Nigeria: Boko Haram Largely Undeterred In Its Terror Campaign
Gaza: How the Media Aided and Abetted Genocide by Israel
Boko Haram’s terror campaign, since 2002, to create an extremist Islamic state in Nigeria continues unabated and with increasingly lethal effect. An estimated 12,000 Nigerians have been killed and 8,000 disabled by their wounds this year alone, President Goodluck Jonathan has said. And the U.N.-affiliated Internal Displacement Monitoring Center says that 3.3 million Nigerians have had to leave their homes because of the violence—placing the country third behind Syria and Colombia for the largest number of internally displaced people.
The recent escalation in bombings, kidnappings and mass killings by Boko Haram suggests a huge problem with the Nigerian military’s capacity to respond, even with foreign intelligence and military help.
Why is Boko Haram able to hold Nigeria hostage? Dr. Chika Onyeani, publisher and editor in chief of The African Sun Times, provides perspective and some answers.
On June 15, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Hamas, the occupation-resistance movement in Palestine, was responsible for the kidnap-murders three days earlier of three Israeli teenagers—a charge Hamas denied. Netanyahu promised retribution. On July 17, Israeli tanks were rolling into Gaza, the first wave of a brutal siege that has claimed more than 1,000 lives, mostly of civilians.
Last Friday, BBC correspondent Jon Donnison tweeted a report that an Israeli police spokesman admitted that Hamas was in fact not responsible for the kidnap-murders. Incredibly, the media organizations that had touted Israel’s pretext for pummelling Gaza into dust, have had little or nothing to say—either about Israel’s lies or about their roles in promoting this act of genocide.
Without the kind of access these media organizations have to key players, Leid Stories on July 18 said that the killings quite possibly were “an unsanctioned act.”
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