Who’s telling you the truth about Israel?
On November 4, Isabel Kershner had a long story in the New York Times titled, “Who’d Import Pigs to Israel? Ancient Europeans, Researchers Say.” Excerpts:
Israel may not be the most obvious place to study pigs, given that religious strictures in both Judaism and Islam forbid their consumption.
But Israeli researchers involved in a lengthy project whose goal is to reconstruct ancient Israel have now established that the pigs here are of European stock, unlike their Middle Eastern counterparts elsewhere in the region, and that they probably arrived with the non-kosher Philistines about 3,000 years ago…
Understanding human and animal movement is crucial to that process, said Israel Finkelstein, a professor at Tel Aviv University’s Institute of Archaeology, who directs the project. “We archaeologists know that pigs and pork consumption are two very good markers of ethnicity and identity,” he said, given the pig taboo in ancient Israel….
“Here, there’s an island of pigs with European ancestry,” said Steve Weiner, a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, who is a partner in the project, which is funded by a grant from the European Research Council. “We don’t know if Napoleon brought pigs, or the Crusaders, or if they all did.”
“Archaeologists,” he concluded, “take pigs very seriously.”
The same day, November 4, Juan Cole had a piece up on his site about all Israel’s human rights violations that week. Some excerpts:
Israel just issued tenders for over 1,700 new homes for Israelis on the Palestinian West Bank. The plan will involve demolishing Palestinian residences. This, at a time when Israel and the Palestinians are supposedly engaged in good faith negotiations that might end in a Palestinian state. At this rate, where would you even put one? (Another 3,000 such Israeli squatter homes are planned).
Israel is planning to dig for oil in the Occupied West Bank, in violation of the Oslo Accords and of the laws governing military occupations. Israel is likewise preventing Palestinians in Gaza from developing their offshore natural gas resources.
The government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is planning to build a ‘security wall’ along the border of Palestine with Jordan. This infrastructure is designed to secure Israel’s security presence along the Jordanian border, where it has no business being, far into the future, yet again detracting from Palestinian sovereignty.
Israel this week destroyed two “residential buildings in Beit Hanina village and 2 rooms in Jabal al-Mukaber neighbourhood” in East Jerusalem, leaving 33 Palestinian civilians homeless” , adding more displaced to the some 400 who have lost their homes in Palestinian Jerusalem in 2013 alone.
Israeli squatters on the Palestinian West Bank in Migdalim just sent bulldozers to the Palestinian village of Qusra, in order to annex more land to the Israeli squatter settlement.
Militant Israeli squatters uprooted and burned 121 olive and almond trees in Nablus and Bethlehem.
Who’s telling the real story, Juan Cole or Isabel Kershner?
Ah, but you see, both of them are!
It’s just that the Gray Lady selectively tells the story. You can’t say she is lying. It’s just that she withholds a lot of information. The favourite method of bias of the New York Times. Their slogan does say it all, really.
I’m sure some say not telling everything is a form of lie, but in technical terms, does what she says constitute a lie? Not really.
But if you think about it, what does it say that Kershner and people like her don’t even bother with hasbara-masquerading-as-news to the same extent which was much more likely 10 years ago? They know they can’t win anymore. So they just avoid.
Please don’t insult pigs. They are cute and intelligent and don’t bulldoze anyone’s home.
Oh dear, Taxi will want these porcine colonists deported back to Europe forthwith.
Isabel Kershner.
Zionist Jew.
Married to an Israeli Zionist Jew.
Probably has children – maybe in IDF?
The NYT is occupied by Zionism.
It’s amusing, but I think Philip is right to highlight stories like this.
It seems innocuous – a science story about pig genetics in Israel.
But if you read the Times long enough, you’ll notice a recurring pattern of such cute, apolitical articles on Israel and Israelis.
In my opinion, there is an agenda here, which is to normalize Israel in their readers minds.