Media Matters Throws Hostage Gilad Shalit Under The Bus

Once again, Media Matters’ evil twin – Media Matters Action Network – has penned a horribly offensive anti-Israel blog post: Compassion for Gilad Shalit Is Commendable But Easy [December 22, 2009 3:24 pm ET by MJ Rosenberg]

The gist of the entry is that anyone can feel compassion for hostage Gilad Shalit, but it takes a real humanitarian to feel compassion for Hamas.

Reading the first paragraph is like pulling back the curtain for a frightening peek into the ethically barren back room of Media Matters:

The year ends with Israel obsessively focusing on the captured soldier, Gilad Shalit. He has been held by Hamas for over three years and, with the help of Israel’s sensationalist media, the entire country seems to be in a fury over the boy’s continued captivity.

Wow! Israel is “obsessed” with their citizen being held hostage by an Islamist-terrorist group, all thanks to Israeli tabloid journalism paying too much attention to the subject. This is awfully dismissive of a nation’s grief over the fate of one of its own citizens, but what is the fate of one Jew worth when people are suffering  somewhere else? To Media Matters, apparently very little [emphasis added]:

The Israeli government has been working virtually nonstop to decide if Israel should trade 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for Shalit.  The public strongly supports the exchange even though some in the intelligence community and elsewhere warn that exchanging prisoners for a captured hostage will produce the further nabbing of Israeli soldiers or even civilians.

Nonetheless, most Israelis are willing to pay the price.  In fact, in demanding the release of a thousand prisoners, Hamas is not making as excessive a demand as it might seem. Israel holds 10,000 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom have not even been charged.  Some, like some of those teenage prisoners in Guantanamo, are only dimly aware of what they are accused of.

Israel. Gitmo. To Media Matters, it’s all the same! Hamas is being reasonable considering how evil Israel and America are.

The troubling aspect of Israel’s obsession with exchanging Shalit for prisoners is that it devotes infinitely less energy to ending the conflict with the Palestinians.

Suppose, in addition or instead of prisoner exchanges with Hamas, Israel liftied the blockade of Gaza which punishes not suspected terrorists but innocent Palestinians.  Israel has inflicted collective punishment on the people of Gaza since Hamas took over their government.

Suppose for a moment Media Matters and the Progressive movement owned up to why they never address the inconvenient truth about Egypt’s sealed border with Gaza. Does Egypt hate Muslims?

The troubling aspect of Progressives’ obsession with Israel is that they devote infinitely less energy to ending the bigoted global Jihad against those deemed “Kuffar” and/or “Dhimmi”.

So why doesn’t the United States insist that Israel broaden its negotiations with Hamas – currently it is negotiating only over the prisoner exchange – to extend to other humanitarian issues?

And just what the hell does Hamas have to offer on the subject of humanitarian issues? [LINK WARNING: Very graphic footage of Hamas terrorists executing political-religious rivals in Gaza]

Those whose concern extends only to soldier Shalit, and not to children in Gaza who are, by definition, even more innocent, are just hypocrites. After all, it’s easy to extend one’s compassion only to one’s own. Compassion on the cheap is not compassion at all.

Puke. Witness with whom Progressives find common cause [LINK WARNING: Very graphic footage of Hamas terrorists executing political-religious rivals in Gaza]

Media Matters seems to think that Jews in Israel only care about one of their own, and froth at the mouth with hate for Muslim children in Gaza. The inconvenient truth for Progressives is that most Israelis and Americans weep and are heartbroken by the destruction Hamas and other Jihadis impose on their victims, whether they are children in Gaza, Tel Aviv, New York City, London, Bali, Mumbai, Baghdad, Madrid, etc….

There is nothing wrong with expressing sorrow and support for the child-victims of Hamas, who are subjected to horrible acts of abuse at the hands of their Islamist “government” in Gaza, but to use those victims of Jihad as a measuring stick for permission to worry for Gilad Shalit’s fate, is morally reprehensible, cheap, and opportunistic.

The authors at Media Matters might not be anti-Semitic, but they certainly are making it difficult to not see them as forgiving/supportive of the Jihad.