PJ Media

Why did the so-called “mainstream media,” or MSM, widely disseminate the picture of Alan Kurdi—the three-year-old Syrian child who drowned in the Mediterranean—while never publishing pictures of other Mideast children who, worse than accidentally drowning, were intentionally murdered?

Did you, for instance, ever see this more recent picture?

This little boy was murdered a few weeks ago, on March 27 — Easter Sunday — when Islamic suicide bombers, targeting Christians, attacked a crowded park, killing dozens of people, mostly women and children.

What about this baby in diaper, lying dead under a church pew?

He—along with some 60 Christian worshippers—was killed when Islamic jihadis attacked their church service in Baghdad in 2010 (click here to see what happened to the adults—including the Muslim suicide bombers).

Did you see this picture?

It was of the “youngest hostage” captured by ISIS/Freedom Fighters after they took the predominantly Christian town of Kessab, Syria, in 2014. Based on precedent [1], he's likely dead now.

What about this 12-year-old Coptic Christian girl — also found lying dead on the Mediterranean coast?

She was abducted and murdered in Libya last year, soon after the U.S.-supported jihadis who ousted Gaddafi issued a “reward” for anyone finding and killing Christians. Her parents were also murdered for the same reason. (More graphic images of her mutilated face here.)

What of this 12-year-old Pakistani Christian girl?

She was raped and murdered by a Muslim man who wasn’t even convicted, as happens regularly in Pakistan whenever a Muslim abuses or murders a Christian.

Christian children are not the only ones to be slaughtered by Muslim jihadis for being subhuman “infidels.” The child below was executed in Syria in 2012 by “freedom fighters”—today more commonly known as “ISIS”—for being the son of Shia (who are seen as “infidels” no less than Christians).

This toddler girl was reportedly chained and made to watch her Shia parents being executed. Based on another extremely graphic picture, her heart may have been later carved out by the “rebels.”

The above pictures are only a small sampling of Christian and other “infidel” children killed by Islamic supremacists. Much more graphic images are available (such as the beheaded and mangled corpse of a very young Buddhist girl in Thailand).

Back to our original question: why did the MSM—which you now know habitually ignores images of children killed for being non-Muslim “infidels”—publish and widely disseminate the image of a child who accidentally drowned? Simple: For a desired effect. For a political agenda. In this case, to prompt “sympathy and outrage at the inaction of developed nations in helping refugees,” as one report put it.

And it worked.

Thus, French president François Hollande phoned a number of “European leaders after the images [of Kurdi] were circulated in the media and told the leaders that the picture must be a reminder of the world's responsibility against refugees.” British Prime Minister David Cameron said he felt “deeply moved” by the picture, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny found it “absolutely shocking,” and so on. “Shame on us all for the death of Aylan Kurdi”—the title of an op-ed—was the dominant theme.

Action followed words. Because of the widely disseminated image of that unfortunate child, countless more Muslim "refugees"—mostly single adult males, some ISIS operatives and sympathizers—were received into Western nations, whose heartstrings were sufficiently pulled, than might have otherwise.

And that’s the reason—the desired effect—that prompted the "mainstream media" to disseminate the image of Alan Kurdi far and wide.

If the mainstream media had intended to be “fair and balanced,” the pictures you just saw, likely for the first time, would have been deemed more newsworthy than the picture of Alan. After all, they depict children who were intentionally killed by Islam-inspired hate, whereas Kurdi died accidentally.

The former murders can actually be prevented—but first the media would have to report them far and wide—whereas the tragedy that befell Kurdi is of the kind that will always plague man.

More pivotal questions:

Based on the widespread outrage and action elicited by the picture of Kurdi, would a picture of a Christian child killed for being an “infidel”—if disseminated widely—provoke widespread “sympathy and outrage at the inaction of developed nations in helping” Christian minorities living under Islam?

