by Shiko Behar
The otherwise simple, straightforward question raised at 3QD (“who ended the cease-fire in Gaza?”) has now also been explored by mainstream global venues, such as CNN, which no sane person can deem unfriendly to Israel. While this development perhaps merits few additional thoughts on the issue, it is important to keep sight of the whole situation at stake: the question raised vis-à-vis the NYT is certainly intriguing – and might even help some to better understand tendencies in Israel/Palestine news coverage; yet its importance significantly pales amid Gaza’s more recent developments. Of these, foremost are the horrific civilian deaths. Bearing this in mind, I still feel some urge to verbalize the one main issue that a week ago transformed me into an irksome-nerd unearthing the sequence of events producing the breakup of the short-lived Israel/Hamas cease-fire: this issue was, and remains, the arrogance and pompousness of the NYT editors who – in what appears to be a rather majestic sloppiness – have propagated what was supposed to be an informed and important editorial into one devoid of the most basic properties it should (and must) have embodied: critical skepticism, and modesty and humbleness, on the on hand, and minimal journalistic balance, on the other.
It is difficult to tolerate any individual who pompously presents fallacies as facts, and does so without even a symbolic blinking or sober awareness of the gravity and magnitude of the deadly issues at stake. More troubling in this respect are individuals who are unwilling to recognize an error and correct it, let alone a fundamental one. Such immature, stubborn refusals become all the more annoying in cases where the error is nothing more than countless other errors that all humans occasionally commit. That, unfortunately, does not seem to be the case with the recent error by the NYT editors: they seem needlessly chauvinist, arrogant machos who apparently prefer not to budge from what after only five days looks like a pathetic text commencing with the (by now) immortal phrase “Israel must defend itself. And Hamas must bear responsibility for ending a six-month cease-fire this month with a barrage of rocket attacks into Israeli territory.” George Orwell wouldn’t have been able to put this better.
It is precisely the absence of a simple correction that prompted me to waste even more time than I already have on this nonsense. Upon further research I was able to find for the NYT one additional view that can perhaps shed brighter light on the “who-ended-the-cease-fire” question. The single most supreme and authoritative Israeli body that deals with issues of terror and security is the Israeli Security Agency (ISA); it is also known in Hebrew (and colloquial English) as the Shabak (or the Shin Bet). Like deadly punctual state organs in every country, the Shabak too publishes every single week an update called “Terror Data and Trends.” Here is what the Shabak’s November 6, 2008 report had to say about that month’s first week (and, by proxy, perhaps also about the NYT/cease-fire question):
This week there was a sharp increase in the number of high trajectory weapon attacks (rockets/mortars) from the Gaza Strip into Israel, including towards Ashkelon. This was preceded by an ISA-IDF operation on the evening between November 4th and 5th, which exposed a tunnel ready for use, which was intended for the purpose of a large terror attack within Israel. This Israeli activity was undertaken in order to deal with an impending and urgent threat, and thus was not a rupture of the “Lull.”
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