30/7/2014 A War of Images by Stella Jatras

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Jewi sh Worl d Revi ew August 22, 2006 / 28 Menachem-Av, 5766
A War of Images
By Stella Jatras
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Will the same weapon that
defeated the Serbs also defeat Israel?
They say that truth is always the first victim in war. Such is the case in the
Israeli/Hezbollah war.
It appears that Hezbollah has taken a page out of the Bosnian Muslim playbook: Win the
PR battle, and you win the war. What better example of media disinformation than the
Bosnian War, where images of civilians "slaughtered" at Sarajevo's Markale market
place, allegedly by Serb forces, were so instrumental? If it worked for the Bosnian
Muslims, why not for Hezbollah? Will Qana, Lebanon, become Israel's Markale market
place?
Yossef Bodansky, author of Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America, wrote
the following in his 1995 book Offensive in the Balkans:
"Phase Three started with the self-inflicted major terrorist provocation. On Friday 5,
1994, a major explosion rocked the Markale -- Sarajevo's main market place -- causing
heavy casualties. What was immediately described as the ubiquitous 'Serb mortar shell'
was actually a special charge designed and built with help from HizbAllah experts and
then most likely dropped from a nearby rooftop onto the crowd of shoppers. Video
cameras at the ready recorded this expertly-staged spectacle of gore, while dozens of
corpses of Bosnian Muslim troops killed in action (exchanged the day before in a 'body
swap' with the Serbs) were paraded in front of cameras to raise the casualty counts.
"This callous self-killing was designed to shock the West especially sentimental and
gullible Washington, in order to raise the level of Western sympathy to the Bosnian
Muslims and further demonize the Serbs so that Western governments would be more
supportive of Sarajevo's forthcoming aggressive moves, and perhaps even finally
intervene militarily." (Emphasis added)
Some headlines that Americans never saw were "Muslims 'slaughter their own people',"
The [London] Independent, 22 Aug. 1992, and "Serbs 'not guilty' of massacre," The
Sunday [London] Times, 1 Oct. 1995.
In 1992, Peter Maher, Professor Emeritus of Linquistics, visited Dubrovnik, Croatia, to
see for himself the truth about the war. He wrote, "A few months earlier, the press was
filled with stories that the Pearl of the Adriatic had been reduced to rubble. The stories
were fakes." Professor Maher goes on to explain just how it happened: "The dramatic
'Dubrovnik burning' pictures were shot with long lenses. . . .But the smoke was from the
fuel tanks of two pleasure boats burning in the Old Harbor ... Dubrovnik's Old City never
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burned and was never even targteted by the federal forces.....The only building in the Old
City of Ragusa to be gutted by explosives and fire was the library and treasure of the
Serbian Orthodox church, which housed a priceless collection of medieval manuscripts
and icons. It was not navy guns that did the damage, but plastic and incendiary devices
planted on the spot by Croatian forces."
Who can forget the horrific pictures that were repeatedly shown on CNN of the two dead
Muslim babies on a bus in Bosnia, allegedly killed by a Serb sniper? I would never have
known the truth if I had not been watching France 2 TV, which showed the funeral of
these innocent babies. Officiating was a Serbian Orthodox priest. These were not
Muslim babies; they were Serbian babies, but for American consumption, the Serbian
Orthodox priest was cropped from the film so that the American people would continue
to believe that the babies were Muslim. This kind of reporting is not just yellow
journalism. It goes beyond the pale, the same kind of "journalism" that Israel is
experiencing today -- manipulation, distortion, staging, forgery and the doctoring of
photos by anti-Israeli media. Welcome to the club!
Hopefully, in the current Israeli/Hezbollah conflict, the media distortions will not sell. At the
beginning of the Balkan conflict we did not have the Internet and bloggers to expose
CNN and its ilk. Today is different. Almost immediately after photos of damage from an
Israeli air strike on Beirut were posted, outrage from bloggers who recognized that the
photos were doctored forced Reuters to admit that two or more photos were altered.
The company stated, "A Reuters photograph of smoke rising from buildings in Beirut
has been withdrawn after coming under attack by American web blogs. The blogs
accused Reuters of distorting the photograph to include more smoke and damage."
Was this simply one person's mistake, or is a pattern being exposed in the present
Israeli/Hezbollah war of the biased or even co-belligerent media that was at work in the
war against the Serbs?
Israel is accused of indiscriminately killing civilians, as in the Qana incident. It is difficult
to find any suggestion in all of the articles on the subject that Qana was staged.
