Saturday, April 04, 2009

The Extremism of the NYTimes Via An Op-ed

How wrong can you be from the very first sentence?

The New York Times can.

As I posted previously, (here) the NYTimes basically recanted from the "soldiers' testimony" story regarding so-called atrocities in Gaza. It was hearsay, no one who spoke in that session actually himself shot anyone and the 'details' in the story were not only not 'ironclad' but were shown to be improbable from an operative point of view.

So, knowing all this, the NYTimes givers a columnist room to write this opening sentence:

CHILLING testimony by Israeli soldiers substantiates charges that Israel’s Gaza Strip assault entailed grave violations of international law.


"Testimony"? "Substantiates"?

This is BS. And a stain on the professional journalistic standards of the august newspaper.

The author, George Bisharat, writes also:

Hamas’s indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israeli civilians also constituted war crimes, but do not excuse Israel’s transgressions.


But, if true, why do Israelis critics excuse themselves all the time by justifying the Hamas terror exclusively directed at civilians by refering to it as "resistance".
This George Bisharat is a professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law.

Bisharat was born in 1954 in Topeka, Kansas to Palestinian parents from Jerusalem. He served as deputy Public Defender for the city of San Francisco from 1987 to 1991, and in 1989, he published the book Palestinian Lawyers and Israeli Rule: Law and Disorder in the West Bank (University of Texas Press). He worked with the Palestinian Legislative Council on efforts to reform and develop the Palestinian judiciary system [not very successful, though], and is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Palestine Studies.

This biographical information the NYTimes didn't see fit to publish.

Nor this:

"[he has] voiced support for the possibility a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and is currently working on a book addressing the legal aspects of the one-state solution. He has also come out in support of a boycott of Israel..."


Why should the NYTimes' readers be cognizant of this extremist's views?

After all, who cares about fairness and balance in the New York Times?

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Noah Pollack thinks as I do.

1 comment:

g said...

While Bisharat is actually working on something proposing solution to a conflict, all you do is smearing dirt, demonizing Arabs and Islam, spread proIsrael pro-violence propaganda and creating more problems, propagating the conflict. Never heard on your blog condemnation of violence by Israel or your opinion on how to end this conflict.

His views are not extreme. Are all proPalestinian views extreme?

Israel gravely violated international law many many times in the past and this "news" is not something unbelievable, neither would i question it. Just tooo many examples in the past, no matter how hard Israel is trying to lie its way out.