Non-Thinking from the NYTimes

Jodi Ruderon alerted us to Ethan Bronner's piece in the NYTimes, whose theme is "Separation Is Dehumanizing", from which I quote and comment:

...When the Oslo peace process fell apart in 2000 and a Palestinian uprising erupted, 

It did not fall apart.  Arafat refused the Clinton parameters, a very, very generous offer.

the common wisdom that quickly developed was that the two nations needed not greater intimacy but complete separation. Israel built a barrier, 

That was intended to keep terrorists and especially suicide bombers from reaching their targets.

barred most Palestinians from entering (replacing them with Asians on temporary visas) and made it illegal for Israeli citizens to enter Palestinian cities. At the same time, a movement took hold among Palestinians aimed at cutting off contact with Israelis. This has grown into what is known as boycott, divestment and sanctions, or B.D.S., which seeks to isolate Israel internationally.
...Israelis — especially in the heartland around Tel Aviv, where two-thirds of the country lives — can now go weeks without laying eyes on a Palestinian or ever having to think about one. In Gaza, Israelis do not exist except in a kind of collective nightmare. In the West Bank, the Israelis are mostly settlers and soldiers. Apart from a few pockets of industry and shopping where Palestinians are employed, interaction is highly limited.

And if an independent "Palestine" is established, we'll see more of its citizens in our country???

...The relationship between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas is one of mutual loathing, according to Martin S. Indyk, who resigned last month as American envoy for peace negotiations after nine months of futile efforts. The two sides and their leaders have become total strangers. Each vilifies the other and imagines its own people to be morally superior, forced to defend itself against the cruel predations of the other.

To compare officially-sponsored incitement of the Pal. Authority to anything any Israeli does, is really incomprehensible.

A generation ago, there were plenty of causes for tension and concern. But Palestinians building what they hoped would become their state, and Israelis working with them, had an often moving sense of shared purpose. Some discovered that they liked one another and looked forward to working together. Today, those feelings are virtually dead. And while mixing the populations in those years was no panacea, divorcing them has only made things worse.

Didn't Israel divorce --- disengage --- from territory?  Didn't, under Oslo, it create Areas A and B? Did it help?

More non-thinking from the NYTimes.

______________

EG prompts me:

"he doesn't say that all along it has been Israel's "peace camp" or "left" that has called for separation"


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Another Unpublished Letter

This was submitted last week but...as usual, why should the NYTimes bother with a perceived "right-of-center" reaction even though my insight, IMHO, is simply factual and an objective view:-

To the Editor:

Ethan Bronner's report on the woes of Israel's Channel 10 commerical television ("Israel TV Station’s Troubles Reflect a Larger Political Battleground", Dec. 28) certainly highlights the politics involved. Of the eight sources whose words were quoted in the story, one was neutral to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and seven were persons ideologically opposed to him, even the one who suggested excusing his presumed behavior. An anonymous source was used to make quite a spurious claim that finally included a direct response of denial from the Prime Minister's bureau. None of Israel's media monitoring groups appeared in the story to offer additional angles. For example, the issue of the previous positive political intervention in favor of Channel 10 over the past decade in permitting its owners to avoid payment of debts and gain other financial favors was missing, as was the possible factual incorrectness of Raviv Drucker's investigation.

Yisrael Medad
Vice-chairman, Israel's Media Watch
Jerusalem,
http://www.imw.org.il/

In other words, my point is that the real story here is not "democracy threatened by Netanyahu" but "democracy threatened by media tycoons who have managed to have politicians from all across the political spectrum allow them for a decade latitude in their financial woes and obligations while possibly 'paying' them off with privileged media coverage which could be considered blackmail in a sense". That, I think, is at least the real story, in addition to the very real quite-left-of-center media branja now ganging up on Netanyahu. The media is the actual threat to democracy.


For your information, in any case.

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Bronner Errs

The New York Times' Ethan Bronner, wrote this:

Gen. David H. Petraeus, who oversaw American war efforts in Iraq and now in Afghanistan, told Congress this year that the lack of progress in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict created a hostile environment for the United States in the region

It's wrong, though.
Petraeus was asked the question on camera by Philip Klein and denied it.


How's that for the paper of record?


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A Bronner Botch - It's All in a Name

Ethan Bronner displays the subtle bias that permeates our media reality - even if unintended - when on the issue of eastern Jerusalem he writes:-

no utterance escapes politics. All labels and names here are contested. The mayor calls the neighborhood not by its Arabic name of Al Bustan but by a Hebrew one — Gan Hamelech, or the King’s Garden, a reference to the spot some believe King David wrote psalms

Ethan, Bustan in Arabic means Garden or Orchard. The Arabs are foreigners, and have been since 638, and are occupiers, turning Jewish land into what they wish you and other to supposedly consider as Arab land since time immemorial". Hebrew came first.

You see, the Arabs "borrowed" not only the name but the history of the Jews there. It's not even a contest.

That name, Gan HaMelech, the King's Garden, is found in Second Kings 25:4 and in Jeremiah 39:4, for example.

The Arabs came to Jerusalem, calling it Beyt El-Makdas, the Beit HaMikdash, the Temple. Almost all iof the names of existing Arab locations in the Land of Israel are either translations of or adaptations to the original Hebrew placename. is they who are contesting and attempting to illegally rewrite reality.

