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| Pâ•qidꞋ Yi•rᵊmᵊyâhꞋ u |
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| A Khamas senior stands in the background behind Khamas PM Ismail Haniyeh, who controlled their release, seated (left) with kidnapped Fox reporter Steve Centanni, cameraman Olaf Wiig and Wiig's wife, Anita McNaught. | Fox journalists Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig after conversion to Islam at gunpoint |
2006.09.04, 1330 –
Update 2006.11.15 (WND.com) — The $2 million ransom was tracked to "a clan from the Gaza Strip which leads terror cells of the Popular Resistance Committees… Senior Palestinian officials told WND their investigation into the abductions led them to the Dugmash family, based in Khan Yunis and Gaza City… The Committees is closely associated with Hamas."
The abduction in Gaza of two Fox journalists marks a transition in Muslim Arab terrorist PR styles that is being driven by changing conditions.
Two primary changes that have necessitated this adaptation are the American entrenching of western journalists and western media, itself, becoming more aware (though at a glacial pace) of being manipulated. As a result, newer PR models developed by Sunni al-Qaida and Shiite Khiz'b-Allah, which have proven as effective against the U.S. and other western countries as against Israel, are superseding the older WW-II vintage PR paradigm of Arafat, "Baghdad Bob" and "Mr. Massacre".
What went around came around. Israel is no longer the only "infidel" being bitten.
The PR model that ruled for decades in the Arab-occupied West Bank and Gaza is that exemplified in the Jenin "Massacre" and the "Gaza Beach Explosion" video. In this PR model, Muslim Arabs spoke an uncompromising line to Muslim Arabs while evincing a "victim" line to western media. Almost any tragedy was transformed into a propaganda coup. Like the predisposed Muslim Arabs, the liberal journalism school mentality of western media repeatedly and unquestioningly accepted Muslim Arab accounts that blame-shifted even Muslim Arab "friendly fire" injury or death to Israeli Jews. These stories typically included grisly photos or videos of suffering or dead children – even if the victim or other props had to be transported to the scene from some unrelated tragedy before the media was invited to the scene. Such brazen lies and calculating barbarity seemed impossible to the liberal journalism school mentality – until the truth of "Baghdad Bob" began to emerge.
The most popular ploy – requiring willing and repeatedly duped "journalists" – was to provoke an Israeli response, for example by firing on IDF soldiers from among swarming children throwing rocks, and ensure that the armed terrorists melted away before the media was called to witness only the response "against innocent children." Only when the stage was properly set, the director of propaganda called the media, who then showed up on cue to witness Israeli soldiers firing away "at innocent civilians." The media witnessed no more and no less than what Islamic terrorist propaganda puppeteers directed. Reporters relied exclusively on "witnesses" – activists provided by the propagandists.
Media have delighted in this sensationalist tabloid reporting for years. Hungry for air time and fame, justifying themselves as reporting only what they saw – and what was "reported" to them by the propagandists' activists – western "journalists" were eager accomplices in Muslim Arab propaganda machines. In their zeal to "scoop" their rivals, they happily gave the delirious Muslim Arab propagandists exactly that: broadcasting the Muslim Arab propaganda first and only – the big scoop – while ignoring "old school" news reporting of checking facts and verifying forensic evidence.
In Iraq, the American entrenching of media eliminated the ability of the Islamic terrorists to control what the media witnesses. Solution: al-Qaida in Iraq developed zero tolerance for the media. Thus, because of America's entrenching of media in the Iraq War, al-Qaida in Iraq developed a more mature and ongoing process of innovation in Islamic terrorist PR – appealing solely to Muslim audiences while entirely shutting out western media (proving, incidentally, that Muslims don't consider western media indispensable to getting their story out where it counts to them).
Khiz'b-Allah further refined Islamic terrorist propaganda, developing a double-faceted PR strategy that combined a hybrid model, developed from the Arafat and al-Qaida models, with a highly professional and polished PR practiced by Nassᵊr-Allah. In the tradition of Arafat and al-Qaida, we saw western media, often unnecessarily, kept at a distance while a Khiz'b-Allah propagandist led a CNN dupe around South Beirut by the nose, permitting him to see only what Khiz'b-Allah wanted him to see and, most importantly, only when Khiz'b-Allah was ready for him to see it. The Khiz'b-Allah director of propaganda even managed to persuade the CNN dupe to run, on camera, from a potential "Zionist" bomb attack with him. In another example, the stage was set, complete with replays, actors and extras in Qana before the media was escorted to see their staged play – and replays. While these are straight out of Yasser Arafat's and Saeb Erekat's propaganda handbook.
While these tactics recall Arafat and al-Qaida, Nassᵊr-Allah was busily employing a textbook proactive PR strategy that proved so vastly superior to Israel's primitive and reactive "explanation propaganda" (Hebrew "hasbara") that a significant number of Israelis relied more on Nassᵊr-Allah's reports than reports from the IDF and Israeli government – deplorably, with good reason. Israel's reporting was – and still is – 100% reactive and defensive, stated "authoritatively" by the conflicting pontifications of every politician in Israel and, unsurprisingly therefore, contradictory, riddled with error, consistently overstated, based on miscommunications or complete lack of communications and managing to be, simultaneously, both the epitome of condescension (Avi Pazner) and whiny (Capt. Yishai David). The single bright spot in this gloom was Amb. Dan Gillerman.
The Islamic terrorists continue to adapt their PR strategy to changing constraints around the intransigent insistence on absolute control, one way or another, over the story they permit to the media. Islamic terrorists want their stories reported – emphasis on "their." Unlike Israel and other democratic countries where the media has almost unfettered free run, however, Islamic terrorists will not tolerate the reporting of true stories when it conflicts with "their" story. To Islamic terrorists, better no story to the west than a detrimental story. Muslims will continue to get "their" story without western media (al Manor, al Jazira, etc.).
The abduction of the Fox journalists in Gaza punctuates this theme running through all of the Islamic terrorist PR strategies and marks a dramatic shift from the Arafat model moving, probably inevitably, toward the al-Qaida model in which western journalists not toeing their mark will be killed. (Israel and the west will, ruefully, yet see their adoption of the hugely successful Nassᵊr-Allah PR model.)
Western journalists who ignore Islamic terrorist rules do so at their own peril. Gaza signals that it's relations with the media is in transition to the Iraqi (al-Qaida) model. The two Fox reporters stepped out of that line. If they, or their successors, continue to do so, the Islamic terrorists will kill them.
In encouraging other journalists to go to Gaza and report the Muslim Arab story Mr. Centanni is fooling himself – and likely to get one of his successors killed. There is no way to report an accurate and true story in an Islamic terrorist environment except entrenching with the "infidel" forces to ensure that the reporter has access, and is witness to events, from the initial arrival of forces on the scene. Reporters can only be careful to verify facts of stories told to them by Muslim "witnesses," double-check any available forensic evidence and issue strong caveats with every report that their ability to report, short of inviting death, is extremely limited and if the Islamic terrorists spoke truth they would ensure media safe and unfettered access.
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