I still have to read the Lawrence Wright piece on Gaza in the New Yorker. From a friend who has:
It’s a reasonably well-meaning report, yet badly organized and haphazardly conceived–passing in and out of the Shalit story and Operation Cast Lead. No forward motion, no momentum; the effect is diffuse–partly a deliberate effect to avoid a direct, continuous encounter with the wretchedness of the life Israel has helped create in Gaza; also likely an effect of writing with insufficient purpose. The Shalit story is the frame, and that assures that human interest will outweigh considerations of international politics and power. It closes with a pathetic plea from Shalit’s father, but no such Palestinian voice is ever heard directly, anywhere.
It also cuts corners in the customary ways of the MSM–speaking, for example, of the fact that "Saudi Arabia arranged a peace accord" between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority in March 2007, broken by civil war; this without the relevant proximate fact that the U.S. gave substantial assistance to the Palestinian Authority–i.e. the connection between Elliott Abrams and Muhammad Dahlan. The paragraph about March 2007 never uses the words "Palestinian Unity Government": surely a purposeful omission. Such a government is what most Arab countries and most of Europe would like to deal with, but the very word is forbidden now by the apparent enforced exclusion of Hamas from negotiations.
There’s also a fair amount of grammatical euphemism, e.g. "According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, ninety-six percent of Gaza’s industrial sector collapsed after Operation Cast Lead." He uses an active verb, "collapsed," but it is a verb that conceals agency. Consider the different feel of the sentence he did not write: "Israel destroyed ninety-six percent of Gaza’s industries."
Weiss interjects that one friend of his thought the piece was an "absolute plus" for the goal of opening Americans’ eyes.
I go halfway with your friend… The article puts together the facts about the destruction in a way that will startle those who haven’t had any real exposure to the facts before. But its tendency is to make us see the place as a terrible, just a pitiable, trap, which unfortunately the people of Gaza and their leaders have made largely by themselves. Israeli politics is barely touched. Not a word for example on the pre-election placement of the assault and the importance of the timing for the candidates Livni and Barak.
That opening photograph, by contrast, is tremendous–a tremendous shock. Oddly like the Times which occasionally lets its pictures say what the stories refuse to say.
