Who Gained Most from the Fox Reporters' Kidnapping?
The Gaza Maze

By RAMZY BAROUD

Two Fox News journalists, Steve Cantani and Olas Wing were released by their Palestinian kidnappers in the Gaza Strip on Sunday, August 27. Just one day earlier, two Reuters cameramen were seriously wounded in an apparently deliberate Israeli strike on their clearly marked vehicle, according to news reports. The names of the two wounded cameramen, as well as their story went largely unreported. Why was their fate deemed inconsequential, compared to that of the Fox News journalists.

Video recordings released earlier by the kidnappers of Cantani and Wing revealed similarities in style with that of Iraqi groups, notorious for their gory beheadings and other acts of savagery. The Palestinian group has no clear record and no apparent affiliation with any other known Palestinian faction. They laid out impossible demands and employed Islamic rhetoric. Both journalists were forced to convert to Islam, in a very disturbing, yet amateurish act. Any Islamic interpretation, no matter how fundamental, forbids such practice. Qoranic verses in this regard are indisputable.

Did the Holy Jihad Brigades -- a dodgy name by any Palestinian standards -- know that forcing a person to recite that "There is No God but Allah" does not qualify them as Muslim? What business did the dubious holy worriers of Gaza have demanding a release of all Muslim prisoners in American jails? Not enough Palestinians in Israeli prisons, perhaps?

How interesting that the Palestinian kidnappers wished to twist American arms which was of course met with US defiance the same way that the capturers of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit on June 25 tried to extract concessions from Israel,m when they rightfully demanded the release of Palestinian women and children held illegally in Israeli jails. Once again the American public are being introduced to the outlandish ways of Islamic terror, and once again asked to appreciate the 'courage' and defiance of the Israeli government in the face of extortion and intimidation.

While the kidnapping of the two Fox News journalists -- the method, the demands and the dark-age presentation that lasted for two weeks - all exhibit the work of disturbed and ignorant young men ­ their timing and the PR disaster they've caused are hardly above suspicion.

Though it's difficult, if not impossible, to determine for sure who was exactly behind that charade, it's important to fathom the context in which it took place.

Israel, on the one hand, had desperately tried to link its fight against Palestinians,which evolved into a war against Palestinian democracy following the January 2006 legislative elections, with America's war on terror. Palestinian factions, wary of the Israeli scheme seemed averse to any involvement with al-Qaeda.

The advent of Hamas to the political scene in Palestine, and despite its utterly moderate position if compared to most Islamic political and/or militant movements dotting the Middle East and the Muslim world, prompted Israel into renewed allegations of the existence of that link: Hamas to Israel is as al-Qaeda to America. So ran the Israeli mantra.

That ploy too has failed, even with the help of President Bush and his administration, who have never shied away from linking Hamas with al-Qaeda at every available opportunity. The Israeli redeployment around Gaza was hardly the end of Israeli interest in the impoverished Gaza Strip. It left behind a legion of self-seekers, eager to retrieve the many privileges lost since the restructuring of the political landscape after the democratic toppling of Fatah in the recent Palestinian elections. While many Palestinians wish not to admit the size and significance of such a group, all signs point to their unmatched influence, and ability to wreck havoc on Palestinian society, prompt chaos, and impede the genuine attempts of Hamas and a less corrupt Fatah faction to achieve a national unity government.

Though Palestinians are an occupied nation, a unity government could be very positive. Without it Palestinians have little chance to develop meaningful internal and external strategies to unify their ranks and to resist Israel's onslaught and unremitting land grabs in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Every time officials from both sides promised that such a government will be declared very soon, sometimes within hours, a dramatic event sends talks back to square one. The Israeli onslaughts on Gaza, which killed hundreds in recent months, came at the heels of an inter-Palestinian agreement according to which Hamas would accept international law as the most plausible resolution to the conflict with Israel, and also ensure the release of the captured Israeli soldier. The kidnapping of the two American journalists was timed in such a way to embarrass the Palestinian government and provide Israel with enough leverage to carry on with its incessant violence.

But how could the Palestinian kidnappers be so outdated in their rhetoric, yet so skilful in producing a faultless PR disaster, handing Israel the most convenient illustration as of yet, of al-Qaeda-like mindset of Palestinians?

The kidnapping episode will certainly be milked for all its worth ­ while the deliberate targeting of the two Reuters journalists by the Israeli army will hardly register for more than a day or two as a fleeting item. The Israelis and their friends will eloquently associate the journalist kidnapping with its most rational kin, the capturing of the Israeli soldier.
few will dare challenge that scenario, or point at the discrepancies between the Holy Jihad Brigades' style and technique and other Palestinian militants fighting Israeli occupation.

