This photo of Israeli soldiers appeared on front page of New York Times yesterday. It was taken by Abbas Momani of AFP
The phones must have been ringing off the hook yesterday at the New York Times.
For many readers of the paper of record were shocked/stunned/pleased to see this photograph by Abbas Momani of Agence France-Presse/Getty Images over four columns at the lefthand top of the front page (over Ethan Bronner’s story about the Iranian issue eclipsing the Palestinian question). The caption said:
“Israeli soldiers fired at Palestinian stone throwers in the West Bank town of Al Ram, near East Jerusalem, last month.”
If you go to that link now, you will find a different caption: “Israeli soldiers fired rubber bullets at Palestinian stone throwers in the West Bank town of Al Ram, near East Jerusalem, last month.”
The article has this addendum:
A picture caption on Thursday with an article about the increasing marginalization being felt by Palestinians in the West Bank referred incompletely to the action of the Israeli soldiers shown. While the soldiers, whose activity was not recounted in the article, were indeed firing rifles at stone throwers in the West Bank town of Al Ram last month, the rifles contained rubber bullets.
As Hemingway said, you really need a good bullshit detector to get anywhere in journalism.
PS: Do I think those soldiers are firing rubber bullets? Yes. Do I think anyone knows just what they were firing? No. Do I think a lot of people with certain affiliations were asserting yesterday that they were firing rubber bullets? Yes.
And, fired straight on as the angle in the pic suggests, do US readers imagine that rubber bullets just bounce off t-shirt clad chests of Palestinian boys and young men? Do NYT readers assume the soldiers need all that protective clothing against stones thrown by Palestinians?
When a “rubber bullet” hits a head, knee or other parts of the human anatomy, the result is not that much different than a lead bullet. Just ask all Palestinian kids who are injured for life because of Israeli rubber bullets. Israeli soldiers like to shoot at the legs and knees.
Or maybe they were just firing teargas cannisters. Sounds not-lethal too. And that is what NYT readers want to hear.
Israeli “rubber bullets” aren’t necessarily all rubber:
The Israeli soldiers in the photograph are firing what appear to be rifles, so the “rubber” bullets are apparently of the first kind, metal cores covered by rubber, and that kind of bullet can inflict serious injury.
Language police alert! Avoid GOV-SPEAK. GOV-SPEAK is a euphonious circumlocution to remove the bad odor of something disreputable. Call a spade a spade.
“Rubber bullets” is a GOV-SPEAK code for, “We are not bad people.” Doesn’t that “rubber” make you all warm and cozy? Aren’t you sure that no harm was done by such fuzzy bullets? That’s what GOV-SPEAK is for.
Saying they shot “rubber bullets” does not answer three questions: WHY were they firing and WHAT did they seek to accomplish by firing and WHAT did they in fact accomplish by firing.
When WE talk, we should avoid GOV-SPEAK code words. We should even avoid using the so-called “live ammunition” phrase, itself a weird GOV-SPEAK code for something (which might even embrace the worst sort of ammunition, dum-dum bullets) with the word “live” thrown in, I suppose, to suggest to the unknowing that being hit by one leaves you alive, and to suggest to the knowing, “A-ha, live ammunition, we — the knowing folks — know what THAT means, ho-ho-ho”.
I’d just say, “Soldiers shot bullets at people.” Don’t engage in GOV-SPEAK.