We’ve made a lot of Ethan Bronner’s implicit endorsement of the Israeli battle-orders for West Bank nighttime raids: "cutting the grass." David Bromwich’s analysis:
Love of order may present itself as a principle without exceptions so long as the order in view is that of our own society. In practice, the principle gets scaled back when disorder is seen to emanate from our own, i.e. the people to whom we owe loyalty and protection. So Bronner, all too easily, picked up the shocking euphemism "cutting the grass" to give the quality of a suburban chore to the IDF suppression of Palestinian disorders on the West Bank. Why the easy adoption of a prejudicial usage? Because it seemed obvious to Bronner that the bad people should be kept down, leveled like grass, etc. Part of the natural order of things. Yet he would never use such a phrase about a violent action against the West Bank settlers–even if the violence were carried out by the IDF and the settlers were a lynch mob.
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And now you are repeating that the falsehood that the euphemism was Bronner’s and not the individual that he was interviewing.
At worst, you’re only making those here out to be as bad as you and your denial of Hamas’ adherence to the ceasefire, November 4th and the actual targets of Operation Cast Lead and all of that. It’s like you’re trying to rearrange deck chairs on someone else’s Olympic while your own Titanic is sinking.
So much for your lecture about journalistic responsibility.
C’mon, Richard, that was NPR’s excuse for the shocking story Sheera Frenkel reported about gangs of gun-toting Israeli vigilantes harrassing Palestinian boys who are seen with Jewish girls. They were just reporting the story! From http://www.npr.org/ombudsman/2009/11/jewish_vigilante_story.html
Since Bronner blithely quotes the IDF officer without comment of his own, it appears that the vernicular is acceptable to him as a metaphor for the night-time raids. And Bronner’s legitimizing the phrase through its publication in (what once was) “the newspaper of record.”
Surely you would agree had the paragraph following the quotation had the Palestinian perspective on “cutting the grass,” it would be at least a bit more balanced? On September 22, Mohammad Othman was arrested by IDF soldiers on the Allenby Bridge Crossing, and is being held in an Israeli prison without being charged with a crime. A perfect example of “cut grass.”
Do you, as a Zionist, support this form of “cutting the grass?” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgTeRzueWsY
Its intellectually paltry to confuse a quote of another, with an original statement.
Sorry to accuse Phil of that, but that is what he did now three times.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
And don’t say you’re sorry, when you don’t actually mean it.
And you, refering to Bronwich’s statement as Bronner’s.
Those who can’t do, carp at others who can.
Like my impression of Friedman, I believe that the two are examples of the conventional wisdom shifting to the critical of likud in particular, NOT to “hasbara”.
I find that their reports include criticism of Israeli policies, and take heart in that.
They do not criticize the validity of the state of Israel, in formation, orgination, current existence, or its right to self-defense. They do point to excess that extends beyond self-defense, while noting that dealing with Hamas or those in the BDS movement that indulge in “we’ve got them on the run”, is not an easy task.
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