Jerome Slater, author of an important paper on
the American press's failures to tell us just
how bad life is in Palestine (in stark comparison
to the Israeli press's achievement in the same area),
has offered me another critique of recent Times coverage:
Until fairly recently, the New York Times customarily simply
reported, without comment, whatever U.S. government spokesman
or politicians running for office claimed about this
or that, no matter how obviously false or distorted the
statements. Lately, though, no doubt in response to the
increasingly widespread criticism of this practice, the Times
has occasionally been adding its own corrective commentaries
within the news stories, sometimes slyly, sometimes in
straightforward fashion.
Not when it comes to Israel, though. In this morning’s
Times, Steven Erlanger
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reported that two armed soldiers from the Hebron settlement
of Kiryat Arba were shot and killed while hiking in the area;
Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility. Without comment, the Times
reported the Israeli police statement: two hikers were attacked
by “terrorists.”
In other words, two innocents, minding their own business,
were without provocation, murdered? If so, that would certainly
be “terrorism.” The plain facts of the matter are quite different:
two settlers, members of one of the most fanatical, irrational,
and violent Jewish settlements in the heart of Palestinian terri-
tory, who were also serving as soldiers in an increasingly repressive
army of occupation that now routinely kills Palestinians on an almost
daily basis, were shot and killed. That’s not “terrorism” but armed
resistance—even if done by a resistance group that on other occasions
does indeed employ terrorism.
The official language of the Israeli report, in short, is nothing
less than an all too common Israeli Orwellian perversion of language,
and thus understanding. For the Times to fail to even hint at that
is a dereliction of responsibility--to its readers, to the best interest
of Israel, and to simple truth.
(Weiss: I'd add one note. The article ends with a short paragraph
saying that Israeli soldiers had killed "at least" 7 Palestinian
"gunmen" in Gaza the day before. Obviously, these lives don't count
as much as the two armed hikers.)
