Thursday, July 17, 2014

'We teach life, sir.' The Tragic Realities of Gaza

As a family we are in Beirut this week, and it is sobering to watch the latest news from Gaza and the announcement today of Israel's decision to send ground troops in. With this decision the situation will escalate further, and as always those who suffer the most will not be the armed actors on each side, but rather the innocent, especially children.

The tragic realities of this long standing conflict once again fill our nightly TV news bulletins and newspapers. In many ways the situation is complex, but in other respects it is very simple. Media reporting on Gaza ranges from balanced and informed to the quite absurd.  A low point last week was in the US, where Dianne Sawyer, a respected journalist, wrongly reported on footage of 'rockets raining down on Israel' and 'an Israeli family gathering outside their destroyed house to collect their belongings'.  The reality was that the footage was actually Israeli rockets raining down on Gaza, and a Palestinian family who have lost everything. As they say, truth is the first casualty of war.

Often the Palestinian voice is not well represented in media coverage, so please take just 4 minutes to watch the clip below (or click here if you are watching on a mobile device). This is a powerful perspective to the 'other side' of this conflict.

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