Fox’s Julie Banderas and Jennifer Griffin selectively edited history Thursday as they deceptively painted Israel’s strike on Iranian targets in Syria as merely a reaction to Iranian aggression against a blameless Israel.
To be fair, much of the media is burying Israel’s aggression that preceded the Iranian attack Israel retaliated heavily against. But at least they've got it. This New York Times has this in its fifth paragraph of an article called, "Iran Fires Rockets Into Golan Heights From Syria, Israelis Say":
As Iran has tried to build up its military capabilities inside Syria, Israel has carried out scores of strikes against what it says are advanced weapons and convoys destined for its enemies in the region.
[Iran’s] rocket attack early Thursday appeared to come in response to Israeli strikes on positions in southern Syria on Wednesday.
The Times also noted. albeit obliquely, that Donald Trump’s violation of the Iran nuclear agreement played a direct role in the ratcheting up of tensions.
Israel had been bracing for a retaliatory attack from Syrian territory after a number of deadly strikes against Iranian targets there. But analysts said the Iranians had been restrained from striking back while awaiting President Trump’s decision on whether to withdraw the United States from the nuclear agreement with Iran.
[…]
A missile strike, apparently by Israel, south of the Syrian capital, Damascus, on Tuesday, an hour after Mr. Trump’s announcement about the nuclear deal, killed 15 people, at least eight of them Iranians, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Wednesday.
But on Fox News, the escalation was presented as the result of Iranian attack on innocent Israel and with the obvious suggestion that the Iranians are dangerous enemies not to be trusted in the nuclear agreement.
Anchor Julie Banderas set the stage for a report by Fox correspondent Jennifer Griffin:
BANDERAS: A dramatic escalation in Middle East tension as Iran and Israel trade fire in Syria and take a look at these images! Israel saying it carried out one of its most extensive strikes in the region in decades, hitting, quote, nearly all Iranian targets on its list. The attacks coming in response to a series of Iranian rockets fired at Israeli army outposts.
Griffin’s report was almost all stenography from the Trump administration's pro-israeli talking points. First, she said the Pentagon “would like to not get drawn into this.” But she also kept the door wide open for future involvement when she said she had been told by a “senior U.S. defense official” that “there had been no request for support or any political decision made as of yet about the U.S. military getting further involved.”
Then Griffin read a statement from press secretary Sarah Sanders that misrepresented the situation and demanded Iran “take no further provocative steps” while asking no such thing of Israel:
“The United States condemns the Iranian regime’s provocative rocket attacks from Syria against Israeli citizens, and we strongly support Israel’s right to act in self-defense. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRBGC) bears full responsibility for the consequences of its reckless actions, and we call on the IRGC and its militant proxies, including Hizbollah [sic] to take no further provocative steps.”
Near the end of the report, Griffin noted that the “Iranian strike on Israeli targets” came one day after Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear agreement as if Iran, not Israel, had been waiting for the opportunity to ratchet up aggression.
But Griffin also added this odd fact, that a little over two weeks ago, “U.S. Central Command General Joe Votel was invited to Israel on an unusual trip given that Israel doesn’t fall under CENTCOM. Syria, however, does.”
In short, Trump’s violation of the Iran nuclear deal is already having deadly consequences. With regime-change enthusiasts John Bolton and Mike Pompeo in Trump's cabinet, it's probably merely a precursor of more and worse to come.
You can bet your tax cut and rising health insurance premiums that Fox News will be there to hustle us all along.
Watch the gaslighting above, from the May 10, 2018 Happening Now.
Originally published at Newshounds.us
