Israel Matzav

AFP: 'The sky is falling'

In an earlier post, I showed you most of Defense Minister Ehud Barak's interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria. Here's how AFP reported the interview. Hysteria and exaggeration mark their description of Barak's interview, but the truth is that if anything, the 'international community' has once again under-reacted to a threat is deemed to be aimed 'only' at Israel (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).

Barak, speaking on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS program, indicated that Israel's patience was wearing thin -- and provided an ominous response when asked about the growing speculation of an Israeli military strike.

"I don't think that that is a subject for public discussion," he said. "But I can tell you that the IAEA report has a sobering impact on many in the world, leaders as well as the publics, and people understand that the time has come."

Well what do you expect him to say when Fareed asks him "will Israel attack Iran?" If he says yes, he's a war mongerer and has to put up or lose his credibility. If he says no, he takes the military option off the table, which is something no credible leader ought to be doing right now.

On Friday the IAEA's board passed a resolution condemning Iran's nuclear activities, but stopped short of reporting Tehran to the United Nations and issuing no deadline for compliance.

That's incredible. If Iran were a non-Muslim country and/or the country it is threatening were any country other than Israel, this would have been referred to the Security Council a LONG time ago. (Yes, I know, they also referred Syria to the Security Council but only after Israel had destroyed its reactor).

Washington, Paris and London however jumped on the report as justification to increase pressure on Iran, already under four rounds of Security Council sanctions and additional US and European Union restrictions.

Do you get the impression that AFP is not too happy about that last sentence? 'Paris' didn't exactly jump on the report anyway, but how do they expect countries to react? Do they expect the US and Israel and everyone else to stand up and cheer?

Labels: anti-Israel media bias, IAEA, Iranian nuclear threat, United Nations Security Council

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:21 PM