Steve, It's Called Tzitzit and It's But One Undergrament

Steve Erlanger, its seems, is probably finishing off his regular job as the NYTimes' correspondent in Israel and as is the custom, is preparing for his removal and replacement by gathering material for a book. In doing so, he is finally hitting the "soft news" field which he as his predecessors have done before him have ignored (and in doing so, pervert the reality of what Israel is but that's another issue).

In an article on the buying power and purchasing tastes of the Hareidi community, I spotted this:

Here in Ramat Beit Shemesh A, the spacious “Shefa Shouk” is an outlet for the ultra-Orthodox segment of a large grocery chain, Blue Square-Israel Ltd. Shefa Shouk has its own food labels with the strict “Badatz” kosher certificate. There is special clothing — undergarments with fringes, for example — and a large baby section.

Steve, it but one garment and, in Hebrew, it's popularly called 'tzitzit' which refers to the fringes, as commanded in the Torah, that need but fixed to four-cornered clothes, under or over.


Picture source

By the way, my grandmother always called it "arba kanfot" (four corners) because 'tzitzit' sounds too much like 'tzitzim' which in Yiddish means female breasts. She wanted me to grow up proper, in deed and word. And don't get it mixed up with 'tzimmes' a great dish for Rosh Hashana or Succot.

Erlanger Enamored

Another Steve Erlanger "inside Gaza" story:-

September 26, 2007
For Gaza’s Young at Play, Fields Can Be Deadly
By STEVEN ERLANGER
GAZA — The three Abu Ghazala fathers were in mourning, in the Palestinian way, sitting with their relatives recently in a shaded courtyard, open to the fields of watermelon and eggplant in which their children had died.

The children — Yehiya, 12, Mahmoud, 9, and Sara, 9 — were tending goats and playing tag on Aug. 29 when an Israeli shell or rocket blew them apart. “They went up to that palm tree,” said Ramadan Abu Ghazala, Yehiya’s father, pointing 300 yards away. “They went there every day.”

As the fathers, all farmers, talked, an Israeli blimp, with cameras, hovered in the sky above Beit Hanoun on the northern edge of Gaza, an Israeli drone buzzed in the air and an Israeli watchtower loomed over the nearby border. It was the blimp or the drone, presumably, that first identified the target.

And there's more.

Like this contradiction:

The Abu Ghazalas do not defend the rocket fire from their fields...Suleiman Abu Ghazala, Sara’s father, said the launcher in question had been sitting in the same field for three months; the others agreed.

Hmmm. Three months they didn't think to remove the launcher?

They crazy or perhaps they really do support Arab terror against Israeli civilians?

Really?

Mr. [Mahmoud] Zahar, who has a tougher reputation and is more senior in Hamas, also agreed, but said praying outdoors violated religious laws.

Steve Erlanger, reporting for the New York Times wrote that. Good to know.

But check this:-

Cairo - Scholars of al-Azhar, Egypt's top religious authority, said a ban imposed by the Palestinian radical group Hamas on public prayers in Gaza was not Islamic, reports said Friday.

And he also wrote this in that same report:-

Nearly three months after Hamas conquered the teeming streets of Gaza, a wary calm has taken hold. People stroll at all hours, car theft has practically stopped, even armed police officers are rarely seen.

After 18 months in which gun battles between Hamas and Fatah forces defined street life, Hamas has made it illegal to carry weapons in public or to fire them, even at weddings or funerals.

Calm? Illegal to carry weapons?

Oh, sorry. Erlanger meant only vis a vis other Arabs.

Shooting at Jews, rocketing them, mortaring them, etc., that okay.

Reporting all the news there Steve?

Try this:

Sep 7, 2007, 10:57 GMT

Gaza City - The Fatah party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused the rival Hamas movement Friday of having abducted and executed a Fatah member in the central Gaza Strip.

Palestinian ambulance services said they found the body of 24 year-old Tarazan Dughmush at the Gaza beach near the Nusseirat refugee camp. He had been snatched by masked gunmen along with his cousin Ibrahim Dughmush the previous night.

Palestinian medical sources said Tarazan Dughmush appeared to have been killed instantly by a single bullet in the head fired at close range. His cousin was also badly injured.

Or this:-

Sept. 4 - A Palestinian was shot dead Wednesday in a Hamas stronghold in Gaza City, and hospital officials said he was a member of a Hamas security force, but the Islamic group later denied he belonged to the force.

The circumstances of the shooting in the Zeitoun neighborhood were not immediately clear.

The shooting came almost two months after Hamas wrested control of the Gaza Strip in five days of brutal fighting. Since then, tensions have been high in Gaza between Hamas and the rival Fatah...

Steve and Foreign News Editor of the esteemed NYTimes, are we truly getting the news in your reporting and your paper?

NYTimes Doesn't Bring You the Other Side

Steve Erlanger reports on the Peace Now report.

But doesn't include a reaction/response/denial/agreement/ from either Moetzet Yesha or Bet El (the story carries a map of Bet El as an illustration).

Not nice journalism ethics.

P.S. Well, I presume that he did not contact any spokesperson.

How I Would Have Written It

Here's Steve Erlanger's copy from today's NYTimes (although to be fair, there is always an editor or two on ndown the line before his original copy gets published):-

Israeli security forces shot and killed two Palestinian gunmen who opened fire at them on Saturday night in Sheik Said, the Arab East Jerusalem neighborhood, near the separation barrier that Israel is building. Israeli police and ambulance services said two Israeli officers were wounded, one seriously. A Palestinian bystander was also seriously wounded and later died.

and here's how I would have written it:-

Two Palestinian gunmen who opened fire on Israeli security personnel were killed in the returned defensive fire. The terrorist incident occured on Saturday night in Jerusalem's Sheik Said neighborhood, populated by Arabs near the prevention barrier Israel is being forced to build. Israeli police and ambulance services said two Israeli officers were wounded, one seriously. A Palestinian bystander was also seriously wounded and later died.