A Compliant has been lodged with the ABC by Lee, about the Four Corners program, 10 Feb 2014: 'Stone Cold Justice', as follows:
The Four Corners report 'Stone Cold Justice' was an incredibly one sided & biased piece of reporting.
The story romanticised and heroized the Palestinian perpetrators. It is they – not the Israeli dead and injured – who are presented as the victims, "provoked by the situation," forced into this type of "futile" hobby, only to be arrested and incarcerated by fierce, powerful Israeli soldiers.
Stone throwing Palestinians were glorified as "pushback against Israel," a "rite of passage," and an "honored act of defiance." Its violent results were played down, whitewashed.
What about 5-month old Yehuda Shoham whose skull was crushed by stones hurled at his car and who died after a six day struggle for life in 2001?
What about 3-year-old Adele Biton who spent four months in the intensive care unit of a hospital fighting for her life and is now confined at a rehabilitation hospital, relearning how to eat, talk and walk after Palestinian rocks struck her mother's car this past March?
What about 1-year-old Yonatan Palmer and his 25-year old father who were killed in September 2011 when their car was struck in a Palestinian stone attack?
Lyons repeatedly laments the cruel arbitrary arrest of "Palestinian children." But who are the Palestinian children to which he refers? 16 year olds? Any person below the age of 18?
It is hard to believe that of the 700 + Palestinian youth to which Lyons refers, a majority are five and six year olds. The emotive images suggest the children are very young however most of those arrested for crimes are predominantly youths aged 17 and 18. They are engaged in serious terrorist activity and carry out the same heinous crimes as those Palestinians who are legal adults.
The question that needs to be raised unequivocally is why are Palestinian 'children' in the streets throwing stones rather than in school?
Indeed, it is not the Israeli justice system that plays Palestinian youth as pawns, but rather Hamas, the PA and the Palestinian leadership that recruit their own youths as puppets in their game of armed conflict.
Palestinians know the deadly repercussions of rock throwing and the potential legal implications. Yet, they continue to exploit their children in their own violent pursuits rather than foster sentiments of mutual coexistence.
By the same token children as young as five are recruited as 'assistants' for suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks that have killed many innocent civilians. Unfortunately, Lyons ignores the dilemma of the Israeli courts to deal with the very challenging problems posed by Palestinian "child terrorists."
Given all that is happening in the Middle East at the moment, especially in Syria [where 10,000 children have been killed, along with 130,000 adults; and where over 8 million civilians have been rendered homeless], one must wonder why the show choose to air a story about a situation which is already being handled by the international community and the relevant country with great concern and at the outmost seriousness, instead of airing a real exposé regarding the human rights condition anywhere else in the Middle East.
This is clunky journalism at best, malicious distortion at worst.
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