Wednesday, December 10, 2014

The "One-Sentence Media Bias" Maneuver

How easy is it to perform a media bias maneuver?

Just one sentence can do it.

How?

Here:-

Exiled from Canaan in antiquity, Jews are famously scattered across the world

By the time the Jews were scattered (for the second time I should point out), the land called Canaan hadn't existed for many centuries.  And there were no Canaanites either.

Even the Romans who in 69 CE conquered Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple and then, in 135 CE, lost tens of thousands of troops quelling a revolt of Jews led by Bar Kochba, called the country Judaea:-

Soon, however, all Judaea had been stirred up, and the Jews everywhere were showing signs of disturbance, were gathering together, and giving evidence of great hostility to the Romans, partly by secret and partly by overt acts; 2 many outside nations, too, were joining them through eagerness for gain, and the whole earth, one might almost say, was being stirred up over the matter. Then, indeed, Hadrian sent against them his best generals. First of these was Julius Severus, who was dispatched from Britain, where he was governor, against the Jews. 3 Severus did not venture to attack his opponents in the open at any one point, in view of their numbers and their desperation, but by intercepting small groups, thanks to the number of his soldiers and his under-officers, and by depriving them of food and shutting them up, he was able, rather slowly, to be sure, but with comparatively little danger, to crush, exhaust and exterminate them. Very few of them in fact survived. 14 1 Fifty of their most important outposts and nine hundred and eighty-five of their most famous villages were razed to the ground. Five hundred and eighty thousand men were slain in the various raids and battles, and the number of those that perished by famine, disease and fire was past finding out. 2 Thus nearly the whole of Judaea was made desolate, a result of which the people had had forewarning before the war. For the tomb of Solomon[the temple], which the Jews regard as an object of veneration, fell to pieces of itself and collapsed, and many wolves and hyenas rushed howling into their cities. 3 Many Romans, moreover, perished in this war. Therefore Hadrian in writing to the senate did not employ the opening phrase commonly affected by the emperors, "If you and our children are in health, it is well; I and the legions are in health."

The country is the Land of Israel, in Hebrew, Eretz-Yisrael.

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