According to the Hebrew side of the Haartez website, a new report documents that Btselem is consistently and significantly wrong in its reports. Aggravatingly, the report itself isn't yet online at the website where it should be, here. This is standard fare: when it comes to presenting things correctly we're often bumbling idiots. So once this goes online I may revisit it. In the meantime, however, two quick comments:
1. Btselem routinely reports the deaths of Palestinian combatants as if they were non-combatants, sometimes even blatantly so.
2. The research arrived at this conclusion by comparing Betselem's reports with... Palestinian reports! Which means, it seems to me, that Betselem makes Israel look worse than even the internal, Arabic language Palestinian sources do. Can you believe it? More important: can you explain it?
I'm just a teensy bit more concerned how the IDF identifies combatants than B'Tselem.
ReplyDeleteIn the West Bank town of Hebron, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy was fatally shot in the chest during a protest against Israel, Palestinian medical officials said. It was the first death in the West Bank connected to the Gaza offensive.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/02/world/main3897330_page2.shtml
Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin announced tough new measures today against Palestinians accused of throwing stones in the occupied territories.
The measures include allowing a greater number of soldiers to fire on demonstrators, sealing or destroying the homes of stone throwers and confiscating the cars and other property of those who take part in the uprising.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DEFD91F39F93BA25752C0A96F948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
Why does Rabin get called a peace maker again?