This is getting annoying:

Those sentences is from ABC News, but it's typical of how weasels are covering this is. Can you guess what kind of weasel tactic we're dealing with here? We'll give you a minute.

Ready?

It's the weekend, so we made this one kind of easy. It's just your standard, garden variety "technically true but totally irrelevant statements". Nothing special. Let's look at the second, critical sentence again:

Well yes, there was pressure from fundamentalist religious leaders to cancel the parade. But the plausibly-deniable implication - that they had anything to do with getting the parade canceled - is flat out false. In fact, that sentence is exactly as true (and exactly as true), as the following one would have been:

Gay leaders on Thursday canceled the public parade in Jerusalem amid security concerns, pressure from fundamentalist religious leaders, the Democratic sweep of the US Congress, the statements by Democratic leaders that they were going to seek redeployment from Iraq, a new South Park episode attacking anti-theist douchebag Richard Dawkins, and the publication of several damning reviews of George Lakoff's conservative-bashing "this is why academics who gain fame in one field need to stay the hell out of rhetoric and political new book.

Again, our rewritten sentence is technically true - all of those things were happening when planners and security officials moved the gay pride parade to Hebrew University. But the point is that they're totally irrelevant to the move. The same thing is true about the religious pressure - yes, we ourselves complained about lack of civility, bigotry, and outbursts of violence from ultra-religious Jews in Israel.

We know why this weasel tactic is being busted out. There are a lot of journalists who seem to believe a lot of stupid catchphrases like "the problem isn't fundamentalist Islam - the problem is fundamentalism in any religion". Now the problem for them is that anyone with a brain responds "well yeah, but it seems that Islam is unique in that any version except fundamentalism seems to have been destroyed - the moderates let the extremists set the agenda for their cultures and countries". So for those journalists, it'd be really nice for them if there was some other religion or country where moderates were staying silent in the face of extremist bigotry.

Unfortunately for them, this isn't that example. Let's be very precise about this: fundamentalist pressure did not cause the parade to get canceled. It was neither sufficient nor necessary for the cancellation. The parade was originally going to go on despite it, and police had made plans to bring out over 10,000 officers to make sure that it went on. And the parade would have been called off because of the security alert without it. Implying that Israeli leaders caved to fundamentalist religious pressure is very nice for people whose ideology tells them that "the problem is not Islam, it's religious fundamentalism in general". But it's false.

[Cross-posted at IsraPundit]

Previously: "Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism" Is The Dumbest Slogan Ever,
Evangelical Support of Israel - Now With Even More Good Will!, The Problem Isn't Any Particular Religion...