It is interesting to follow links.
My daughter sent me a link to Free Middle East (http://www.freemiddleeast.com/).
The blog du jour the day I first went to the page was titled "Palestinian Corruption and Humanitarian Aid."
There was a link to another blog entry, "Free Palestine" (http://www.freemiddleeast.com/phasedplan.php), a clip that discusses the palestinian leadership's (?) multi-phase plan to eliminate Israel.
In the beginning I thought it would document how the palestinians in Gaza destroyed synagogues, greenhouses, and infrastructure left when Israel withdrew - facilities the palestinians vowed to respect.
But then things got interesting.
There was a link titled "The Obsession with Israel; Overtly Skewed Media Coverage" (http://www.freemiddleeast.com/blog/free_middle_east/overtly-skewed-media-coverage/123/?
This linked to an entry that graphically compared deaths for various conflicts. Compared to the disaster in the Democratic Republic Of Congo (DRC), the Israel-palestinian conflict is minuscule - that does not mean the deaths of innocents in the Israel-palestinian conflict are less important, just far, far fewer.
This FreeMiddleEast page links to another blog, "Stealth Conflicts" (http://stealthconflicts.wordpress.com/2009/02/21/death-toll-comparisons/, a very interesting page.
Subtitled "How the World's Worst Violence Is Ignored," the primary page contains several links to other locations within the blog URL, all of which are worth visiting.
One in particular focuses on the amount of media attention the situation in Israel receives. According to the entry at http://stealthconflicts.wordpress.com/2009/01/01/israel-palestine-and-contagious-journalism/ , the blogger notes that "With little budget for foreign newsgathering, Zambia’s leading newspaper (the Post) buys its world news from foreign news agencies. The result is that it gives more coverage to the situation in Israel-Palestine than it does to the eight countries on Zambia’s border combined. In the year 2004, for example, it devoted 9 percent of its foreign coverage to Israel-Palestine, but only 4 percent to all of Zambia’s eight neighbours."
One of Zambia's neighbors is theDemocratic Republic of Congo, the world leader in conflict casualties.
It all makes for very interesting reading . . . especially when you dig a little bit and find out just who is doing the killing in Africa.
Yohanon Glenn
Yohanon.Glenn at gmail dot com
