Wednesday, January 30, 2008

A letter to the Editor

One of the organizations that I am involved with is a group called Kiwis for Balanced Reporting on the Mid-East.

One of the things that this organization does is monitor the New Zealand press, and alerts members to cases of extreme bias or inaccuracy.
Well last week the Herald on Sunday (an Auckland Weekend Paper) published one of the worst diatribes against Israel I've ever seen in a New Zealand paper (and that's quite an accomplishment).
Take a look for yourself

The author is a well known radical left politician in New Zealand, you can read all about him in Wikipedia.

I submitted a letter to the editor, very hard to relate to such an article with a 200 word limit, but here's my best attempt:

Sir,

Matt McCarten’s column printed January 27 is so full of exaggerations, lies, and outrageous comparisons, that it is hard to see how anyone with even a minimal understanding of events in the Middle East could take Mr. McCarten seriously.

Since Israel ended the occupation of Gaza over two years ago, the Hamas leadership been involved in what Mr. McCarten describes as “causing a nuisance”.

“Nuisance” is a very mild word to describe over 4000 missiles fired at civilian population centres, including homes, schools, and synagogues.

One of the targets of these missiles has been the electrical power plant in the Israeli city of Ashkelon. This power plant has been providing the Gaza Strip with a large percentage of its electric power.

After the number of daily missiles rose to more than fifty, Israel decided to react by reducing the amount of power provided to Gaza by the power plant that was the target of the attacks.

Mr. McCarten’s conclusion was that this slight reduction of power is on par with Nazi planned genocide during WWII. Mr. McCarten’s extreme prejudice seems to have clouded his common sense or sense of proportion.

So, what do you think?

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