On How The NYTimes Reports

What was reported yesterday is today in the NYTimes:

Israel Intensifies Training of Settler Security Teams

We are informed that

The military is drawing up boundaries around each settlement that protesters will not be allowed to cross and is carrying out simulated “scenarios” with the security teams, according to Shlomo Vaknin, the security officer of the Yesha Council, the settlers’ umbrella organization.

It was not clear how the boundaries would be made clear to protesters.

I hope the protestors will get to know those boundaries.

For all our sakes.

But the NYT has to get biased:

...There are more than 100 settlements in the West Bank, only some of which are fenced. Each has its own rapid response team armed with military-issued M-16 automatic rifles. There are high levels of hostility — and past clashes — between some Palestinian villages and neighboring settlements and outposts dominated by Jews claiming territory they consider their biblical birthright.

And added this:

the Israeli military said in a statement that it “maintains an ongoing, professional dialogue with the community leadership and security personnel throughout Judea and Samaria while devoting great efforts to training local forces and preparing them to deal with any possible scenario.” It was referring to the areas of the West Bank by their biblical names.

My that sounds ominous.  Our communities "dominate" although anybody who has been out here can see that many more Arab villages dominate our towns, and dominate our roads and our fields.  They not only dominate, they kill, and ignite and destroy.  This is not a one-way situation.

And those names?  They appear in the 1947 partition resolution:

The boundary of the hill country of Samaria and Judea starts on the Jordan River at the Wadi Malih south-east of Beisan and runs due west to meet the Beisan-Jericho road and then follows the western side of that road in a north-westerly direction to the junction of the boundaries of the Sub-Districts of Beisan, Nablus, and Jenin...

Is the UN a Bible-thumping organization?  Is there something wrong with Biblical names?

Does not the NYTimes know what real boundaries are?  Or what if the esteemed paper would employ such terms as "historical borders" or "historical names"?  Do they have to stain us with a brush of fanaticism?

And there is, on another theme, this:

The Israeli military says it now provides its forces with more nonlethal equipment for use in such situations. Despite reports that such weapons, like tear gas and stun grenades, would be distributed to the settler teams, Mr. Vaknin said he believed the military had so far decided not to do so.

So, not everything reported is true.

^