Militant New York Times Editorial

The NYTimes is on the warpath.

From its Nov. 5 editorial on Israel, entitled "The War Within":-

Militant Jewish settlers in the West Bank clash regularly with Israeli police who remove illegal homes. Israeli security officials have warned of possible assassination attempts on peace-seeking Israeli leaders.

In September, Jewish militants tried to assassinate Professor Zeev Sternhell, a supporter of Peace Now, which documents settlement construction. Settlers are damaging Palestinian property in retaliation for government actions against the outposts.

That was a neat trick. Apply the term "militant" to settlers, then call those who placed a small explosive device (you saw the damage here) - there was no real assassination attempt!) - "militants" as well, make sure the term "settlers" is repeated and, poof!, 1 + 1 = 2. Guilt by associative manipulation.

Moreover, the editorial writer continues:-

Israel must freeze all settlements and reduce the roadblocks in the West Bank that are strangling the Palestinian economy. To do so, the Israeli government needs the public support of American Jews and moderate Israelis against militants who seek political change through violence.

Is the Pal. economy really being strangled? As is the sole reason "settlements" and "roadblocks" or other reasons.

And, of course, finally, "militants" is the euphemism for "terrorists" in the pages of the New York Times.

So, according to the New York Times language mavens, all the "settlers" (that's me, too, I guess) are "militants" (who are "terrorists") who all what to assassinate their opponents and are all responsible, supposedly for strangling an economy (that only thrives to support, shhhh, terror) and the lack of peace.

Gee, too bad we weren't around in 1947-48 (War of Independence); 1951-56 (Fedayeen); 1962-64 (Water War with Syria); 1964-1967 (Founding of Fatah and Six Days War) to be blamed.

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UPDATE

Received this from inside the NYTimes:

Just so you understand the structure of an American newspaper – the editorial and [rporters] have nothing to do with each other. [They] don’t talk with the editorial writers, they don’t talk with [the reporters] and [neither] feel in any way affected by what they write. That is how the publisher wants it. There is no pressure whatsoever for...work to conform to the views of the opinion page. It is like a separate publication which is inserted into the newspaper. Complain away, of course...unlike Israeli and European papers, major American papers have different structures, a kind of separation of church and state, if you will.

Second UPDATE

Sent in this letter:

The editorial, "The War Within" (Nov. 4) applies the term "militants" to the Jewish civilians who reside in communities in the disputed territories. In that the NYTimes' policy is to use that very same word as a euphemism to describe Hamas, Jihad and Fatah terrorists (*), its use to describe Jews who do not engage in terrorism is most unfortunate.

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(*) See this:

Rice has been making the same twin challenges to Israel and the Palestinians on more than 20 largely fruitless journeys to the region during her tenure as secretary of state: Israel should loosen its grip on the West Bank and the Palestinians should tighten theirs on militants.