4200 Red Balloons for Sderot

By Mladen Andrijasevic
January 26, 2008

4200 Red Balloons in the shadow of the UN HQ in New York (courtesy)

There is this photo in The Jerusalem Post of red balloons that the Israeli consulate put on 1st Avenue just in front of the UN headquarters. Actually 4,200 red balloons to signify 4,200 Kassam rockets fired into Israel from Gaza since the 2005 disengagement. It was done apparently because nothing else worked. "Up until this day, every attempt to raise the issue and make it part of the American media's agenda has been unsuccessful," Consulate Spokesman David Saranga said.

I emailed my friends in the States to find out whether this photo was carried by any New York City media, or any media in the US. Nothing. Apart from the blogosphere — nothing.

This article could be devoted only to the fact that the UN, the organization set up to stop aggression has been debating a resolution which would accuse Israel for blockading Gaza without even mentioning the 4200 rockets, and in so doing would negate the very principles it was originally founded on. But the American media does not seem to care about the 4200 Kassams either. That implies that nobody in the world cares about getting their facts straight. This, in itself, is a startling story.

Red balloons float in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza

Does the world always behave like this? No, of course not. We all know what would be happening if Key West were attacked from Cuba or San Diego attacked from Mexico. The rockets falling on Key West would not go unreported. No, there has to be one ingredient in the story which makes everybody switch into another universe, into a trance of mass hypnosis ? and that ingredient is of course Israel. When Israel is part of the equation you can expect — actually there does not seem to be a limit what one can expect. It all becomes surreal.

Diplomats from democratic liberal democracies whose countries participated in the founding of the UN organization look at the red balloons and then proceed to abstain. Not support, mind you, but abstain. Supporting the resolution would be too much; the signs of total surrender to tyranny. They are not quite ready for that yet. Abstaining gives them the feeling of wisdom and tolerance and 'control". They can look themselves in the mirror without throwing up.

The Jewish Community Relations Council set what was to be 4,200 red balloons
as an act of solidarity against the 4,200 Qassam missles launched from Gaza
by Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists into the Israeli town of Sderot.
(AP Photo/Stephen Chernin)

For the US media there could be even less excuse. Especially the New York City media. The ideology which fuels the Kassams attacks is the same one that inspired the 19 jihadists to fly into the World Trade Center just three miles south of these red balloon reminders. But the story that involves Israel is automatically judged by other standards, and however logically we try to explain what is going on, and try to factor in all the known anti-Israel bias, it is insufficient, because as the UN Security Council resolution in the making shows, the explanation is beyond hate, envy, appeasement, cowardice, greed, anti-Semitism.

it is mystical.