Would European leaders wring their hands and express how “absolutely shocked” or “deeply moved” they are? Would the MSM publish a barrage of op-eds berating us for shirking our humanitarian responses? Would Hollande proclaim that “the picture must be a reminder of the world's responsibility” for persecuted Christians?

Would action follow words?

Rather than put their political counterparts in such a predicament, the "mainstream media" do not publish such images at all.

For those who still need it spelled out: the MSM’s primary function is to normalize and popularize certain narratives that pave the way for certain political agendas. These narratives often have nothing to do with reality and exist solely to cause much of the populace to support policy.

In this case, the narrative/political agenda is to maintain the farce that Islam is inherently peaceful and that the West is responsible for taking in millions of Muslim "refugees."

The above pictures of Christian and other “infidel” children mutilated and murdered by Muslims destroy that narrative, so you never got to see them before.

But now you have them, along with access to social media and contact information for mainstream outlets. Let’s see how they respond.

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[1] This particular picture reminds one of a very apt excerpt from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s classic work, The Brothers Karamazov, which follows:

These Turks took a pleasure in torturing children, too; cutting the unborn child from the mother’s womb, and tossing babies up in the air and catching them on the points of their bayonets before their mothers’ eyes. Doing it before the mothers’ eyes was what gave zest to the amusement. Here is another scene that I thought very interesting. Imagine a trembling mother with her baby in her arms, a circle of invading Turks around her. They’ve planned a diversion: they pet the baby, laugh to make it laugh. They succeed, the baby laughs. At that moment a Turk points a pistol four inches from the baby’s face. The baby laughs with glee, holds out its little hands to the pistol, and he pulls the trigger in the baby’s face and blows out its brains. Artistic, wasn’t it? By the way, Turks are particularly fond of sweet things, they say. [Emphasis added]

Originally published by the Gatestone Institute under the title "Should the U.S. Build an 'ISIS Wall?'"

Of all the legitimate reasons a majority of Americans support U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump’s plan to “build a wall” along the U.S./Mexican border, perhaps the most important is least known: Islamic terrorists, including ISIS operatives, are trying to use the porous border as a way to smuggle WMDs into the U.S. and launch terror attacks that would make 9/11 seem like child’s play.

Recently, “One of the American men accused in Minnesota of trying to join the Islamic State group wanted to open up routes from Syria to the U.S. through Mexico... Guled Ali Omar told the ISIS members about the route so that it could be used to send members to America to carry out terrorist attacks, prosecutors alleged in a document.”

But ISIS didn’t need to be “told” by Ali “about the route.” Nearly a year earlier, the Islamic State explored options on how it could smuggle a WMD “into the U.S. through Mexico by using existing trafficking networks in Latin America.” Consider the following (currently) hypothetical scenario outlined in an article published by the Islamic State’s magazine Dabiq last May (issue #9):

Let me throw a hypothetical operation onto the table. The Islamic State has billions of dollars in the bank, so they call on their wilāyah [province] in Pakistan to purchase a nuclear device through weapons dealers with links to corrupt officials in the region…. The weapon is then transported over land until it makes it to Libya, where the mujāhidīn [jihadis] move it south to Nigeria. Drug shipments from Columbia bound for Europe pass through West Africa, so moving other types of contraband from East to West is just as possible. The nuke and accompanying mujāhidīn arrive on the shorelines of South America and are transported through the porous borders of Central America before arriving in Mexico and up to the border with the United States. From there it’s just a quick hop through a smuggling tunnel and hey presto, they’re mingling with another 12 million ‘illegal’ aliens in America with a nuclear bomb in the trunk of their car.

If not a nuke, “a few thousand tons of ammonium nitrate explosive,” which is easily manufactured, could be smuggled, explained the ISIS publication.

