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Saturday, August 12, 2006

Rape of Lebanon - More Balanced Views Required

Malaysiakini published my letter on the Israeli attack on Lebanon. I thank the online independent newspaper for providing me the space to air some contra views ;-) to around 3 pro-Israel letters published earlier. Unfortunately one of the editors butchered it somewhat, by amending a couple of sentences where I made direct references to the names (or pseudonyms) of those pro-Israel readers.

I reckon Malaysiakini tried to depersonalise my references but alas, did it badly. For example I had written in:

"Unfortunately Tom Peters provided a grossly simplified and non-contextual account of the current Israeli-Hezbollah/Hamas conflicts. He described the kidnapping of the Israeli soldiers as if those had occurred in a vacuum, avoiding ..."

Malaysiakini changed it to:

"Some of your readers have provided a grossly simplified and non-contextual account of the current Israeli-Hezbollah/Hamas conflicts. He described the kidnaping of the Israeli soldiers as if those had occurred in a vacuum, avoiding ..."

Anyway, in that depersonalising process, it turned my references to a 3rd party singular ('Tom Peters ...') into a 3rd party plural ['Some of your readers ...'] but then joining it to the body of my text containing the 3rd party singular [He described ...'] again- butchering my English!

It also changed my English spelling of 'kidnapping' into American style 'kidnaping' which appears just plain awful (except to those who use American spelling).

Then the worst occurred when it chopped off completely one of the most crucial paragraphs where the pro-Israel Tom Peters berated Hamas for not "concentrating on running the already fragile Palestinian government while helping President Abbas start the stalled peace plan with Israel".

I countered by reminding Peters that his chiding of Hamas has been hypocritical and indeed misleading for failing to mention the Israeli-instigated and US-led financial embargo of the Palestinian authority, which has been the real reason why Hamas wasn't able to be "concentrating on running the already fragile Palestinian government ...".

I stated that has been my difficulty with Peters' letter, which lacked context and thus objectivity, apart from misleading readers by deliberately leaving important facts out.

Then in the third last paragraph Malaysiakini did the 'singular into plural into singular 3rd person' butchering again - same stuff as described above. The person I had referred to was a Malaysiakini reader with the initials of JTB.

But nonetheless I thank Malaysiakini for publishing my letter aimed at balancing the excessive pro-Israel and anti-Hamas and anti-Hezbollah views especially around the western (or English speaking) world. I thought I would start with the letters column in Malaysiakini.

1 comment:

  1. Hezbollah, unlike Israelis, are Lebanese. Therefore they could and can never inavde and occupy Lebanon. Whatever they had done thus far has been as a Lebanese resistance group. They don't rob other people's land or attack/invade other countries like Israel and the USA.

    You brought up an old tale of Haj Amin al-Husseini. Let me ask you this - Wasn't Avraham Stern, of the Jewish Lehi terrorist group, a collaborator of the Nazis. Didn't he assassinate a UN mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden, a man who had actually saved many thousands of Jews from Hitlers's gas chambers?

    Recently the Israeli Knesset eulogised Stern, one of the world's worst terrorists, a man who was a quisling of the Nazi authorities and who murdered a man who saved Jews.

    Another Israeli PM was also a terrorist member of the terrorist Lehi - Yitzhak Shamir.

    Then you have the greatest terrorist Kahuna of them all, Menachem Begin, an Israeli icon, and an unmitigated murderer of women and children at Deir Yassin.

    Compared to those Jewish-Israeli terrorists, and if you like, you can throw in Baruch Goldstein as well, Hezbollah and Hamas are like Sunday School teachers.

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