Sunday, February 01, 2009

How to word news headlines: Israel threatens retaliation for Gaza rocket fire (AP)

Quick and simple points:
  • This headline was seen on my Yahoo!mail homepage. Yahoo!mail is a major player in propaganda dissimination, see here
  • The headline first attempts to influence the world leaders with the opportunity to pressure Israel not to retaliate - it presents concern for retaliation, not for the actual attack on civilians who happen to be Jewish.
  • Israel committed a unilateral cease fire - the thank you it gets from the world is continued bombardment of Israeli civilians - while half assed attempts are made stop the flow of Arms to Hamas. This is somehow not newsworthy. It is not the content of the title. I don't care what you may find within it in paragraph 7. Every person who gets his news by flipping through his email only sees the title.


Israel threatens retaliation for Gaza rocket fire
Israeli's prime minister threatened "harsh and disproportionate" retaliation after Gaza militants fired at least 10 rockets and mortar shells into southern Israel on Sunday, wounding three and raising the risk of fresh violence days ahead of elections.

All three candidates to replace Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in the Feb. 10 vote leveled their own threats against Gaza's Hamas rulers.

Since an unwritten truce ended Israel's offensive in Gaza two weeks ago, rocket and mortar fire from the Palestinian territory has increased steadily. Israeli retaliation, including brief ground incursions and bombing runs aimed at rocket launchers and smuggling tunnels, is intensifying.

A late afternoon mortar barrage on the village of Nahal Oz, next to the Gaza border fence, wounded two soldiers and a civilian, the military and rescue services said. Earlier, a rocket landed near a kindergarten near Gaza, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

Even before the mortars hit Nahal Oz, Olmert told his Cabinet that "if there is shooting at residents of the south, there will be an Israeli response that will be harsh and disproportionate by its nature."

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