(no subject)

[eub]

This editorial describes Israel's situation pretty well, I'm afraid. (But the Palestinian situation with less empathy: harm to civilians may literally have been "minimal", but that's a sizeable minimum.)

Comments

[stresskitten.livejournal.com]

I've done my best to find sources of reporting that I can believe aren't just propaganda. The most credible such sources have seemed to me to be international human rights organizations (Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Doctors Without Borders), eyewitness accounts from established journalists at mainstream news organizations (New York Times, Guardian, Independent, Harpers' Bazaar, BBC), and Quaker/Mennonite peacemaker teams. Judging by what those sources say, the claim that the IDF "does its best to avoid harming innocent civilians" is horribly false.

I don't know what to say about the rest of Mr. Gazit's editorial, except to wish that even his kind of reasoning would get through to Sharon and his crew.

[stresskitten.livejournal.com]

Also, I've had to conclude that either all of those sources lie habitually and shamelessly, or the IDF spokespeople do. I tend to think it's the latter.

[cellio]

I'd like to know more about what's behind the following two claims, which cannot, plausibly, both be true: (a) Palestinians claiming 500 or more civilians dead in Jenin, and (b) the reports yesterday that Palestinian relief workers went into Jenin and found 14 bodies. Where are the others? How many are there *really*? (I don't think either 500 or 14 is correct.)

Sadly, Israel has often been its own worst enemy with respect to PR. They should have let journalists in much earlier to see for themselves, because I'm pretty sure the evidence would actually support Israel more than the Palestinians. Nobody is squeaky clean here, but if Israel wanted to just kill Palestinians, there are *much* more effective ways to do it.

[mh75.livejournal.com]

Both NPR and the NY Times are giving pretty good coverage of the Middle East Situation. One thing I appreciate is that they seem to be trying very hard to view the problem from both sides.
I have not personally been reading the Washington Post in the past week or so, but they usually do a good job with this type of coverage.

There are a lot of news stories out there, and most of them will be depressing. But, for example, here is something that has a more Palestinian slant.
http://www.latimes.com/la-000026946apr15.story

There are very few people in the world right now who would agree that Israel is in the right. Their demands for peace negotiations without Arafat seem ridiculous to me. More importantly, their current military actions smack of genocide. Their actions are being compared to those of Hitler more frequently.

Yesterday I took a break from the Middle East, which I find profoundly depressing:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/healthscience/134436644_arctic15.html

[eub.livejournal.com]

What I should have said was that for the author to frame this as a question of whether or not the harm is miniminal is itself a failure of empathy.

I have been reading the MSF reports (and the NYT) and they say that IDF soldiers have hurt and killed people who were clearly civilians. I'm still hoping that this is not universal and not IDF policy, but I'm not optimistic.

[stresskitten.livejournal.com]

I think that the relief workers who are collecting bodies (and I thought it was only the Red Cross, escorted by the IDF at all times) have only been allowed into very limited parts of the camp so far, because the IDF is saying that most areas are still too dangerous. The claims that 500 or more people were massacred generally say that the bodies are buried under the bulldozed houses, and especially that the IDF used the bulldozers to make mass graves. To investigate such claims the relief workers would need far more freedom than they are currently getting