March 22, 2005

Terrorist use of ambulances

Thanks again to David for sending this link to Lawrence of Cyberia. I'm surprised I missed this as I ran a £10 challenge regarding the terrorist use of ambulances in response to a pack of lies in the Guardian from Israel's press officer in London about that same subject. Anyway, Lawrence has a post (October 2004) about how Ha'aretz censors its English edition, particularly to cover up the misdeeds of the Israeli army.
Ha’aretz is like the BBC: a news outlet that enjoys a reputation for progressive, liberal reporting, despite the fact that its fundamental bias is not really pro-Right or pro-Left at all, but strongly pro-Establishment. Editorially, both the BBC and Ha’aretz are essentially mouthpieces of the powers-that-be in their respective societies. Their great virtue is that regardless of how conservative (with a small "c") their editorial position, they at least provide a platform for outstanding individual journalists to speak, even when that individual does not toe the party line. BBC News owes its worldwide reputation today not to its editorial policy or its governors, but to individuals who posted no-nonsense, hard-hitting reports which, as often as not, the corporate BBC could not back away from quickly enough. (I’m talking here about truly great news reporters like Charles Wheeler, Martin Bell, Kate Adie, Keith Graves etc, etc. Perhaps their closest counterpart today might be Orla Guerin, the BBC’s correspondent in the Occupied Territories, and nemesis of Natan Sharansky for her refusal to be cowed by his any-criticism-of-Israel-is-anti-Semitism nonsense).
Lawrence also has a table showing the differential treatment of the Barghouti kidnap between the Hebrew and English editions of Ha'aretz. I haven't figured out how to do tables in Blogger yet so here's the content of the last row in non-tabular form:
Hey where did the ambulance go?
Hebrew version

The initial siege of the house involved soldiers from a battalion of an armored brigade, and soldiers from the Dukhifat infantry battalion. The Dukhifat soldiers were squeezed into a protected ambulance in order to arrive as quickly as possible at the house where Barghouti was hiding, and to seal it off. The head of the armoured battalion commanded the operation.

English version

This paragraph omitted from English edition.

Lawrence's comment

Ha’aretz’ English edition inserts tangential comments demonizing Arafat, but omits salient facts from the original story because they reflect IDF misconduct?
Hey why the question mark?

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