Questions should have been raised. For instance, how is it that the IDF air attack was
between midnight and 1:00 AM, but when the building blew up (or collapsed) at 8:00 AM
there were approximately 50 women and children (reported numbers vary) sleeping in
the building? Why is no one asking what was in that building that caused it to blow up
seven or eight hours after the air strike? Why is no one in the mainstream media asking
why those people were still in the building or why there were only women and children?
While western democracies try to keep civilians, especially their own, safe from ongoing
hostilities, Islamic forces have a history of using their own civilians as human shields.
Israel claims that Hezbollah deliberately puts its weapons and fighters in civilian
neighborhoods, keeping residents hostage and not caring if they are killed or not. One
interesting fact can be found in the book by Lord David Owen, titled Balkan Odyssey, in
which he writes, "In Sarajevo it became ever clearer that there were in fact two sieges of
the city: one by the Bosnian Serb army, with shells, sniper fire and blockades, and the
other by the Bosnian government army, with internal blockades and red tape
bureaucracy which kept their own people from leaving. In a radio broadcast the army --
not the government -- said that able bodied men aged 18-65 years and women aged
18-60 years were forbidden to leave because they were needed for the city's defence;
but their main reason was different. In the propaganda war, the Serbian siege aroused
the sympathy of the world, and for this they needed the elderly and the children to stay. It
was their most emotive propaganda weapon for bringing the Americans in to fight the
war, and they never wanted it to be weakened."
For those who think accusing Muslims of deliberately killing their own civilians or putting
them where they are sure to be "collateral casualties" is farfetched, I would ask, why is
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that any more unthinkable than encouraging one's own child to be a suicide bomber?
One noticeable difference between the reporting in the Israeli/Hezbollah war and the
Balkan war is balance. Although the media coverage is primarily one-sided in the
Israeli/Hezbollah conflict, nearly four to one showing civilian casualties in Lebanon vs.
those in Israel, the Balkan war news of Serbian casualties and suffering was almost non-
existent.
In 1995, the journal World Affairs published the following quote from John Ranz, U.S.
chairman of Survivors of Buchenwald Concentration Camp: "The gigantic campaign to
brainwash America by our media against the Serbian people is just incredible, with its
daily dose of one-sided information and outright lies....What is today's reality? The
murderers of Jews, Serbs and Gypsies are back [in Croatia] from the U.S., Canada,
Argentina where they fled after World War II. The Serbs fought the Nazis, they paid a
terrible price for standing at the side of the allies against Hitler. Humanity owes them a
debt of gratitude."
Yohanan Ramati, Director of the Jerusalem Institute for Western Defense, seconded the
notion: "This organized anti-Serb and pro-Muslim propaganda should cause anyone
believing in democracy and free speech serious concerns. It recalls Hitler's propaganda
against the allies in World War II. Facts are twisted and, when convenient, disregarded."
Most disturbing is a 1992 observation by Gregory Copley, who wrote in his Defense &
Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy report, "Pictures of dead or wounded (or raped) Serbs
often fill the screens of the world's television and print media, only to be re-labeled as
dead or wounded or raped Croats or Muslims. Many Serbian victims -- and the bulk of
the victims of the conflict, contrary to popular reports, have been Serbs either from
Bosnia and Herzegovina or from Croatia -- not only suffer the indignity of defeat in death;
they also are used in death as models in the macabre image manipulation operation of
the Croatians and the Muslim Bosnians. If the Vietnam War was lost to the United States
by the negative television images of its own reporters, then the Balkan war against the
Serbs are being won by Ustashi Croatia and the Muslim Bosnians by an active, planned
manipulation of international television."
Like any sovereign nation, Israel has the right to defend itself against Muslim
terrorists.The Serbian people should have had the right to defend their sovereignty
against the same Muslim terrorists whom we are fighting today.
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As a career military officer's wife, Stella Jatras has traveled widely and has
lived in many foreign countries where she not only learned about other
cultures but also became very knowledgeable regarding world affairs and
world politics. With the advent of the war in Bosnia, Mrs. Jatras immediately
recognized the bias of the Western media and the Clinton administration's
flawed foreign policy in the Balkans and began her efforts to present to the
American people a more accurate view of that tragic situation. Her letters and
articles have been published in The Washington Times, The Washington Post,
The Arizona Republic, The Patriot- News (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania),
Chronicles, The Stars and Stripes, and the Los Angeles Times, as well as a
number of magazines and periodicals. In addition her writings have had
worldwide distribution via the Internet such as Citizen Soldier and Jihad
Watch. Stella Jatras lived in Moscow for two years (where her husband,
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George, was the Senior Air Attach), and while there, worked in the Political
Section of the US Embassy. Stella has also lived in Germany, Greece and
Saudi Arabia. Her travels took her to over twenty countries.
2006, Stella Jatras
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