Mishegas, Politics

Washington Post Reporter: Israel deliberately not destroying launchers

ynet reports:

Tom Ricks, military reporter for the Washington Post, accused Israel Tuesday of intentionally failing to destroy a number of rocket launchers in south Lebanon, to maintain a moral defense to its striking civilian of targets in Lebanon.
Ricks, who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in journalism and recently published his new book “Fiasco” on the failure of the American war in Iraq, made the comments during an interview on CNN.
Ricks, who was hosted on the Howard Kurtz’s weekly media review show on the CNN news network, said: “Civilian casualties are also part of the battlefield play for both sides here. One of the things that is going on, according to some US military analysts, is that Israel purposely has left pockets of Hizbullah rockets in Lebanon, because as long as they’re being rocketed, they can continue to have a sort of moral equivalency in their operations in Lebanon.”
[…] Ricks noted that in an off-the-record conversation with a number of military analysts, two of them said they believed it was a clever strategy on the part of Israel to leave a few rocket launchers intact to aid Israel in sharpening public sentiment and give Israeli forces more freedom to operate.
The analysts didn’t think it was a bad strategy, Ricks noted. Rather, they believed it would be a clever move on the part of Israel if it were true.

Full story

8 thoughts on “Washington Post Reporter: Israel deliberately not destroying launchers

  1. If you’re not going to name names, it becomes editorial + rumor, in my opinion, especially if he’s using the word of only two of these theoretical/anonymous military analysts. Is it two out of three? Two out of a dozen? Two of a hundred? And were they military analysts to the Pentagon? To Haliburton? To CNN? To the Pensacola Daily Herald? I mean… a little context? Some texture to the statements? Corroboration? And if the discussion was off the record, how responsible is it to make accusations of policy using them as basis?

  2. Monk:
    Responsibility has nothing to do with it. This seems to be a favourite ploy of those railing against the facts on the ground; make as many accusations as you like, false or otherwise, and force those actually ‘fighting the fight’ to respond.
    Whst disturbs me is how quickly some would swallow the unverifiable accusations of Tom Ricks, yet when Reuters actually DROP a photographer for falsifying and doctoring photos this doesn’t seem to ‘make the news’.
    How do you spell double standard? I’m beginning to think it begins with L-E-F-T, but that’s just my view from sunny London.

  3. Next on the BBC, we have reports that Israeli F16s are targeting old women in wheelchairs claiming they were transporting katyushas. MI6 defence analysts, wishing to remain anonymous, claim this tactic was premeditated and have seen the PowerPoint presentations used to justify ‘Operation Dolly Caster’ to the Israeli cabinet.

  4. Hmm, the IDF is either immoral but competent or moral and incompetent. Quite a dilemma.
    How do you get a spokesperson for Israel to deny this hoax without implying that the Israeli military is incompetent?

  5. I was watching CNN when Ricks made the comment and Kurtz, as probably everyone watching (except for John Brown? see, even Israeli victims are victims of Israel) was incredulous. This guy has lost all credibility. (Ricks)

  6. Rebecca M:
    I would be grateful if you could point me to exactly where on Jewschool and by which contributor the story surrounding Adnan Hajj’s falsified images.
    We seem to be pretty good at picking up all of the news articles which represent our own narrow view of world events, however.

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