Greg Mitchell's Blog, page 68

Lorin Maazel, R.I.P.

The great conductor Lorin Maazel has died, rather unexpectedly, at age 82.  We had a brief Twitter exchange a couple years back where I asked him his favorite Beethoven movement in any piece.  As an orchestra conductor, he would surely pick a piece for orchestra, right? No, he selected the exquisite slow movement of LvB's "Spring" violin (plus piano) sonata.  

Sunday Morning in the Church of Beethoven

My weekly feature, this time for World Cup final, as Ludwig cheers on his countrymen....

More Misleading Coverage at 'NYT'

As bad and biased as the reporting by the two main NYT reporters in Jerusalem  has been, one hoped for better from Steve Erlanger.  Unfortunately, with rare exception, he has joined in.   And, as always, there is more honest reporting--and criticism of Israel in opinion columns--at the Israeli daily Haaretz. 

Note just in the first three Erlanger paragraphs of his lead story today:  accepting the Israeli claims that their maps showed weapons cache at the mosque (as opposed to saying "claimed they showed"); pictured the slaughter of dozens of women and children as merely causing "difficulties" for the Israeli attackers (yesterday in a front-page headline the paper had minimized the crisis by saying it made for an "anxious" Ramadan); and straining to highlight the Hamas response by fudging the fact that the "barrage" of rockets to Tel Aviv are unguided and nearly all fall in desert by suggesting the city was only saved by the Iron Dome defense. 

BEIT LAHIYA, Gaza Strip — As Israel’s air war against Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters in Gaza entered its sixth day on Saturday, a pair of bombings threw the difficulties of the campaign into painful relief: Israel bombed a mosque, which its aerial photos indicated was harboring a weapons cache, and a center for the disabled, killing two residents and wounding three, as well as a caretaker.

A separate strike on the house of a police commander killed at least 18 people, the highest toll so far this conflict, bringing the total number of dead to at least 140, Palestinian officials said.

In response, Hamas fired a barrage of rockets at Tel Aviv, Israel’s largest city, garnering much attention despite causing no deaths or injuries, as three of them were intercepted.

Much of the rest of the piece, you might say, offers a much more nuanced and "balanced" view.  But the heavy-handed writing--or quite possibly,  editing--at the top reflect the paper's need to strongly tilt toward Israel, as always, in its news pages.  Note, in contrast, the latest report at The Guardian, which puts at the very top the appeal for a probe of possible Israeli war crimes by the United Nations' top human rights official.

Just last week, NYT bureau chief Jodi Rudoren dismissed criticism of her often stenographic reporting as simply coming from "anti-Israel activists." 

And one person's view of the BBC coverage:

Map of Palestine Draws Controversy

Juan Cole posted it (and so did Andrew Sullivan) and it drew much criticism.  See Cole's defense of its accuracy and more here.

Israel Strikes the Disabled--and Destroys Mosque

Update 4 p.m. ET:  AP reports 15 killed by deadliest Israel air-strike yet, near Mosque.  Haaretz now confirms it was home of Gaza police cheif, that women and kids killed and some still buried.....Israel has also asked for evacuation of northern part of Gaza, suggesting invasion coming in a few hours....Given the massive U.S. funding and supplying jets and weaponry, should this not these be called  "Israel-U.S. air attacks" on Gaza?  

Earlier: As The Guardian notes: This is why "international criticism grows."

What is certain is that the occupant was absent in the early hours of Saturday morning when the two Israeli drones "knocked on his roof" – firing warning shots to encourage civilians to vacate the building prior to a strike.

A few minutes later, an Israeli war plane fired a missile into the house. But it didn't detonate on the first floor. Instead, it smashed through to the ground floor where the explosion ripped through the room where five of the disabled residents were sleeping, killing two and injuring the others.

The NYT's laughable coverage of the civilian casualties--now about 1000 killed or injured--epitomized by a front-page headline that claims this makes for a "tense" Ramadan there.  Gee, really?  Then there's this, on destuction of Gaza mosque, by one of the longtime, utterly biased NYT reporters in Jerusalem.  Much of it could have been written by the IDF.  All you have to do is contrast NYT coverage with that in most leading papers abroad. 

