Although his editors at the New York Times removed the offending word from his article, reporter Thomas Friedman at one point described the Israeli bombardment as “indiscriminate.”14 He was referring specifically to the sporadic shelling of neighborhoods like the area around the Commodore Hotel, where he and most journalists were staying, and which certainly contained nothing whatsoever of military interest.15 The only possible objective of such blanket bombardment was to terrorize the population of Beirut and turn it against the PLO.