The irony in all of this is that Israel, the United States and much of Europe behind them have collectively punished the Palestinian people for electing Hamas, imposing an effective siege, economic and diplomatic against Palestinians, which resulted in further chaos and instability.

Regardless of who is exactly behind the journalists' kidnapping in Gaza, this episode highlights the volatility of a situation in which an elected government is being forced to operate under ground (with many of its members already in Israeli jails), leaving the matter of security to be handled by same Fatah factions that caused a significant part of the chaos and insecurity in Gaza.

Is it a surprise that the Fatah security forces always fail to carry out even one arrest once the release of foreign hostages is secured, perhaps with the hope that the kidnappers will strike once more whenever such distractions are convenient for both Israel and its beneficiaries? The mockery is most disturbing.

Ramzy Baroud is a US author and journalist, currently based in London. His recent book, "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London) is now available at Amazon.com. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of PalestineChronicle.com.

Here's some great studies (with links to other studies/analysis showing clear pro-israel bias in the mainstream right wing media)
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/media/
Great vid with Galloway:
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/40071/

Look at all your irrelevant hidden postings?
http://la.indymedia.org/news/?keyword=&author=&comments=yes&display=f&year=&month=&day=&medium=&language_id=&category=0&sort=&limit=30
LMFAO!
What a whiner.

what a flaming hypocrite.
And of corse it wasn't you who fouled up
'Why the Zionist Assault @ LA IMC?'
It's amusing that stupid people think everyone else is stupid...

The nutcase is calling everyone else a spammer, when there is a link to the zio-nut's incessent spamming (just today's) right above his moronic post.
Not to mention the thread where he has meltodwowns and threatens posters....LMFAO!

From the anti-Zionists:

"I think despicable selfish trash like you *should* be despised. I think it's completely cool to want to KILL YOU, and that every last one of history's finest hours has consisted of bloodbaths for people like yourself. I think these impulses to hate and kill your kind are the essential social manifestations of Justice Itself"

or this unforgettable classic:

"Go make yourself some white-baby stew. You'll feel much better. As for decapitating rich greedy people, you're right man, I'm through being a hypocrite. what say I start with you?"

and then there's the ultimate testimony of peace love and understanding:

"The way to change it is by slashing all the
Eichmanns' heads off and singing jubilantly in the shower of their arterial blood"

and my personal favorite:
"Lesbians lack sexual gratification because a woman can not satisfy another woman in the same way a man can. "

Wow. makes the Zionists sound like kind loving beings, doesn't it?

If "they do it too" were an excuse, Hitler would be off the hook, right?
Besides, this is one of your very own more prolific zionist spam-nuts
"Hopefully the banker you met with today won't approve your loan. Maybe only a rough forceful rape by another man, possibly a whitey, will straighten your perversions out. "

You have to put the blinders on. forceful rape is much more vitriolic. Then there's the threats (I know, I know, real tough guy, huh?LOL!)

SchtarkerYid
by Yes,if thats what it takes Thursday, May. 25, 2006 at 3:03 PM
Yes,if thats what it takes. Sometimes you have to "school" ignorant haters. Why, do you have a problem with me that you'd like to meet and discuss in person?

If "he did it too" were an excuse, HItler would be off the hook. At least you admitted the zionists are filth. Good job.
Gotta run. You have permission to play in the sandbox now.

A zionist calling someone else a nazi...

now we must ask ourselves who exactly helped the zionist emigrate into Palestine.
Does the name Eichmann ring any bells?

One comma to many.

That's hateful and ignorant sheepdog.

@%<

sure it is...
Why?
I think the facts are fairly evident .
Anyone can use a search engine
Zionism +Eichmann

And it shows all the signs of a manufactured PR stunt.

this is too deep for SY but one may want to look at the fact that the sponsors of WWII ( you know the Rockefeller and Rothchild families ) were funding both sides and everyone else they could compromise.
Still doesn't negate the zionists ready cooperation with the nazis.
Pointing to another pile of sh*t doesn't make *your* pile any cleaner.

typical "anti-zionist","my mind is already made up, it was a CONSPIRACY, now don't try and confuse me with any facts.

governments operate through 'CONSPIRACY' and 'CONSPIRACY' is the most prosecuted crime on the books.
It's a real world with real assholes.

>Does the name Eichmann ring any bells?

