The Times Dont Name the Victim Mentality - August 14, 2003
Times Watch for August 14, 2003
The Times Dont Name the Victim Mentality
Thursdays story from
Israel by Ian Fisher, 2 Suicide Bombers Fulfilled Their Fathers Worst Fears,
profiles the fathers of two young terrorist bombers and talks about the anger
the boys felt toward Israel, while mentioning their two victims in passing and
without even giving their names.
Fisher writes: These two
fathers never met until Tuesday, when word spread through Nablus that their
sons-both 17, who knew each other slightly but were apparently working
separately-had carried out suicide attacks that morning. They killed one
Israeli man who was grocery shopping and an 18-year-old army recruit at a bus
stop. And thats it for the victims.
Fisher concludes the
story with a warning that Israels countermeasures, including the razing of the
houses of the families of suicide bombers, will only breed more bombers: With
the blasted-out window framed surreally with orange curtains, the view is now of
their neighbors' toppled house. Of course now my kids will be full of hatred
toward anything called Israeli soldiers, Mr. Sadr said. They will grow up with
these memories.
Of course, victims like
18-year-old Israeli army recruit Erez Hershkovitz will never grow up at all, and
even in death will be relegated to the 27th paragraph in the Times, as he was in
Fishers
Wednesday story on the attack. (To be fair, that same days edition named
the other Israeli victim, Yehezkel Yakutieli, in the caption of a front-page
photograph of his grieving sister.)
For the rest of Ian Fishers story on the proud
dads of suicide bombers,
click here.
Ian Fisher
|
Israel
|
Palestinians
|
Terrorism
Shielding
for Saddam
Thursday the Times takes a
sympathetic, chronologically challenged look at the U.S. citizens who went to
Iraq to serve as human shields this spring in protest of the imminent U.S.
invasion. U.S. May Fine Some Who Shielded Iraq Sites, is the headline to Adam
Liptaks story, which focuses on a young Milwaukee record-store owner named Ryan
Clancy who went to Iraq to protest the imminent U.S. invasion. (Clancys
become a popular human shield.) But Liptak rather overstates their nobility
by omitting some key chronology.
Liptak
alleges: Several hundred people calling themselves human shields camped at oil
refineries, water treatment plants, electricity generating stations and similar
sites during the war. Many were from Europe; about 20 were American. Several
people involved in the effort said that none of the sites were attacked while
human shields were present.
Thats
hardly surprising, since as other reporting makes clear, the shields left before
the war started!
On Aug.
11,
Gina Barton of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel filed a report on the same
brave protester, which, while glowing, also notes: Clancy left Iraq before
bombing by the U.S. began. He crossed into Jordan to get cash he thought he'd
need to make it home once the war started, and he was not allowed to re-enter
Iraq. So these noble human shields were all ready to protect Iraq from
bombingup until the moment the bombing actually started.
Liptak finds another brave soul who protected an oil refinery: Several people
involved in the effort said that none of the sites were attacked while human
shields were present. That tells me we were successful, said Judith Karpova, a
58-year-old writer in Hoboken, N.J., who placed herself at an oil refinery near
Baghdad. We went there to protect innocent civilians, and I went there to
protect my own country against further crimes against humanity and war crimes.
That makes
sense, since, as
Karpova told Jennifer Frey of the Washington Post back on March 18, she
stayed in Iraq just three weeks before high-tailing it to Jordan March 9-eleven
days before the war began.
As for
Karpova, the little old lady writer from Hoboken is also a member of the
Socialist
Party, a fact that may have cost her some reader sympathy, if Liptak had
bothered to mention it.
For the rest of Adam Liptaks story
on human shields,
click here.
Anti-War Protestors
|
Ryan Clancy
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Gaffes
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Human Shields
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Iraq War
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Judith Karpova
|
Adam Liptak