Amnesty on This Week's War Crimes

Amnesty International just called for a UN probe of war crimes on all sides in the Israel-Gaza crisis and arms embargo. 

Since Israel launched Operation “Protective Edge” in the early morning of 8 July, more than 100 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip, most of them civilians who were not directly participating in hostilities. This includes at least 24 children and 16 women as of Friday morning. More than 600 people have been wounded, many of them seriously. More than 340 homes in Gaza have been completely destroyed or left uninhabitable and at least five health facilities and three ambulances have been damaged. In Israel, at least 20 people have been wounded by rocket attacks and property has been damaged...

Meanwhile, Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip have fired more than 600 indiscriminate rockets at Israel, including at major Israeli cities such as Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Be’er Sheva, Ashkelon and Hadera, placing millions of people at risk. A Hamas spokesperson has stated that all Israelis are legitimate targets.

Tommy Ramone, R.I.P.

Last surviving Ramone, drummer Tommy, has died.  Did any of them reach 65?   Of course, we covered them first at Crawdaddy back in, what, 1976?

Iron Dome Over Conscience

Another great column at the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz.  As usual, more protest of Israel's actions from those at home than from TV liberals and pundit and Democrats in the USA.

Restraint? I’d like to see how Israelis would act and speak if just once an F-16 squadron swooped down on a residential neighborhood and dropped a ton of smart bombs on it. Unity? Not far from that stairwell, the tenants of a luxury high-rise refused to let the residents of the nearby Givat Amal neighborhood into their shelters when they knocked on their locked doors with their children.

Only hatred still serves as glue. Many dozens of Palestinians have already been killed and hundreds wounded in this limited, compassionate and surgical operation. A complete city, the most densely populated one in the world, is being pounded. After all, the editor of Israel Today demanded “to return Gaza to the Stone Age.”

The casualty numbers will continue to rise. But Israelis will continue to wallow in their exclusive misery and self-pity. It doesn’t appear in the technical specifications, but Iron Dome does not intercept only missiles. Apparently it intercepts free thought as well. It dooms its users to blindness, deafness and dementia. Has anyone asked himself how and why the “present round of escalation” began? Who escalated it? Whom and what does it serve? Why are rockets suddenly falling out of the sky?

To the government’s credit, it made it clear to its subjects immediately after the youths were abducted that it was waging an all-out war against Hamas and the Palestinian unity. Despite this, Israelis continue to recite obediently, at the government’s behest, that the war was intended “to bring the quiet back to the residents of the south.” That is a lie. You can’t bring back something that doesn’t exist.

The residents of the south have been living under fire for 14 years. So have Gaza’s beleaguered residents. If our leaders really want them to have quiet, they must strive courageously and creatively for an overall solution. They must install above us all the iron dome of a negotiated political settlement. But apparently it doesn’t pay to manufacture such an item.

Palestinian Boy Gives Reporter the Finger

Though it's not quite what you may think.  Veteran Wash Post reporter upset by what he sees in visit to Gaza.  Includes this: 

It is all very intimate. We visited a house in Maghazi that had just been hit by an Israeli airstrike a few hours earlier. While I was interviewing the members of the Nawasrah family who survived, one of the cousins opened up a plastic bag and handed me a little finger.

I didn’t flip out, only because it was the second time that day someone had shown me something like this. After the rocket attacks, the Palestinians collect the dead from the debris, and sometimes the dead are no longer whole, and so they gather what they can for burial. Like a fingertip.

The 'Lopsided' Death Toll

The Wash Post reporter at least makes an effort here to probe the "asymetry" of the death toll in Gaza (large) and Israel (zero) this week, which mirrors previous air battles there.   He doesn't quite make the contrast as stark as it could be--the Palestinian rocketry is far worse and far more inaccurate than described and the Iron Dome results are always overly-hyped--and includes such as understatements as: "Even with these new weapons, Israel clearly outguns Palestinian fighters."  But at least this is a start.

Meanwhile, NYT, long with head in sand on this, discovers Israeli "extremism" today.