Disproportionality

The MSM loves to point out that Israel's self-defense is "disproportionate" meaning, I suppose, that we can only fire Kassams and Katyushas at Palestinian civilians rather than target Kassam factories and Hezbollah command bunkers with bombs.

Little mention was made in local papers, and none at all in the foreign media, of last week's death of Chai Shalom Cohen. Like my son, Chai Shalom suffered from cerebral palsy. Unlike my son, who has impaired vision, Chai reportedly suffered from a heart defect, hearing loss and speech deficits. Like almost all of the special needs children in Israel, he was transported daily to and from school in a special bus.

Last week, his bus was carrying the children to school when Hamastan fired another of its endless volleys of Kassam missiles into Israel, hitting Sderot again. One Kassam exploded next to the special needs bus, blowing shrapnel into the bus and wounding the children. Chai Shalom's legs were broken. He was rushed to Soroka Hospital, where complications set in, and he died.

He was 13 years old.

Every day, across this nation and across California where we hailed from, parents of special needs children entrust those children to the special buses which transport the kids to and from their schools. My husband and I, paranoid products of too many police reports, chose to transport the Boy every day in our car rather than entrust him to the care and driving of strangers. We had that luxury. Chai Shalom's parents did not. In a city under seige from Iranian and Saudi bought-and-paid-for terrorists, the parents undoubtedly tried to keep to as normal a routine as possible for their child. Special needs children, more than most, need a stable environment and routine. Many parents can't leave Sderot for fear of losing their jobs, their homes and hence their lives' savings. Many parents do not have adequate shelters in their homes and feel that the schools are marginally safer for their children.

I have watched all the major news stations this week: Al Jazeera, BBC, Sky News, FoxNews, CNN, France 24. No mention was made of the death of Chai Shalom or any other child who has died during the Terror Seige of Sderot in the last 6 years. Every MSM anchor and field reporter was careful to be "proportional," always mentioning first that Gaza took a hit then second that the hit was in response to rocket attacks on Israeli towns nearby, while running more staged footage of Red Crescent ambulances disgorging the bloodless "wounded" into a hospital amid screaming and panic. I recognized some of the footage as stock rerun from the last year's incursion into Gaza for Gilad Shalit.

No photos of Chai Shalom were displayed on the evening news. No film of the shrapnel shredded school bus appeared nor were his grieving parents interviewed or his teachers asked about him and his life. An internet search under his name yields almost no mention of his too-short-life and death.

THIS is disproportionality. When the media ignores the tragic death of children, disabled or not, in a civilian town with no military function, following a total withdrawal from all of Gaza, and the subsequent bombardment of that town and its civilians, then "disproportional" is the mildest thing I can call it. It is, instead of merely "disproportionate", it is criminal: the mainstream media, entangled in its outdated Old Left agenda, has failed to recognize the rising fascism of the Arab people it constantly extolls as the only recognizable ethnic group with a claim to statehood in this part of the world (never mind the UN and League of Nations decisions to the contrary, or the Jewish presence here continuously for thousands of years). The MSM has connived with terror and abetted the genocidal agenda of so-called Palestinian nationalists--people who define their nationhood solely through terror attacks dating back to the 1920s.

My heart goes out to the family of Chai Shalom. My heart has hardened towards Gaza and its despicable indoctrination of hate in Arab children of all ages. Someone should remind Hamas that those who sew the wind reap the whirlwind.