare or combat. Now, let me ask you. Is the surprise ambush of teenagers at a music festival warfare or combat? Is the torture and murder of innocent families in their homes warfare or combat? And so the point is this. Every news reporter who’s been forced by their news organization to call Hamas and its terrorist thugs “militants” instead of “terrorists” is demonstrably engaged in false reporting. Every news organization forcing this throughout its ranks has ordered that their news organizations lie about what it is that they are covering. This isn’t a game of semantics or even political correctness. As always there are two sides to stories and one side to facts. The facts are clear. Hamas is a terrorist organization. Period. Its members are terrorists, period. They are not militants. Period. And when news organizations go out of their way to mislead and falsely report to protect the interests of Islamic terrorists with a stated goal of “destroying Israel”, one might wonder – do Jewish lives matter to these organizations? And speaking of media companies and questionable characterizations...
- Savages. While the Hamas terrorists don’t meet the definition of militants, they do meet the definition of savages...which is a brutal or vicious person. So, when Florida’s Senior Senator Marco Rubio posts a YouTube video clip entitled: Western ideals Won’t Work on savage terrorist groups...one wouldn’t expect that it would be removed due to a violation of YouTube’s “hate speech policy”...but it was. Quoting YouTube’s policy: Content that incites hatred against individuals or groups based on their protected group status isn’t allowed on YouTube. And it was at that point, reading that definition, that it dawned on me. Islamic Terrorists are evidently in a “protected group status”. That explains why Rubio’s video was removed. It explains why most news organizations in this country and around the world are going out of their way to falsely characterize the Islamic terrorists as something less severe that they’re not. And that takes me to this thought. Getting away from the false news reporting of most established news organizations can be hard to avoid but entirely possible to achieve. Getting away from Google is hard. 81% of Americans use Gmail for email. 79% watch YouTube videos. 52% browse with Chrome. 43% have an Android powered mobile device. In other words, most Americans use Google for most of what they do online. And while services change, and habits change, the only change that’s happened over the past twenty or, so years are ever more Americans migrating in the direction of Google’s products and services. As I’ve said many times, I don’t do boycotts, I don’t advocate for boycotts, but I do believe in voting with one’s wallet. Or in the case of Google’s products and services, one’s wallet and online service habits. When a Florida Senator can’t call terrorists savages without be deplatformed – Google's got a problem and it’s not one I’m interested in contributing to.
- House vote. It’s been two weeks and two different Republican nominees, since former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted. Which means it’s been two weeks since the House of Representatives was active. Today we’re told there will be a floor vote for Speaker of House. How that vote goes is very much in question. Jim Jordan is the most recent GOP nominee but with a level of pledged support in conference originally that has left him well short of the majority. And aside from normal House business, time is now of the essence. The Senate will soon have their Israel aid package ready to go, but if the House doesn’t have a speaker there’s no vote which that’ll take place and no US aid that could go. And aside from the significant humanitarian considerations of that aid, there would likely begin to be enormous political repercussions from the House not even being functional enough to consider Israeli aid. That prospect makes today’s House vote an especially important one – for Jim Jordan personally and for House Republicans politically. And if the vote (or votes?) goes south for Jim Jordan there have been rumblings of moderate Republicans cutting deals with Democrats which could create the conditions for what I warned about in the beginning. And two South Florida House Reps are central to the potential outcome as well. Carlos Gimenez has said he intends to vote for Kevin McCarthy on the floor today. Mario Diaz Balart stated he’ll vote for Steve Scalise. How they do decide to vote, could determine not only who’s Speaker of the House, but potentially even the political party of the next Speaker of the House.