The Return of the Israeli Military Censor

[MrPrax]

***Note to MODS The piece is about a Canadian newspaper story regarding the Israel-Lebanon war and so it might of interest to Canadian readers of the Globe and Mail***

The Return of the Israeli Military Censor

Mark MacKinnon is The Globe and Mail correspondent in Israel. In an article under his byline published at page A10 of today's national edition of "Canada's national newspaper", entitled "Capturing Hezbollah stronghold perilous", we read that there was a statement from Hezbollah about a recent brief bout of combat with Israeli forces that, "claimed that four Israeli tanks had been damaged by Hezbollah fire and were 'totally burnt while their crews were killed or wounded.' Israel said one of its tanks had been hit."

The implication, probably intentional, is that Hezbollah is inflating its victories to boost morale, whereas in reality Israel is evidently taking some hits -- perhaps someone got video footage out there that's hard to deny. According to the logic of the notorious anti-Arab racism of the Israeli authorities, with which they taint everything and anything about their neighbors, the consequences and scale of the military prowess of such "cowardly" Untermenschen are -- and indeed must be -- less, perhaps far less, than the "dirty, lying media spin" pumped out by such "a bunch of evildoing Islamic Arab terrorists."

...

Now, either Mark MacKinnon knows nothing about this notice, or indeed knows about but decided not to let anyone else know, or his editors know all about and decided not to tell him, or they both know and agreed not to tell their readers in Canada. So far, The Globe and Mail has not resumed what used to be standard practice, back in the days reporters were trying to report Palestinian military resistance encounters with the Israeli military during the first Intifada, of informing readers that their report had passed the Israeli Military Censor. But, thanks to the disclosure of the censor's return to ensure that it will now be Israelis first and foremost who are not to see full truth, hear full truth or speak full truth, the actual state of affairs becomes clear. Regardless of the request placed by a foreign journalist reporting outside that country, the news that "Israel said one of its tanks had been hit" could not have been released from the Israeli side to see the light of day and the ink-stained authority of print publication without first passing the censor.

Dissident

Here's the Globe story as told to it by Israel's military censors

In the Zatzman piece, he lists the Military Censor's relevant guidelines...might be useful to look at and then you can judge for yourself if the story is slanted or not.