Weasels All Over
Reuters trashes Israeli commandos for killing Palestinian soldiers at the height of Intifada II in revenge for the murder of Israeli soldiers. The writer, Dan Williams, buries the meter on the weasel-journalism detector:
The report in the Maariv daily, confirmed by senior Israeli security sources, was the latest public challenge to the Jewish state's official insistence that its forces have abided by a strict code of ethics in battling a Palestinian uprising.
"The latest public challenge"? Have I missed a wave of revelations recently? Shouldn't the writer, at a minimum, give some hint as to what that wave might be (on the blogosphere, he would have had to link to something while making that statement - luckily for Williams, he's not, so he doesn't have to).
After gunmen from the Palestinian faction Fatah killed six soldiers at a checkpoint outside the West Bank city of Ramallah on Feb. 19, 2002, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon approved stepping up the scale and variety of retaliations. "The feeling was that this would be 'an eye for an eye'," an ex-soldier who took part in the shooting spree three years ago told Maariv.
When Palestinians make Israelis dead, they're "killing" them. When Israelis respond to the Palestinian murderers, they're going on a "shooting spree."
Reprisals have long loomed large in Israel's strategic planning, beginning in the 1950s when it answered cross-border raids by Arab irregulars in kind. After 11 Israeli athletes were killed by Palestinian gunmen during the 1972 Munich Olympics, Israel sent agents to assassinate that attack's masterminds.
The first sentence is true but misleading. Those "irregulars" were trained and armed by Egyptian Intelligence, and they operated largely out of Jordanian territory. Nasser openly bragged about conducting winter raids into Israel and (per his usual charming manner) went so far as to offer a fixed bounty for Israeli heads. Between 1951 and 1956, over 400 Israelis were killed and 900 were injured. Of course, the Arab countries were never condemned for their blatant disregard of UN resolutions and international law, even though they openly admitted to enabling the terrorists (Israel, during the same period, was the subject of numerous UN condemnations). History lessons by Reuters - now without any of that annoying context stuff.
The second sentence is nonsense at best and open lying at worst. Killing the Black September terrorists who murdered Israeli athletes has nothing to do with "reprisal," a word that indeed implies an "eye for an eye". If Israel kidnapped, terrorized, and finally murdered 11 star Arab athletes, then it would be a reprisal. Going after murderers might be extra-judicial, but it's not even "retaliation." Reprisal is a weasel way of smuggling in moral-equivalence, in this case between the murderers of Jews and the Jews who punish them for murder.
The report in the Maariv daily, confirmed by senior Israeli security sources, was the latest public challenge to the Jewish state's official insistence that its forces have abided by a strict code of ethics in battling a Palestinian uprising.
"The latest public challenge"? Have I missed a wave of revelations recently? Shouldn't the writer, at a minimum, give some hint as to what that wave might be (on the blogosphere, he would have had to link to something while making that statement - luckily for Williams, he's not, so he doesn't have to).
After gunmen from the Palestinian faction Fatah killed six soldiers at a checkpoint outside the West Bank city of Ramallah on Feb. 19, 2002, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon approved stepping up the scale and variety of retaliations. "The feeling was that this would be 'an eye for an eye'," an ex-soldier who took part in the shooting spree three years ago told Maariv.
When Palestinians make Israelis dead, they're "killing" them. When Israelis respond to the Palestinian murderers, they're going on a "shooting spree."
Reprisals have long loomed large in Israel's strategic planning, beginning in the 1950s when it answered cross-border raids by Arab irregulars in kind. After 11 Israeli athletes were killed by Palestinian gunmen during the 1972 Munich Olympics, Israel sent agents to assassinate that attack's masterminds.
The first sentence is true but misleading. Those "irregulars" were trained and armed by Egyptian Intelligence, and they operated largely out of Jordanian territory. Nasser openly bragged about conducting winter raids into Israel and (per his usual charming manner) went so far as to offer a fixed bounty for Israeli heads. Between 1951 and 1956, over 400 Israelis were killed and 900 were injured. Of course, the Arab countries were never condemned for their blatant disregard of UN resolutions and international law, even though they openly admitted to enabling the terrorists (Israel, during the same period, was the subject of numerous UN condemnations). History lessons by Reuters - now without any of that annoying context stuff.
The second sentence is nonsense at best and open lying at worst. Killing the Black September terrorists who murdered Israeli athletes has nothing to do with "reprisal," a word that indeed implies an "eye for an eye". If Israel kidnapped, terrorized, and finally murdered 11 star Arab athletes, then it would be a reprisal. Going after murderers might be extra-judicial, but it's not even "retaliation." Reprisal is a weasel way of smuggling in moral-equivalence, in this case between the murderers of Jews and the Jews who punish them for murder.
