I'm hell with Arab names. Sorry, I grew up with the same orientalism that Goldberg of Arabia did. But last night I published an allegation from the ingaza blog of a methodical Dier-Yassin like massacre in Zaytoun, which is evidently the name of a Gaza town, of a family called Samouni. I questioned whether it could be true, and still do. I challenged my internet informant for the source of the accusation. Response:
If you watch Bartlett on that video, she seems to have two eyes and two ears. Of course she got the Zaytoun report second hand. Who knows. I hope reporters with resources look into this. Maybe even Mark Danner, who made his name in investigating Salvadoran atrocities. I'm agnostic. I wouldn't put anything past Israel. (Nor past brutalized Arab fanatics either towards Israelis).
Speaking of Jeffrey Goldberg, I noticed that last night he was slamming the Arab world for propping up children's bodies for photographs. This is a racist argument; Goldberg is suggesting that Arab people treat their children differently from other peoples. They don't. I have been on 5 continents; all peoples love their children– and sometimes the children of other people too. The fact is that it is necessary to document civilian casualties. Inevitably such iconography has its own strange spiritual and emotional vocabulary. The Holocaust Memorial is filled with ghastly images, as it must be.
