In the Middle Ages, Alchemists worked to find the Philosopher's Stone which would allow them to transform base metals into gold. The MSM, through the magic of PC, has managed to transform oppressive colonialists into sympathetic victims.
In years past, if you were to read news articles about the Israeli settlers in Gaza, you would almost always see them referred to as "right wing, ultra-Orthodox, religious fanatics" or some such combination of pejoratives. They were stealing Palestinian land and forcing the oppressed Palestinians to live in squalor (though this is disputed by CAMERA.) You rarely read that the Israelis were stuck with Gaza when they gave back Sinai to the Egyptians because the Egyptians wanted nothing to do with the Palestinians; while the Arab world gives lip service to the Palestinians cause, they actually revile them across the Arab world. The Palestinians have been thrown out of Jordan, Lebanon, and Kuwait, and have been encouraged to leave Iraq (where they were among Saddam Hussein's most ardent supporters).
None of this was ever used to offer context to stories of Israeli intransigence and the settler's right wing radical ideology.
However, now that the settlers are being forced out of their homes by the confusing, but still evil, Ariel Sharon, the MSM has changed its descriptors markedly. Through the alchemy of victimization, the settlers are now revealed as real people being forced out of the homes they have lived in for 20 or 30 years. The tears, the anguish, and the pain of loss are prominent. Even the volunteers who have come into the Gaza settlements in the last few weeks in order to make the soldier's jobs more difficult are treated with a new found moderation.
Today's New York Times article, Israeli Soldiers Move Into 2 Synagogues to Evacuate Settlers, by Steven Erlanger and Dina Kraft is a case in point.
Nearly 10,000 Israeli soldiers and police officers began the forcible evacuation on Wednesday, carrying some screaming from their homes in scenes that moved a number of the soldiers to tears.
....
The mood was somber and serious, with experienced soldiers and police officers quietly trying to negotiate voluntary departures first with sometimes hysterical settlers, while ignoring their taunts. Only later in the afternoon did the forces resort to widespread forced evacuations in various settlements, in some cases dragging parents away in front of their frightened children.
Whether the pull out is ultimately a failure or a successful step toward increased safety and security for Israel will not be known for a while. The Palestinians will have their land to themselves and in a sense, Sharon has called their bluff. Now it is up to the Palestinians to show whether or not they can rule themselves in something approaching peace and prosperity, or degenerate into the Taliban Afghanistan or warlord run Somalia, will be the story of Gaza in the near future. They will, of course, continue to accuse the Israelis of oppression, but it will be more difficult without pictures of Israeli soldiers at check points and road blocks within Gaza.
For the moment, the settlers being evicted from their homes have earned the (temporary) right to be known as victims by the MSM. Soon enough, attention will turn to the West bank; the MSM will find new ways to depict the Israelis as colonial oppressors. But even there, Sharon has made their PC-fantasy structure of victim and oppressor, more difficult to sustain. By planning to have almost total separation of Palestinians from Israelis on the West bank, the daily interactions that could be slanted to show the Israelis as brutalizers (they actually made a violinist open his case and play; the inhumanity!) will be unavailable.
Once the narrative is no longer given sustenance by the manipulations of the media, it will no longer be useful for explaining the plight of the Palestinians. They will be held more responsible for their own plight, or, more likely, ignored by the MSM.
After all, a wall of separation may be many things, but it is not an oppressor.
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