Don't let them steal our nomenclature, our history, our identity, our land.

Not That Simple

I found this quotation in the NYTimes' coverage of Avigdor Lieberman:

“I am afraid of this guy, and I dislike him,” said Shmuel Sandler, dean of social sciences at Bar Ilan University, an institution that emphasizes Jewish identity and values. “He appeals to simple-minded voters. Average Israelis feel that we have given up territory, and at the same time the Arabs don’t want to accept the Jewish nature of the state.”

Simple-minded? Simple? Or perhaps the average Israeli is pretty well a sophisticated voter?

Well, here's another not very complicated observation in that same article:

“The biggest boost his campaign had were pictures of Israeli Arabs waving Hamas flags during the Gaza war and shouting ‘Death to the Jews,’ ” noted Abe Selig, a reporter for The Jerusalem Post who has been covering Mr. Lieberman.

and this too:

There are about 1.3 million Arab citizens of Israel, or a little less than 20 percent of the population. Their loyalties are divided, but never before have they protested so vigorously.

But this bit is not that simple:

Unlike many on the far right, he favors a two-state solution with the Palestinians.

How's that? Maybe that's convoluted or perhaps it's not so simple to grasp what Lieberman is placing on the body politic's agenda.

and what about this:

Uzi Landau, the party’s No. 2, said recently, “In the United States, whoever wants to be a citizen has to pledge allegiance to the country and its Constitution, know the anthem, be familiar with the flag and its history.”

But, despite all this, which to any independent observer would mean that a) things are not that simple and b) there is a serious problem of loyalty which needs a creative solution, one based on democratic fundamentals but assuring that politicide, the stripping off of Israel's character, will not occur, Bronner fails as a reporter when he writes further on:

Taken together, Mr. Lieberman’s proposals aim toward an ethnically purer Jewish state

Ethnically purer would mean he wants all Arabs out or restricted when all he wants is a simple, yes, simple plain old committment of basic loyalty. No screaming "Death to the Jews!", no ieentification/justification of Hamas and other terror groups like Hezbollah.

When the balcks campaigned for civili rights, they won because they did not try to destroy American but rather to demand constitutional liberties.

Arabs deserve more in Israel but that comes with a concommitant element of loyalty.

I won't be voting for him because I, too, am uncomfortable with him and his message although I know it has to be discussed and dealt with. I don't trust him to keep Eretz-Yisrael on the one hand, and I know he won't go anywhere fast with his "loyalty" program, which he has been championing for the past three elections and done nada.

Translation Alternative

In his review of A.B. Yehoshua's newest novel rendered into English, Ethan Bronner writes this paragraph:-

the death that haunts this story isn’t that of her sister, Yirmi’s wife, but of her nephew, his son, six years earlier as a soldier in the Israeli-­occupied West Bank. He was accidently shot by fellow soldiers during an ambush, the victim of what is called in English “friendly fire.” In Hebrew — Eish Yedidutit — these words don’t carry the same meaning, and therefore have a jarring impact on both the ear and the heart. In his rage and desperation, Yirmi seizes on this phrase, translated from English, when he first hears it as “some small spark of light that would help me navigate through the great darkness that awaited me and better identify the true sickness that afflicts all of us.”

The translation of that phrase, which is Stuart Schoffman's, is indeed problematic but the translation is adequate.

What I think, though, that Bronner is trying to convey in his comment that "these words don’t carry the same meaning" is that it could have been rendered as "friendship fire" to give it a more resonant meaning since 'friend' in Hebrew is actualy "chaver" (חבר) and 'friendly fire' should have been then: "eish chaverit".

Yedid in Hebrew also relates to God, as in the 500-year old Sabbath Hymn, "Yedid Nefesh".

Embarrassing Israel TV

I am now watching Channel One TV right now. A program called "Press Conference".

The two guests discussing the American elections are Bob Simons and Ethan Bronner, respectively of CBS and the NYTimes. It's in real-time broadcast, not pre-recorded.

This is Israel. We speak Hebrew. If an Israeli journalist was invited to "Meet the Press", would he speak Hebrew? No.

So, we're watching Bob and Ethan speaking English with the host, Menashe Raz and journalist Barbara Rom, asking questions in English and Raz is feebly and inadequately and poorly doing a translation.

This is quite embarrassing.

Overlooked

Seems I composed this, sent it off to the NYTimes but when it wasn't published (surprise, surprise), I forgot to put it up.

Background here and here.

So, here it is, another spurned and rejected Letter to the Editor:-

Ethan Bronner, reviewing Sari Nusseibeh's memoir, asserts that the author "has always publicly spurned all forms of violence" but notes that after 1987, he "carried cash in bags to and from the exiled leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization" ("After Years in Middle East Politics, One Palestinian Still Finds Hope", March 29). But one cannot be non-violent and yet fund a terrorist organization.

Even after signing the 1993 Oslo Accords which were predicated on a cessation of terror, the PLO, headed by Yassir Arafat, continued to engage in terror, a terror it began in 1964, when it was founded, three years before the Six Days War when the territory that was to be "liberated Palestine" was solely Israel.

It is this duality of duplicity that continues to serve ill the Arabs residing between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River and a major reason they do not deserve a state anywhere in that area.