Of Tossi Gurvitz
Source: Comedonchisciotte
As these lines are written IDF snipers have killed more than 40 Palestinians near the Gaza barrier and injured others 2,200, a dozen are believed to have been mortally wounded. At the same time you read these words, the numbers have probably already gone up. IDF spokesman used to claim his snipers were 'in danger'. When you hear these words, think aboutoperazione Speedy Express.
Speedy Express was flown by the US Army's 9th Infantry Division in the Mekong Delta in 1969. The US military claimed to have killed 10,899 opposing fighters. He just suffered 244 losses. Being in Saigon, a young genius called Alexander Demitri Shimkin, a veteran of civil rights marches, he perplexed his fellow journalists with a strange pastime: he took the trouble to actually read the official press releases and tabulated what was written.
After a few months, Shimkin put together a strange statistic: the 9th Division claimed to have killed 10,899 fighters but had only captured 748 weapons. Shimkin's conclusion was simple: the disparity between deaths and captured weapons means that the majority of those killed in Speedy Express were not combatants but civilians. It was problematic for Shimkin to find a publisher willing to publish this first example of data journalism and Newsweek published it only in 1972. Nonetheless, the publication caused a political firestorm, with the US military forced to take refuge in the desperate claim that “many guerrilla units were not armed with weapons”.
Speedy Express should be a lesson to all journalists dealing with information provided by the military (any army): take a good look at the data and ask unpleasant but necessary questions. The questions that every journalist should ask when interviewing the IDF spokesperson would be:
- How many accidental losses did the IDF suffer in Gaza? If the number is zero (and it is as these lines are written) or almost zero, then the armed forces were not in danger and this was not a military operation but a massacre.
- How many weapons did the IDF capture?, or at least documented to have been used by Palestinians? If the number is zero (and currently it is) or less than the number of people killed or injured, then at least some of those hit did not present a danger to the IDF.
Left-wing Israelis were wondering on social media today why the IDF always has an easy-gun attitude when it comes to Gaza. Unfortunately I think the answer comes from the depths of national psychology: with their very existence, the inhabitants of Gaza remember the Israelis of the Nakba, they are ghosts that continue to haunt the silent "great nights of horror" of 1948. They are ghosts that remind Israelis that their country is built on a huge cemetery; for this reason they must be silenced, in any way possible.
When the IDF claims to face “a threat” from Gaza, he does not mean an earthly threat, physics: some improvised guns and some handmade bombs. Under the banality of “a threat” lies Lady MacBeth's tormented conscience: “Ma, these hands will never be clean?”
Source: http://mondoweiss.ne
Link: http://mondoweiss.net/2018/05/questions-journalist-military/
Selected and translated for www.comedonchisciotte.org yes EP
