http://sarahhonig.com/2012/03/16/another-tack-marie-in-morag/
More than anything, Marie Colvin, who was laid to rest Monday, will be remembered for sacrificing her life for the London Sunday Times’ circulation figures (albeit pro forma in the name of intrepid reporting on the siege of Homs). Her immortality in the annals of journalism is guaranteed.
With that in mind, it’d be especially instructive for us to recall one of her eyewitness accounts which is most pertinent to our own circumstances.
It was published nearly six years ago – in April 2006, only a few months after we disengaged from Gaza.
Colvin tossed the truth about our self-bamboozlement directly in our faces. This perhaps was why that specific item generated near-zero resonance among us. Why focus on the unpleasant even if it’s the straightforward bottom line with profound implications for our possible future follow- up follies?
If there’s anything we dislike, it’s to be confronted with evidence of our own inexcusable imbecility.
Colvin unceremoniously gave us the facts. It was left up to us to draw conclusions which our establishment and Left-dominated media scoffed at. Therefore, Colvin’s singularly unpalatable feature never made our headlines back in the day.
That in itself poses something of a riddle. One would expect our agenda-driven press to lap up her material, because Colvin was never remotely renowned for being a lover of Zion.
Having gone where few men dared and promoted herself as dedicated to chronicling war’s worst, she covered conflicts in Kosovo, East Timor, Chechnya and Sri Lanka, where she lost an eye. In March 2006 she boldly ventured a tad beyond the reinstated Green Line to see what became of Morag, one of the spirited settlements razed by Ariel Sharon and sidekicks – Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni et al.
“Four green flags of the extremist Palestinian party Hamas were flying last week at the gate of a military training camp built on the ruins of Morag,” she opened. “Inside the camp recruits from the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, ran mock attacks over dunes covered in dry grass. One of them stopped to launch a rocket-propelled grenade.”
Colvin stressed that “the base is no makeshift encampment. A telecommunication tower rises from a dune; loudspeakers broadcast from masts… the stones from the old homes have been painted white and used to make guardhouses. Even the settlement’s gate has been cannibalized; now it swings to Toyota pick-up trucks bringing more armed men in uniform.”
A senior al-Qassam honcho who showed Colvin around explained to her that his outfit’s deadly aims vis-à-vis Israel haven’t changed one iota since Hamas’s electoral victory.
The insolence of the unnamed hotshot quoted by Colvin was underscored at exactly that same time by then-Palestinian Authority foreign minister Mahmoud a-Zahar of Hamas (during the Hamas-Fatah partnership).