See:

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/160324_comment.php#163011

(snip)

"Von Bolschwing was deeply involved in intelligence work--and in the persecution of innocent people -- for most of his adult life. He had joined the Nazi party at the age of twenty-three, in 1932, and had become an SD (party security service) informer almost immediately. In the years leading up to 1939, von Bolschwing became a leading Nazi intelligence agent in the Middle East, where he worked under cover as an importer in Jerusalem. One of his first brushes with Nazi espionage work, according to captured SS records, was a role in creating a covert agreement between the Nazis and Fieval Polkes, a commander of the militant Zionist organization Haganah, whom von Bolschwing had met through business associates in the Mideast. Under the arrangement the Haganah was permitted to run recruiting and training camps for Jewish youth inside Germany. These young people, as well as certain other Jews driven out of Germany by the Nazis, were encouraged to emigrate to Palestine. Polkes and the Haganah, in return, agreed to provide the SS with intelligence about British affairs in Palestine. Captured German records claim that Polkes believed the increasingly brutal Nazi persecution of the Jews could be turned to Zionist advantage -- at least temporarily -- by compelling Jewish immigration to Palestine, and that the Haganah commander's sole source of income, moreover, was secret funds from the SS.

It was in the course of these negotiations that the young Baron von Bolschwing gained the trust of Adolf Eichmann, who was at the time an obscure SS functionary specializing in intelligence on Freemasonry and Jewish affairs for the Nazi party. The acquaintance was more than a casual one, for von Bolschwing went on to play a central role in arranging conferences between Eichmann and Polkes in Vienna and Cairo, contacts that established Eichmann as the SS's Jewish affairs expert and laid the foundation for his later career as the architect of the extermination of European Jewry.”

-- Blowback : America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War by Christopher Simpson, ISBN: 1555841066, p 253

Simpson’s source on this is:

Sicherheitsdienst des RFSS SD-Hauptamt, Palastinareise Bericht (U.S. designation no. 173-b-16-14/61), now at Frames 2936012-2936068, microfilm roll 411, T-175, RG 242, NA, Washington, D.C.

* * * * *

After the war, von Bolschwing settled in California. He became a Republican Party activist and a personal friend of Richard Nixon. Among his other accomplishments, he perpetrated the single largest stock fraud in California’s history. He squirmed out of the charges when a patsy took the fall for him. Later he was partners in a defense electronics company called TCI with Iran-contra figures Richard Secord and (Iranian Jew) Albert Hakim.

What a guy, huh? For details, see:

http://www.newsmakingnews.com/mbtape11,22,81,520.htm

(snip)

SF-IMC hasn't reactivated the comments posting. Angie Tibb's infamous ravings still can't be posted. Let's rejoice while the going's good....

I appreciate the history and nessie logic. Not everyone does, though...
too bad.
Must be doing something right to arouse the ire of you zionists.

Exactly! Good call! You know we're doing good work when the fantic zionazis ooze out of the woodwork in a fantic panic to propagandize, lie, deflect, spam, troll and gatekeep in an attempt to stifle criticism of their beloved terror state of Israel.
It frustrates them to no end that, unlike the right wing, pro-war, pro-israel media, they enjoy no power here.
You will not shout us down with false cries of anti-semitism and regurgitated AM-nut radio tripe about 'islamo-fascism' (Radio talk show host Michael Savage has used the term "Islamofascism" frequently on his program ([7]) and in his books (Liberalism Is A Mental Disorder: Savage Solutions, Chapter 2—Unmasking Islamofascism, ISBN 1-5955-5006-2). The context suggests the invocation of Islam to justify fascist-like activities.)
We will continue to be critical of the US and Israel, both terrorist states. You will not shout us down. Truth and history are not on your side.

Thanks for the heads up on those books. I'll go buy 'em and have people post select excerpts to the IMCs. We know we're doing good work when the fantic nazi wannabes ooze out of the woodwork in a fanatic panic to propagandize, lie, deflect, spam, troll and gatekeep in an attempt to stifle criticism of their beloved bug eyed pro-terror anti-Israel messages.
It frustrates them to no end that, unlike the extreme left and right wing, pro-war, anti-israel media, they enjoy no power outside of Indymedia and its like.
You will not shout us down with false cries of anti-Islam and regurgitated AM-nut radio tripe about 'zionazism' (Radio talk show host Michael Savage has rightly used the term "Islamofascism" frequently on his program ([7]) and in his books (Liberalism Is A Mental Disorder: Savage Solutions, Chapter 2—Unmasking Islamofascism, ISBN 1-5955-5006-2)
We will continue to be critical of the anti-US and anti-Israel agendas, both pro-terrorist propositions. You will not shout us down. Truth and history are not on your side. Hey, just farted some more atcha...