http://www.israellycool.com/2011/03/24/thank-you-louise-bagshawe/Thank You Louise Bagshawe
Brian of London here. This is a long post, but if you read to the end you will find a simple explanation for what happened in Itamar but it doesn’t mention “settlers” and it doesn’t blame the victims.
The other night I tried to participate in a bloggers phone interview organised by the excellent IDF Spokesperson’s office for English speaking bloggers. The call was with a member of the paramedic ambulance team (who are actually an IDF unit because of the area they work in) who were the first people (other than the 12 year old daughter of the family and the two other surviving children) into the Fogel home after the terrorist massacre in Itamar.
I was on the call with an earpiece while feeding my little child his final bottle of the day. I heard the introduction to the call and the first few minutes but when I heard the word “butchered” I just hung up. I couldn’t hold my own child, sitting in my apartment, which google and my own experience tells me is a 44 minute drive from Itamar, and hear this. I have now read (and recommend that you do too) the full transcript of the interview.
It is a pity I didn’t stay on the line because after describing the horrific details of what Edi Itelman saw, he went on to say some truly inspirational things coupled with some astonishing revelations that, as usual, the main stream media will not report. Here is an extract from the transcript after the call provided by Tundra Tabloids:
Question: How difficult was it for you after seeing that carnage committed by a terrorist then treat Palestinians. I realize that you’re a professional, but the next time you have to treat a Palestinian…
Answer: I tell you the next time I have to treat a Palestinian, was the day after that, and you know who I got to treat? One of the people they captured for committing the terrorist attacks. He was arrested for being a part of the plan or something like that.
When he was in custody he had an attack of chronic bronchitis, he suffers from chronic bronchitis, and he had a massive attack with a shortness of breath, and this is something that is potentially deadly, people die from that. The only thing that I did was to be as professional as I can be, you don’t think of what he did, or what he could do in the future, you need to be 100% focused, because unless you can do that, you’re in the wrong business. I treated him as best as I could and he survived this massive attack of bronchitis.
First point: shortly after the attack the Ma’aan “news agency” threw out an absolute lie that the brutal butchering of this family may have been carried out by a disgruntled Thai worker who hadn’t been paid. They “reported” that Israeli security forces were rounding up Thai and other foreign workers in Itamar. This is an outrageous lie: there are verifiably no Thai workers in Itamar, the Fogel’s owed no money and, most obviously of all, Thai people (except for those in the Muslim south of Thailand who have been waging an incessant Jihad for years) do not de-humanise themselves to the point where they can butcher sleeping babies. While not directly reporting this as fact, the UK’s Daily Mail unconscionably printed this lie by publishing a letter putting the theory forward. They should be ashamed of themselves.
Edi’s interview above just puts the nail into this outrageous attempt to deflect blame by the PA’s official mouth piece.
But the second point is, of course, this man treating someone like this medically instead of beating him to a bloody pulp as the world expects the brutal, occupying forces of the IDF to be doing all over Israel. That’s just not what we do here in Israel.
And this brings me on to how these events have been reported in the rest of the world:
‘Palestinian’ kills five Israelis in West Bank
Israeli troops have launched a manhunt after five members of a Jewish settler family were killed in the West Bank.
Don’t think the rest of the BBC article provides any more detail because it doesn’t. It just goes on to say that settlements are illegal (they’re not) and imply (as usual) that the three little children slashed to death and left to bleed out on the floor of their home had it coming. Other’s have made more extensive critics of the disgusting way this was reported, Honest Reporting has much more.
Which brings me to a ray of light shining out of the UK’s Telegraph and coming from an MP in the UK, Louise Bagshawe, who was shocked to discover the details of the what happened in Itamar on Twitter, because the BBC deemed them to unimportant to waste with space on their web site, let alone their precious (very precious) tax payer funded world wide air waves. She writes:
I found out about the barbaric attack not on BBC news, but via Twitter on Monday. I followed a link there to a piece by Mark Steyn entitled “Dead Jews is no news’. Horrified, I went to the BBC website to find out more. There I discovered only two stories: one a cursory description of the incident in Itamar, a West Bank settlement, and another focusing on Israel’s decision to build more settlements, which mentioned the killings in passing.
I’m sending a warmly heartfelt thank you to the Right Honourable Member of Parliament for Corby and East Northamptonshire, Lousie Bagshawe for having the courage to speak up on this. The BBC is out of control and if it thinks that there is any “context” for the brutal murder of sleeping children they are deliberately hiding the nature of the mortal enemy that wants to kill MY CHILDREN and all the other Jews in Israel too.
I’m going to add something that hammers home this point. It’s an article by the Dr. Mordachai Kedar from Bar Ilan University. This is part of a longer article by Dr Kedar, who you may remember for his amazing appearance on Al Jazeera a few years back eviscerating a presenter by asking for the exact number of times Jerusalem is mentioned in the Koran by name – none and also in print.
I’m not going to comment on this because you’ll be able to work it out for yourselves. Remember, though, this man speaks perfect Arabic and is a well respected academic studying the middle east and particularly Arab societies. Here is what he wrote:
Why Do They Slaughter?
What is common to Daniel Perl, Nick Berg, the Jews of Hebron in 1929 and the Fogel family? They were butchered. They were not simply stabbed to death, but were killed by an act designed to decapitate them or to cause fatal bleeding by severing their carotid artery. Another common denominator: all were slaughtered by Moslems. An endless list of Moslem girls and women can be added to them, those who were similarly slaughtered by their brothers, fathers or other relatives for “violating the family honor”. A question that arises automatically is where does this Moslem tendency to this kind of slaughter come from?
The answer is simple: Slaughter is a routine, widespread practice among many Moslem families. Many children see how their fathers slaughter sheep when celebrating an important event, and the whole family is present at the sacrificial slaughter during Eid al-Adha, the Festival of Sacrifice, when the slaughter is part of the holiday ritual.
In modern societies, the slaughter of animals for meat consumption takes place in slaughterhouses, far from the eyes of the public and children, who generally get their meat free of blood and hair and ready for cooking or eating. This sterile arrangement spares the public the sight of the slaughter, the blood and the accompanying cries. In the West, many of those who witnessed animal slaughter become vegetarian.
In many Islamic societies, slaughter generally occurs at home, in front of the children, and is part of the routine of life. They are immunized against the sight of slaughter, are not moved by the blood dripping from the animal’s neck and are not frightened by its snorts and struggles. In many cases, the children hold the legs of the lamb in order to immobilize it during slaughter; they sense very well its frantic reactions as the knife so painfully slices through its neck. The presence and participation of the children in the act of slaughter immunizes them emotionally against its influence; when they are older they perform the custom of sacrifice withtheir own hands and knives, and in front of their own children.
The emotional immunity to the act of slaughter allows a Moslem to utilize it whenever he feels he must employ radical methods to rid himself of someone. The slaughter of sheep during the Festival of Sacrifice is accompanied by the recitation of “In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful”, and the butchering of girls who do not behave properly is conducted as a kind of execution ceremony. The slaughterer feels that he is doing something important and worthy, acting in a way to which he is inured sinceearly childhood.
In western societies, slaughter seems barbaric, while members of Moslem societies view it as proper and commendable when carried out within the proper context. Therefore, slaughtering a Jew, a Christian or anyone seen as an enemy is not considered unusual in traditional Islamic societies.This is what professional jargon calls a “cultural difference”.
The article is published in the framework of the Center for the Study of Middle East and Islam (under formation), Bar Ilan University, Israel.
Topic: British Conservative M.P takes BBC to task for Ignoring Fogel slaughter (Read 2597 times)