Whoops somebody got the PR Spin all fucked up on this one

[plural]

Apparently it wasnt a massacre,
but a glorious victory of the palestinian resistance

Jenin 'massacre' reduced to death toll of 56

JENIN, West Bank
Palestinian officials yesterday put the death toll at 56 in the two-week Israeli assault on Jenin, dropping claims of a massacre of 500 that had sparked demands for a U.N. investigation.

The official Palestinian body count, which is not disproportionate to the 33 Israeli soldiers killed in the incursion, was disclosed by Kadoura Mousa Kadoura, the director of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement for the northern West Bank, after a team of four Palestinian-appointed investigators reported to him in his Jenin office.

[Two weeks ago, when European and particularly London newspapers were reporting estimates of "hundreds" massacred, Israeli sources in Washington said they expected the Palestinian toll to reach "45 to 55."]

Click here for the complete text

Paul Martin - Washington Times

thanks to ikilled007 for the link

Comments

[plural.livejournal.com]

umm dahlin
it didnt say equal
it said not disproportionate

the difference is significant
primarily as before the numbers were being
claimed as a massacre

500+ palestinians to 33 israelis

while 56 is not equal to 33
[as i am sure you noticed]
it is far more proportionate
than 500

what the auther was trying to imply
is that in a very heated gunfight
if you lose 33 men to kill 56 enemies
it isnt wholesale slaughter
but brutal combat

while i regret any loss of life
a combatant dying is a war
is very different than a civilian dying

[city-glitter.livejournal.com]

I read it as implying that Israeli lives are more valuable. Mountains could me moved in modern diplomacy if someone were just willing to call a spade a spade, such as I'm doing here.

[estrie.livejournal.com]

does calling a spade a spade involve going out and finding the truth yourself so that you can know for sure what a spade actually is?

[city-glitter.livejournal.com]

Calling a spade a spade involves gathering all the evidence you can, looking from every perspective, and deciding what's right and wrong according to your intuition and convictions.

[plural.livejournal.com]

darling,
if you only had
the slightest idea
of how obfuscating the words
and antique the mannerisms
used in international diplomacy
are
you would be amazed that
any two countries could agree
on the color of the sky
[for the record]
[it was established]
[as cerulian blue]
[by the Augustine treaty of 1658]
[but only twenty-two countries ratified it]

I can see how
it could be read such
and it is possible
that the author even believes it

i feel two ways about it

on one hand, i view all human life
as valued and any loss saddens me

but on the other hand, i understand
human nature, and our preoccupation with
killing each other. as such I look at it
like this. One a battlefield, combatants lives are equal, and civilians lives are equal, the combatants volunteer to risk their lives in the attempt to take the lives of their enemies, civilians merely attempt to live and not get killed by either side.

When we are talking about civilian deaths, it is always tragic, whether israeli or palestinian.

I will admit, my bias here, I do feel that the lives of the palestinian combatants (and only combatants, not civilians) are worth less than those of Israeli Combatants.

How can I make sure a moral judgement?
Because from my experience in this matter, which is substantial, I feel very strongly that the palestinians are the aggressor and that the israeli are engaged in an intense war of self-defense.

I really and value the differences in views that we both hold. and make this statement not to reopen the larger arguement of who own has the right to the land, or who

[city-glitter.livejournal.com]

So. Why don't we just cut the crap and acknowledge that all human beings were created equal and that the only appropriate action is to make sure everyone gets what they need...and as much of what they want as possible. We can start by ensuring that the weaker people in a given area aren't oppressed.

[plural.livejournal.com]

that sounds like an excellent idea

however, Israel has offered extremely generous terms on multiple occasion, all of which give the palestinians a state and more importantly a lot more than they currently have.

If the palestinians were willing to accept that they might be better off not getting 100% of their demands, and settling for 90% of them, this situation would have been over long ago.

Instead they choose to slaughter innocent people in the streets. This is a choice.

You can look at the situation, see israeli tanks, soldiers and helocopters, and say that the palestinians are the weaker people. Indeed militarily they are weaker. But that doesnt mean that they are right.

Osma ben Ladin, was a militarily weaker opponent, who felt that his people were oppressed by the American Imperialism. Does the fact that he was weaker, justify his act of aggression and murder?

The core of the matter, relates to aggresion. If the palestinians people, ceased acting in an agressive manner, and chose to negotiate honestly, this situation would again, have been long ago resolved peacefully (i define honest negotiation as attempting to find a compromise where one gets as much as one can but realizes that you have to give up something to get what you want).

[city-glitter.livejournal.com]

"however, Israel has offered extremely generous terms on multiple occasion, all of which give the palestinians a state and more importantly a lot more than they currently have."

I missed that. Please supply evidence.

[plural.livejournal.com]

by evidence do you mean further information or direct links.

In the last meeting between Barak and Arafat. Israel offered over 90% of the west bank land, much of east Jerusalem and the rights of statehood. They also offered in exchange for cooperation fighting terrorism, aid and assistance to the palestinian state.

While the right of return was not granted, nor was all of the land offered to be returned. You can not argue that what was offered would not be a significant improvement to the condition of the palestinian people

[city-glitter.livejournal.com]

I can also argue that ten dollars a month is an improvement over the current Absolute Jack Shit given to Natives in this country, but who would be comforted?

[plural.livejournal.com]

yes you could and you would be correct.

but you distort the issue. To correspond the israeli offer which concedes to the palestinians the vast majority of their demands, with offering an american native ten dollars a month, is pure showboating and rhetoric.

