Sunday, December 09, 2012

On the Washington Post today

From M.:  "Sometimes I wonder if US reporters are not just outright bribed by the Israel's. In today's WP Wilson writes: (emphasis mine)

"In lieu of peace, Israeli leaders say, measures such as Iron Dome, which was funded in part by the U.S. government, are vital. Some of the system’s advocates say that by preventing the kind of mass civilian killings that often force military reprisals here, the dome will afford Israeli leaders more political latitude to make decisions about war and negotiations."

Utterly disgusting. Thought you might want to comment on it.

Joel Greenberg's piece on Meshal reads like it was written in Tel Aviv. (I'm no fan of Meshal or Hamas nor of the MB, nor of the lunatics in Syria - on both sides).

The Post seems to have a zillion reporters in the area now. As far as I can tell, and I've not done enough research, the most qualified in Abigail Hauslohner who seems to have made a very serious effort to study Arabic. I've been following her on twitter and she seems pretty good. Sadly, although she is the Cairo Bureau chief, many of the articles coming out are not done by her. And why have Greenberg go to Gaza when she was already there and did a very job?

Wilson's article:

Greenberg's article:

And then there is the controversy over "fight" and "kill" in an article apparently written by a native Arabic speaker, Abeer Ayyoub, who has a degree in English from the Islamic University in Gaza. Your comrade at EI has been raising hell, so no doubt you are aware of this issue. My gut feeling is that she did not provide the incorrect translation and that the error was something added in either by some dope at the Observer who thinks he/she knows Arabic, or by someone at Haaretz, the paper Ms. Ayyoub's twitter page says she works for. She's got quite a few articles on Haaretz as it turns out. However, she does not appear to me to be a sellout.

Had not meant to ramble on and on."