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Of Innocents and Savages

By Leslie J. Sacks

Google "Congo killings" and the search engine will find you 3.56 million references. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is 2.3 million square kilometers, and is home to 62.6 million people.

Enter "Gaza killings" and Google will locate 8.56 million references. The Gaza Strip is 360 square kilometers, and home to 1.5 million people. That is one-thousandth of the land mass, and two-hundredths of the population, of the DRC.

The media (both 'new' and 'old') bias is indisputable.

Less than 1,000 Gazans were reliably documented as killed in their last war with Israel, many of which were armed militants. In Congo, over four million unquestionably innocent civilians have now been killed - by weapon or disease - in the past twelve years. Horrific stories of rape, burnings, and mutilations abound. And yet, the media's fixation on Israel's 'oppression' of the Arabs continues.

The question is evitable: why is there such a focus on deaths in Gaza-a war triggered by the firing of over 6,000 rockets at Israeli civilians-while the exterminations in the DRC are comparatively ignored? Is it because the Congolese are black and invisible people who cannot help but murder each other? Or is it because Hamas and the Gazans have been granted victim status amongst the worldwide left, giving the cognoscenti and 'activists' everywhere a perfect whipping boy in Israel? Either way, it doesn't speak well for the evolution of mankind: blacks, apparently, are still savages, and Jews still deserve to be killed. Sincerely,

Mr. Leslie J. Sacks Los Angeles, California LESLIE'S BLOG: