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IN front of your TV set, watching eagerly BBC or CNN -- the international visual news channels of democratic countries, you may be wondering where are the voices of the thousands of distress children, men and women of the Southern Lebanon. Cries of the suffering people uprooted from their home under the blitz of Israeli shells, have vanished in the ether, unable to find their way in the media. Well, you may argue otherwise. Its not in the ether, the plight of this section of humanity lost sight in the heat of the murky sands of Texas.
BBC's journalists are busy to cover the 'dispute' between Zidane and Materazzi; And CNN? Well readers, you know it. Where is the time to focus the cameras on the nozzle of Israeli tanks, bombarding the human-like creatures living in Gaza and the southern Lebanon? They are just another endangered species on the earth, may be of interest to the National Geography.
Enough of analogy. What the western media is trying to portray, with their limited and biased coverage, is that it is just another front against terrorism. And in the name of fighting terror, everything is justifiable. Bombing hospitals, schools, houses, mosques, just name it. Two sacred lives of Israeli solders -- descendants of the chosen people, worth more than thousands of worthless Arabs, most of whom are 'terrorists'. Teasing mother and sister of Zidane is an unforgivable crime than killing mothers and sisters of terrorists.
The mockery does not end here. The world has also seen the pathetic role played by the UN, which is supposed to be the watchdog of world peace. Mr. Kofi Annan may reply with a murmur that the UN has played its role, by proposing to deploy international forces in the conflict area. Not to any surprise, the proposal was vehemently opposed by Israel. It simply proves the banality of the UN proposal. Rest of the world has also supposedly done its duty by supporting the UN proposal.
The OIC -- Organisation of Islamic Conference -- not to be confused with "Oh, I SEE", was so shocked by the atrocities of Israeli forces that it lost its words to express any views. We have to wait until the OIC recovers from the coma.
Israeli atrocities in the southern Lebanon offer a striking similarity to Bangladesh's liberation war. When the occupied Pakistani army perpetrated its brutality to the highest degree possible by killing thousands of unarmed innocent men, women and children, neither the West nor the Muslim world came forward to express sympathy. Bangladesh had to fight her own war -- like the Palestinians are fighting now in Gaza, West Bank and refugee camps in Lebanon. Let the media realise it soon.
F. H. Rana,
Saudi Arabia
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