Saturday, July 19, 2014

New York Times Editorial, "Israel’s War in Gaza": The Blind Leading the Blind

In an editorial entitled "Israel’s War in Gaza" (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/19/opinion/Israels-War-in-Gaza.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region&region=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region&_r=0), The New York Times relies on three would-be authorities: President Obama, the UN and Nathan Thrall. Regarding President Obama, the editorial tells us:

"There was no way Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was going to tolerate the Hamas bombardments, which are indiscriminately lobbed at Israeli population centers. Nor should he. As President Obama said on Friday, 'No nation should accept rockets being fired into its borders, or terrorists tunneling into its territory.'

. . . .

Hamas leaders deserve condemnation for storing and launching rockets in heavily populated areas, cynically knowing they will draw Israeli fire to places where civilians live and play. Still, in a call with Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Obama was right to express concern about the 'risks of further escalation and the loss of more innocent life.'"

Of course, if President Obama says it, it must be right. No mention by the Times that the US, the UK and Afghan government forces have killed a total of some 6,500 innocent Afghan civilians in recent years (see: http://www.thenation.com/afghanistan-database).

Also no mention by the Times of US drone attacks in Pakistan. As reported in a 2014 Huffington Post article entitled "The Toll Of 5 Years Of Drone Strikes: 2,400 Dead" (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/23/obama-drone-program-anniversary_n_4654825.html) by Matt Sledge:

"Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International issued a pair of reports in October fiercely criticizing the secrecy that shrouds the administration's drone program, and calling for investigations into the deaths of drone victims with no apparent connection to terrorism. In Pakistan alone, [the Bureau of Investigative Journalism] estimates, between 416 and 951 civilians, including 168 to 200 children, have been killed."

Apparently unbeknownst to Obama and the editorial board of The New York Times, the Israeli Defense Forces are also seeking to minimize civilian casualties:



Of course, this does not mean that civilians are not going to be killed in a war in which Hamas uses schools to store its missiles (see: http://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/press-releases/unrwa-strongly-condemns-placement-rockets-school), but the IDF is making efforts to reduce civilian casualties, which include leaflets asking civilians to evacuate battle zones, phone calls to civilians warning of an imminent attack, and "knocking-on-the-roof" (a warning with a rocket that does not contain an explosive charge) prior to an air strike.

The Times editorial also quotes the United Nations:

"The United Nations says that of the more than 260 Palestinians killed, three-quarters were civilians, including more than 50 children."

However, the United Nations receives its casualty figures from the health ministry in Gaza, which is run by . . . Hamas. Hamas, needless to say, is actively interested in inflating the number of civilians killed for propaganda purposes.

Finally, the Times editorial refers its readers to a guest op-ed by someone named Nathan Thrall, which was published by the Times yesterday (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2014/07/nathan-thrall-how-west-chose-war-in.html). Thrall would have us believe that Israel, with the help of Egypt and the West, brought the current war with Hamas upon itself. However, Thrall's risible essay fails to mention:

  • The Hamas charter, which calls for the murder of all Jews, not just Israelis.

  • Past suicide bombings in Israel perpetrated by Hamas operatives (425 terrorist attacks between September 2000 and March 2004, which killed 377 and wounded 2,076).

  • The thousands of rockets fired into Israeli population centers from Gaza by Hamas and Islamic Jihad over the course of more than a decade.

Thrall does, of course, repeat Obama's declaration that the situation in Gaza is "unsustainable."

Truly an instance of the blind leading the blind.

2 comments:

  1. In this case, the evil leading the evil

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'd like to comment. I have my perspective.
    When my mother's family survived the Ukrainian famine in the early 1930s by fleeing to Moscow, the New York Times published the Mr. Duranty's praise of Soviet paradise and I think gave him a Pulitzer (too lazy to check) for "reporting."
    When my father's entire extended Jewish family was exterminated, the New York Times was publishing ... actually I don't know what they were publishing. I do know that whatever it was it wasn't about the Holocaust. Even when Jan Karski knocked on all doors in New York begging for help, there was .... silence.
    Now, when my close relatives in Israel live in constant fear of terror, the overfed, overprivileged, overprimitive children of the New York Times (Andrew Rosenthal or Arthur Gelb, for example) joined by other overfed, overprivileged, overprimitive "journalists," such as Thomas Friedman spend their idiotic evil lives in their luxurious mansions by promoting the hate of Jews - still at the NYT (Andrew Rosenthal, for example) or elsewhere, by staging Nazi "operas" at the Met for example (Arthur Gelb)
    I am not forgiving them.
    It's immoral to forgive monsters, particularly when there is no trace of remorse, no attempt at asking for forgiveness.

    ReplyDelete