Such thinking is hardly new. Back in 2009, Abdullah al-Nafisi, a Kuwaiti cleric explained how easy it would be to murder countless Americans by crossing through the Mexican border:

Four pounds of anthrax — in a suitcase this big — carried by a fighter through tunnels from Mexico into the U.S. are guaranteed to kill 330,000 Americans within a single hour if it is properly spread in population centers there. What a horrifying idea; 9/11 will be small change in comparison. Am I right? There is no need for airplanes, conspiracies, timings and so on. One person, with the courage to carry 4 pounds of anthrax, will go to the White House lawn, and will spread this ‘confetti’ all over them, and then we’ll do these cries of joy. It will turn into a real celebration. Abdullah al-Nafisi

Hypotheticals aside, ISIS and other Islamic terrorists are known to be based in and coming from Mexico. In August 2014, Judicial Watch reported that ISIS was “operating in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez and planning to attack the United States with car bombs or other vehicle borne improvised explosive devices.” And in April 2015, ISIS was exposed operating in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua—a mere eight miles from the U.S.

In October 2014, Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif, said, “I know that at least 10 ISIS fighters have been caught coming across the Mexican border in Texas.”

Homeland Security emphatically denied Hunter’s claims, called them “categorically false,” and added that “no credible intelligence to suggest terrorist organizations are actively plotting to cross the southwest border.” However, days later it was confirmed that “4 ISIS Terrorists” were arrested crossing the border into Texas.

On September 20, 2015, “U.S. Border Patrol nabbed two Pakistani men with ties to terrorism at the U.S.-Mexico border…. Both men … took advantage of smuggling networks or other routes increasingly used by Central American illegal immigrants to sneak into the U.S.”

This is uncomfortably reminiscent of the “hypothetical” scenario outlined in the aforementioned ISIS magazine: after naming Pakistan as the nation to acquire nukes from—and the two men arrested for “ties to terrorism” were from Pakistan—the Dabiq excerpt explained: “The nuke and accompanying mujahidin… are transported through the porous borders of Central America before arriving in Mexico and up to the border with the United States. From there it’s just a quick hop through a smuggling tunnel.”

On December 2, 2015, “A Middle Eastern woman was caught surveilling a U.S. port of entry on the Mexican border holding a sketchbook with Arabic writing and drawings of the facility and its security system.” Around the same time, “five young Middle Eastern men were apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol in Amado, an Arizona town situated about 30 miles from the Mexican border. Two of the men were carrying stainless steel cylinders in backpacks...”

Far from being reassuring, all these arrests ultimately indicate that Islamic terrorists are crossing the border into the U.S. For every illegal caught crossing, how many pass? One estimate says that at best only half of those illegally crossing the border are ever apprehended. That would seem to suggest that, for every one ISIS supporter or sympathizer that gets caught—and as seen, many already have been—another quietly slips through. Under Obama’s tenure alone, 2.5 million illegals have crossed the border. How many of these are ISIS operatives/sympathizers? Nor can border guards be especially alert for Islamic terrorists as many Arabs and Middle Easterners easily blend in with native Mexicans.

Three facts are undisputed: 1) ISIS and other terrorist groups see Mexico as a launching pad for acts of terror in the U.S.; 2) ISIS and other terrorist groups have bases of operations in Mexico; 3) members of ISIS and other terrorist groups have been caught trying to enter through the border.

In other words, it’s a matter of time. As Rep. Duncan Hunter once put it:

If you really want to protect Americans from ISIS, you secure the southern border. It’s that simple. ISIS doesn’t have a navy, they don’t have an air force, they don’t have nuclear weapons. The only way that ISIS is going to harm Americans is by coming in through the southern border—which they already have.

However, just as before 9/11—when U.S. leadership had received ample warnings of a spectacular terrorist attack targeting the U.S.—this problem will likely be ignored till a spectacular attack launched through the border occurs. Then, it will be more of the usual from big media and politicians: shock and amazement, handwringing, and appeals against “Islamophobia.”

The idea of securing the U.S.-Mexico border by “building a wall"– or electronic fence, which has worked so effectively in Israel—is more urgent than most know.