Thursday, April 18, 2002

Is this propaganda?
The European press doesn't seem to have much good to say about Ariel Sharon. But this, from the UK Telegraph, gives me pause:

EARLY on Friday morning, Colin Powell sat down to breakfast with Ariel Sharon in the cavernous reception room at the Israeli prime minister's Jerusalem residence.
As they surveyed the spread of freshly baked bread, olives, salad, fruit and sardines - Sharon's favourite - the two former military men chatted.
Then out of the blue, as Mr Powell tucked in, Mr Sharon handed him a collection of gruesome photographs showing mangled Israeli victims of recent suicide bomb attacks, as always blamed squarely on the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
"The Secretary of State could not finish his breakfast," said one Israeli official, with a hint of satisfaction.

Let me get this straight. The head of state of Israel, perhaps feeling insecure with American resolve, contrived to present the Secretary of State with a collection of grisly photographs just as he was sitting down to eat. Sharon is here portrayed as a feudal lord equally comfortable with a lavish breakfast "spread" (in his "cavernous reception room", no less) as with bloody heads on a pike.

I wonder why the Telegraph was the only source to describe this meeting in such terms.

And people (mostly in the media) wonder why nobody believes the media are unbiased anymore.

(By which I mean that either this account is wrong, or everybody else has missed the Story of the Year. I'm prepared to believe either alternative, at the moment.)

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