Some Sloppy Reporting On Israel — Bad Journalism, Faulty Reasoning, Or Anti-Semitism? You Be The Judge
Some Sloppy Reporting On Israel — Bad Journalism, Faulty Reasoning, Or Anti-Semitism? You Be The Judge
By
Ken Eliasberg
Normally I hate to raise the specter of anti-Semitism; I do so only when it is so blatant that it requires a response. And let me hasten to concede that every disagreement with Israel, or any other position possibly linked to Jewish sentiment, is certainly not, without more, an act of anti-Semitism. But when one chooses to so systematically disregard the pertinent facts and/or constructs an argument so devoid of either merit or intellectual substance that it bespeaks of a questionable motive, then I am inclined to the view that there is something else operative in the approach being taken — and, for example, in the case of Israel that something else is, more often than not, anti-Semitism!!
And as a member of a minority, while it is possible to have a heightened sensitivity to slights, it is more often the case that you can distinguish misdirection or harmless criticism, on the one hand, from fairly obvious ethnic slurs, on the other. So, when something of that nature appeared in this paper, I let it go the first time — turned my back, so to speak, (but not my cheek). When it happened again, I decided to turn neither cheek nor back.The Two columns in this paper that I am referring to are: ‘Never Again:’ Judaeo (sic)-Fascism Makes the Slogan Meaningless, by Ralph Shaffer, which appeared in the January 8, 2009 issue of the paper and A New Look At Israel’s Role by Charles H. Bayer, which appeared in the August 6, 2009 issue of the paper. Both inappropriately and incorrectly take Israel to task for defending itself, on the one hand, and preserving itself on the other. So let’s take a look at each of them in some detail — first the Judeo Fascism column, a piece of absolute drivel.
SINCE WHEN IS DEFENDING YOURSELF A FASCIST ACT??
It seems the professor finds no fault with Hamas’s incessant rocket barrage, aimed at “innocent civilians,” but objects vigorously when Israel strikes back in an effort to bring an end to this assault. A careful read of this idiotic screed, which misstates almost all of the facts pertaining to the region’s history, leaves one with the inescapable conclusion that the good professor is, to say the least, not warmly disposed to Jews (as well as not being very well up on his history).
A bit of history here — real history, if you will, as opposed to some of the fabricated stuff intended to demonize Israel - might be helpful in illuminating the on-the-ground realities of the situation in Israel adjacent to Lebanon and in Gaza. In May, 2,000 Israel unilaterally withdrew from Lebanon. What did it get for this unilateral concession to its enemies, credit? Hardly! What it got was an unrelenting barrage of rockets from Hezbollah terrorists who had by then virtually taken over Lebanon. Taken over in the sense that there was no check — either from Lebanon’s armed forces or U.N. representatives on the ground — on the unrestrained brutality that Hezbollah rained down on Israel. Lebanon’s inability to deal with this bit of nastiness came as no surprise; Hezbollah is actually more powerful than Lebanon’s armed forces (and, to a certain extent, probably finds considerable support within that group). The fact that U.N. forces did nothing is certainly no surprise; after all what is a watch dog operation supposed to do other than watch? The U.N. is distinguished, if for nothing else, for its ability to render itself irrelevant in the case of almost any calamity.
Consequently, to provide some surcease to the unrelenting torrent of rockets showered on its citizenry, Israel had to take matters into its own hands — and did so - ineffectually, I might add. Ohlmert, then prime minister, launched a “politically correct” counter attack (you know, the kind of war that we are fighting (?) on terror). Though ineffectual, it did bring an end — at least for the moment — to open hostilities. It did not, however, make a dent in either Hezbollah’s willingness or capacity to wage war. And whatever ordnance was destroyed by the Israelis has been more than replenished by Iran in the intervening period.
Similarly, in August, 2005 Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, and, once again, the response was the same — an unrelenting rocket barrage (this time from Hamas) showered on innocents (over 8,000 such rocket attacks in 4 years) - you know women and children. Again, Israel exercised incredible restraint before launching an all out assault on Hamas in Gaza. Please note that Israel did not respond to Hezbollah’s attacks until 2006, some 6 years after they had withdrawn from the territory, during which time Hezbollah continued to pummel Israel. By the same token, Israel endured Hamas’s acts of incivility for 4 years before responding in kind - an overwhelming, but appropriate and necessary, response to be sure (the only kind calculated to bring an enemy to heel).
One point that bears serious consideration in the war waged against Israel by Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza that cannot be too strongly emphasized - their functionaries embed themselves in the local civilian population so that it is virtually impossible to root them out or kill them without inflicting “collateral damage” on the civilian population among whom they are hiding. In view of this fact, it can reasonably be argued that such damage is not collateral at all; these civilians have provided cover for the terrorists and, as a consequence, they are participants (albeit not necessarily willing participants) of sorts in the ongoing struggle. This is the case in both the Lebanon area and Gaza. You may recall that this was the strategy employed by the Vietcong during the Vietnam war. And it provides great public relations for the anti-war (or anti-Israel) elements in the U.S. who oppose any war, even one to defend yourselves. And they immediately jump on this to proclaim that the Israelis are killing “innocent civilians.” But hold on, I thought that, according to Professor Shaffer, there are no innocent civilians in a war (in fact, as I understand the good professor’s position, based on 9/11, there are no innocent civilians even when one of the parties involved does not know that it is engaged in a war (on the theory that it should know?)). Which is it professor? On the other hand, Hezbollah and Hamas target innocent civilians almost exclusively. Yet this bit of viciousness gets little attention, let alone condemnation from our friends on the left, such as Professor Shaffer.
In both Lebanon and Gaza, some on the left argued that Israel had used “disproportionate” force, an interesting assertion that requires careful scrutiny. Actually, it does not deserve such scrutiny; it is so pathetically stupid on its face as to require no scrutiny whatsoever. It is quite simply absurd, but we shall examine the validity of this line of argument. What does proportionality mean in this context — Israel should only kill one Arab for every Israeli that is killed? Let’s do the math here; Israel has 5,000,000 Jews who want to live. Its Arab neighbors have hundreds of millions of citizens, many of whom both hate Israel and regard death as a one-way ticket to paradise (particularly if the trip is earned by killing some Jews). And, by the way, this is not just my “opinion,” we have it right from the horse’s mouth - on several occasions, but this one by Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of Iran’s religious leaders, will do:
“[Rafsanjani] boasted that an Iranian [nuclear] attack would kill as many as five million Jews. Rafsanjani estimated that even if Israel retaliated by dropping its own nuclear bombs, Iran would probably lose only 15 milliion people, which he said would be a small ‘sacrifice’ from among the billion Muslims in the world.”
The preceding quote was taken from a column by Alan Dershowitz, entitled Prosecute Ahmadinejad which appeared at frontpagemag.com on May 17, 2009.The point here being the obvious one that the notion of proportionality when you are dealing with adversaries who have 5 million people, on the one hand, and several hundred million on the other is somewhere between idiotic and insane. But, no matter how one views the matter of proportionality, to take the position that a disproportionate retaliatory response in a war is equivalent (moral or mathematical) to the systematic extermination of 6,000,000 unarmed civilian Jews requires more than either just stupidity or lunacy — it requires an act of real malice. (to be continued).