Today the New York Times reports on the killings of three Israelis at a checkpoint to the occupied territories, committed by a Palestinian who was then killed. The headline in the paper is:
Palestinian Kills 3 Israelis, Shattering Tranquillity at West Bank Crossing.
The definition of “tranquillity” employed by the Times is one-sided; it can only apply to the Israeli point of view. You need only read some of our recent coverage of Palestinian conditions on the West Bank to see that Palestinians don’t lead tranquil lives. Just last week an Israeli occupying commander vowed to disable half the Palestinian youths in a refugee camp, nine Palestinians were injured in an Israeli raid on an occupied village, and several Palestinians were arrested by Israeli forces in dawn raids on their homes.
The occupation is only tranquil if you’re the occupier. Peter Feld put it best, in a response to the New York Times White House correspondent Peter Baker.
https://twitter.com/peterfeld/status/912998664565612544
How long can America’s leading newspaper express such open indifference to Palestinian conditions?
Thanks to Ofer Neiman.
Normally I hate twitter, but it’s moments like these where we realize that truly, the internet is the great equalizer. Bravo!
Absolute American far left fringe bullshit that palestinians in both the territories and Israel don’t lead long periods of tranquility while other Palestinians in areas where resistance is more active and or violent do not. And some Israeli settlements where both arab and Jews live experience periods of relative tranquility while Israeli settlements where ultra right wing nationalists and orthodox may not, or, may experience calm only by the presence of either IDF troops or pa security to maintain a forced tranquility.
As usual, MW exaggerates in a more egregious way then the crappy nyt, which he constantly whines about. (Except for the dozen or more very pro-palestian pieces they’ve printed recently) covers. If pw would be honest about the nyt and report that pro israel groups often have equally legitimate complaints about the anti-israel bias of some coverage
Reading the following article by Ehud (War Criminal )Barak , one would think there are no Palestinians or even an occupation in any part of “The Land of Israel”.
In this article , the term “occupation ” or Palestinians is never mentioned .
How tranquil is that.
“The ceremony in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc marking the 50th anniversary of our return to every part of the Land of Israel, the cradle of our birth as a nation and as the bearer of a universal mission, is anything but a national ceremony. It’s a cheap, crude political attempt by the right to appropriate the achievements of the Six-Day War and love of the land – and to hell with the truth and the facts.”
read more: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.814538
No paywall using this link.
This is such S****! :
“Israel only occupies 2% of West Bank, says US ambassador …
The US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, has made a second dramatic intervention in US Middle East policy, suggesting that only 2% of the West Bank is occupied by Israel and that the international community always intended for Israel to keep some of the land it seized during the six-day war in 1967.
The comments, made in an interview with the news channel Israeli Walla, came a day after rightwing Israeli politicians celebrated 50 years of Israeli settlement building, prompting condemnation by Palestinian officials.
“I think the settlements are part of Israel,” Friedman said, in comments that seem at odds with decades of US foreign policy.
“I think that was always the expectation when resolution 242 was adopted in 1967,” he said, referring to the UN security council resolution made at the end of the six-day war, when Israeli forces occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip. …
“The idea was that Israel would be entitled to secure borders,” he told Israeli Walla. “The existing borders, the 1967 borders, were viewed by everybody as not secure, so Israel would retain a meaningful portion of the West Bank, and it would return that which it didn’t need for peace and security. So there was always supposed to be some notion of expansion into the West Bank, but not necessarily expansion into the entire West Bank.
“And I think that’s exactly what Israel has done. I mean, they’re only occupying 2% of the West Bank. There is important nationalistic, historical [and] religious significance to those settlements, and I think the settlers view themselves as Israelis and Israel views the settlers as Israelis.”
Resolution 242 demanded the “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict” while “emphasising the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war”.
While the figure of 2% has been used in the past by Israeli officials to define occupation as the physical footprint of settlement buildings, “area C” – the part of the West Bank under Israeli administrative and security control – accounts for 60% of the West Bank.
In addition, reports compiled by the UN and NGOs suggest up to 39% of all land in the occupied West Bank is under the control of Jewish municipalities, local authorities and regional councils, with Israel effectively prohibiting Palestinian construction and development there.
Nabil Shaath, an adviser to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, said: “Sometimes ambassadors can be ignorant and sometimes they can be biased but this is completely ignorant, not just of US policy but the fact that the occupation refers to the whole of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. It also shows a complete ignorance of resolution 242, in which there is no reference to settlements.
“If this is a preview of President Trump’s ultimate deal, I shudder, but we have a situation where decision-making capability and soundness of judgment is totally lacking.”
Another Palestinian official said: “Israel occupies 100% of the West Bank. If I was a US citizen I would be extremely concerned that my ambassador in Israel is using his position to try to emphasise the importance of settlements to Israel.” …”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/28/israel-occupies-small-fraction-of-west-bank-claims-us-ambassador