If we offered the Native Americans, 90% of their land back, a soveriegn government, and assistance to organize and run their governement, would that not be a considerable improvement over their current situation? Yes.

To say otherwise would be foolish. What you are saying, is that it is perfectly acceptible for a group of people to slaughter innocents as long as every one of their demands is not met in full.

This betrays the very concept of justice. Justice would not be served by evicting every american, and turning the land back to the Native Americans. This would be just another injustice, an injustice to the people who are innocently attempting to live their lives and had nothing to do with the original sin. Two injustices do not make justice.

Absolute freedom mocks justice, Absolute justice denies freedom. There must be a compromise somewhere in between.

[estrie.livejournal.com]

media most places is very pro-palestinian, anyhow...
to get straight facts is difficult.

[nutmeg.livejournal.com]

Wow...

I think you can call any one pro-anything if you are radically against one side. Because the media is certainly not pro-palestianian in my opinion.

And in my opinion it certainly isn't proliberal either but all the ultra conservatives harp on how liberal media skews our viewpoints.

When the media consistently says how many israelis were killed and ignores or barely mentions palestian deaths, which is what I hear regularly, I would not call them pro palestinian.

No side is right here. Both are wrong. And so are we.

Re:

[estrie.livejournal.com]

hmm, it occured to me at some point that it probably very much matters where a person's news comes from.
the bbc seems to be quite pro-liberal and pro-palestinian.
i'm not saying anybody in particular is right. in fact i feel everybody's actions are very not right according to my own moral code which has never been put to the test. and that is why i, personally, fear religion.

[ikilled007.livejournal.com]

The media is so leftist it's insanity to claim that it's not. Just an idea of how bad it really is: Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News is the recent book by Bernard Goldberg (a lifelong leftist):

From the review:

Book Description
Think the media are biased? CONSERVATIVES HAVE BEEN crying foul for years, but now a veteran CBS reporter has come forward to expose how liberal bias pervades the mainstream media. Even if you've suspected your nightly news is slanted to the left, it's far worse than you think. Breaking ranks and naming names, Emmy Award-winning broadcast journalist Bernard Goldberg reveals a corporate news culture in which the close-mindedness is breathtaking, journalistic integrity has been pawned to liberal opinion, and "entertainment" trumps hard news every time. In his three decades at CBS, Goldberg repeatedly voiced his concerns to network executives about the often one-sided nature of the news coverage. But no one listened to his complaints-or if they did listen, they did nothing about the problem. Finally, Goldberg had no choice but to blow the whistle on his own industry, to break the code of silence that pervades the news business. Bias is the result. As the author reveals, "liberal bias" doesn't mean simply being hard on Republicans and easy on Democrats. Real media bias is the result of how those in the media see the world-and their bias directly affects how we all see the world.

In fact, just look at the language you used:
"And in my opinion it certainly isn't proliberal either but all the ultra conservatives harp on how liberal media skews our viewpoints."

We hear words like "right wing", "conservative", "ultra-conservative", "far right wing" all the time, but how often do the media (or you) use words like "leftist", "ultra liberal", "extreme left wing" etc.? You'll NEVER hear those words on the news or read them in any mainstream news publications.

It's a credit to how pervasive and common the media bias is that the average person doesn't even recognize it anymore.

[nutmeg.livejournal.com]

I hear the word liberal on the news often. And Ultra conservatives CALL Themselves ultra conservatives to set themselves apart from groups they view as too far center but are otherwise identified as "conservative" The word liberal is used most often as an insult when it is used in the media.

Of course media is biased, so is any thing any human says, because by neccessity we can not be other than subjective. It really depends upon the medium and which specific unit of the medium we are talking about. But a blanket statement that says that media is leftist (And if you haven't heard that word in the media where in the world did you hear it?... or did you make it up).... or conservative is going to be false. Some stations are liberal some conservative, some newspapers, some websites, some radio stations, etc...

(And sorry for the tanget, plural)

Re:

[ikilled007.livejournal.com]

Actually, there is overwhelming evidence that the media IS leftist. Here's one school of thought:

Journalism graduates are educated in journalism and all that communications stuff. They don't have a powerful grasp of the hard sciences, of economics, of history, of literature, etc. And they tend to be do-gooders, so to speak. "Make the world a better place" kind of people, nothing wrong with that. The problem comes in when they report on issues they have no grasp of. They might well know what the current events ARE, but they don't understand the context or the history or the inter-relationships therein. And so when an environmental group throws out some statistic or other like "We're killing off 100,000 species a day in the rain forerst" or some such tripe, they give equal time and/or actual credence to it. Same with domestic economic issues. The news stories push an agenda, usually, "Government must act to ensure that [X]...." That's already a liberal bias ingrained into the format.

Further, did you know that over 80% of the media admit to being registered Democrats or voting Democrat regularly?

The is absolutely a liberal bias in the mainstream media -- even some media liberals like Goldberg have confessed to such.

How anyone would even try to dispute this is beyond me.

[nutmeg.livejournal.com]

How anyone would even try to dispute this is beyond me.

This precludes any debate.

So I won't.

Re:

[ikilled007.livejournal.com]

Smart girl ;)

[city-glitter.livejournal.com]

The American media certainly isn't leftist.

Re:

[ikilled007.livejournal.com]

Yes, the mainstream American media are overwhelmingly leftist, Fox News Channel being the only exception.

[city-glitter.livejournal.com]

Not even close. Where are you getting that from?

[ikilled007.livejournal.com]

Well, here it is again:

http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=plural&itemid=215840&thread=782368#t782368