Sunday, December 30, 2007

Haaretz 'Eulogy': Rumors and Insinuations of ‘Jewish Terrorism’

Ezra HaLevi

According to an article published in Haaretz the morning after the funeral of two Jewish hikers, David Rubin and Achikam Amichai, "Jewish terrorism" is the threat the IDF must contend with. The article, entitled "Nipping new W. Bank Jewish terror group in the bud," posits that the creation of a new Jewish terrorist group is prevented only by the IDF's speedy nabbing of the killers of Jews living in Judea and Samaria. “The effort by the security forces to capture those who carried out the shooting attack where two Israel Defense Forces soldiers were killed west of Hebron on Friday is…designed to nip in the bud the creation of a new Jewish terror organization in the West Bank,” the article by senior Haaretz journalists Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff begins.

No evidence for the existence of such a group is offered.

The article goes on to explain that its premise that the murder of Jews brings about Jewish terrorism is based on historical analyses. “An analysis of incidents in the past few decades in which Jews struck at Palestinians shows that right-wing terror groups grew amid Jewish settlers' increasing fears for their safety and progress in the peace talks that would lead to the evacuation of settlements,” the article continues.

The article goes on to speculate that the Arab murderers were in the midst of an arms deal: “Israeli hikers do not frequent the Telem stream, where Friday's attack took place, so it is unlikely that terrorists ambushed the three Israelis. (A woman hiking with the soldiers escaped uninjured.) The stream is also relatively far from the nearest Palestinian village, so it is unlikely that the terrorists were alerted by other Palestinians to the presence of the Israelis. Members of the Palestinian preventive security forces suggested yesterday that the Israelis might have accidentally interrupted a meeting of arms dealers, who subsequently decided to shoot them.”

Khaled Abu Toameh, a Jerusalem Post journalist with sources throughout Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, reported otherwise.

“Some of the gunmen who participated in Friday's shooting attack near Hebron belong to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction, Fatah activists…confirmed over the weekend,” Toameh reported. “They said the attack was carried out jointly by Fatah and Islamic Jihad members.”

Toameh says that many Fatah terrorists have declined to join the PA security forces and are operating under various names such as the “Yasser Arafat Group and the Martyr Ayman Judeh Group, which took credit for Friday's attack.”

In fact, one of the terrorists killed in the attack was Basel al-Natsheh, a known Fatah terrorist whose father, Nabil, is a Hamas member imprisoned in Israel. Al-Natsheh is not an arms dealer.

Israel's Media Watch Responds

"This, it appears, is a classic case of the red line of news-views being crossed, a most serious journalism ethics concern," responded Yisrael Medad, Vice-Chairman of Israel's Media Watch. "If it turns out that this is complete fiction, which I assume, I would champion a lawyer pursuing an incitement charge based on paragraph 136 of Israel's Penal Code which prohibits causing unrest among different elements of the populace which this reportage clearly seeks to accomplish."

Comment: This is also a classic case of shooting ones self in the foot and misunderstanding what freedom of the press means in a true democracy. Oftern I have noticed over the decade I have lived in Israel, we are our own worst enemy. Other than a "sensational" story line, what is the motivation for a story such as this to be published? Our enemy loves the "divide and conquer" that is going on inside Israel today-this is dangerous ground to be traveling down!

1 comment:

YMedad said...

Check out Israel's Media Watch web site