Thoughts on Amstetten and Israel

May 1, 2008 at 3:37 pm (1)

• The BBC and pretty much every outlet has, in reporting the Amstetten incest story, consistently used the word ‘fathered’ — as in Josef Fritzl has fathered seven children with his daughter. The word has irritated me all week but I thought if all of the English-language media can’t think of a better word how can I? Then I came across this story in Der Spiegel’s English service. It found the word that had eluded the BBC and me: Fritzl sired children with his daughter. Ah, doesn’t that feel better

• The only good news about the Amstetten story is that Josek Fritzl is not a Muslim. Note how the media doesn’t report ‘Christian man keeps daughter under locks for 24 years’. Had he been a Muslim so-called expert after expert would be offering amateur dissections of the ‘Islamic’ mind and how it is predisposed to such barbarity. Had Fritzl been Muslim, consumers of Westerner media could rest assured that such barbarity belongs not to Us, but Them, the darkie orientals. But no, Fritzl is white and as far as I know, Christian. Phew.

• Rightly, the people of Amstetten are reporting to be soul-searching and wondering how such horror could be going on under their noses. On the day this news arrived, news also arrived that Israel had killed four Palestinian children. Gaza, like the basement in Amstetten, is ignored by its neighbours while Israel’s policy of collective punishment carries on unchallenged, as it has done since its inception 60 years ago. How can four children be killed in one day, a people deprived of fuel for basic needs, how can they suffer zero healthcare, and poverty and how can we allow the Fritzl’s that are Israel’s spokesmen to spout their bile, while Palestine’s children pay the price? Perhaps it is their fault that they were not born in Tibet and that their cause is not as fashionable as it is morally upright. Boycott China in today’s world say Happy Birthday to Israel. It’s okay for a state to be a torturer and a murder, if not an individual.