Incontinence and Bile

Angry Arab suffers from incontinent bile when it comes to Israel, Zionism, and sometimes Jews per se.

Here is an example:

"Wednesday, April 13, 2011 Israel: desperate for visiting celebrities: no matter who they are"

Yet the article he links to describes not desperation on the part of Israel but rather some good commonsensical considerations from Netanyahu, that suggests to me the very opposite of desperation. If the Prime Minister of Israel is going to waste some of his precious time managing a beleaguered country on a teenage idol with an annoying hairdo, he might as well try to imbue the occasion with some meaningful content, like engineering a meeting between the over-privileged pampered boy- star and other kids his own age and younger who live an entirely different reality. If such an occasion did not meet with Bieber's favour, then "moichel toyves" (gee, thanks, but no thanks).

BTW, among those who are described by AA as " celebrities: no matter who they are", implying, I think, that those talented, rich and famous who visit Israel are somehow second-rate, junky, artists, one can count Leonard Cohen, Madona, Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Quentin Tarantino, Val Kilmer, and the list goes on.

It grieves me to be forced to post such a petty comment, which could be described as being on the equivalent intellectual level as "mine is bigger than yours" (not that I can boast of one anyway), but sometimes you have little choice but to descend to the level of a professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus and visiting professor at UC, Berkeley.

_________

And tangentially relevant:

"... here in the middle of a silly article about Justin Bieber's visit to Israel, The New York Times' Isabel Kershner goldstones Israel.

"Last Thursday, a 16-year-old Israeli boy was critically wounded by an antitank missile fired by Hamas militants at a school bus in [SIC] Gaza.* That triggered days of intense exchanges of fire, during which 18 Palestinians, about half of them civilians, were killed."

So how much is "about half" of 18? How many dead civilians? Eight? Nine? Ten?

Actually, the real number of civilians killed is five. It's relatively easy to find out just by looking at Arab sources in English. And according to Arab sources, four were in close proximity to terrorists firing missiles at Israel. "

What does it mean when a journalist writes so lightly about killed civilians?

"18 Palestinians, about half of them civilians"

"As for the civilian casualty figures, our reporting of the numbers has been based on the information provided by our correspondent in Gaza. I can already see a discrepancy in that your list has all the men killed in Rafah as fighters, whereas he identified three of four killed there on the first day as civilians collecting gravel near the old airport, if I remember rightly. Anyway we have asked for a thorough check and hope to have results soon."

Qualifying words like "About" and "If I remember correctly" do not inspire much trust in the reported account. And if there is doubt or troubling inaccuracies, or problematic memory, isn't it the first duty of an ethical journalist to ask for a thorough check before publishing that information?