Soccer Dad

The Alternate Blogosphere

The transporter whines and I materialize. It was a strange transport. I felt queasy as I became solid; I didn't usualy feel that way.
I stumbled a bit as I stepped off the platform. "Are you all right Captain Soccer Dad," the transporter technician asked as he came to give me a hand. "I'll be fine," I replied. Still the techie came over to assist me. He helped me down and then, despite my protests, he accompanied back to my quarters. We chatted pleasantly, as we strolled the corridors; I had the most recent issues of Commentary, the National Review and the Weekly Standard with me. I would relax and recover quickly.
We had not noticed the odd metallic ore that had settled on the transporter platform. After we left, the transporter whined again and a second figure reassembled itself out of scattered atoms. He also had a nameplate that read "Captain Soccer Dad," but he was different. He was carrying the Nation, Mother Jones and the Village Voice. He might have been me ... but he wasn't. It was as if he came from an alternate blogosphere.
Sorry for that Star Trekky intro, because this is a serious subject. It just feels odd having someone with my handle whose views are diametrically opposed to mine.
I've noted before that through blogdigger I discovered that there was a blogger, Soccer Dad, on an extreme left wing blog "The Left Coaster". I usually pay him no mind, but this recent posting, "Killing children is no longer a big deal" really deserves a response.
Soccer Dad bases his post on an article Gideon Levy in Ha'aretz. Basing oneself on Levy is hazardous as his credibility level is low as IMRA noted here:

Irit Linor, a popular Left-wing author, columnist and radio personality, revealed this week that Gideon Levy neither speaks, reads, or understands Arabic. Levy's pro-Palestinian reports appear regularly in Ha'aretz, including a weekly feature in the Friday Magazine.

In a letter to Ha'aretz in which she explained why she was canceling her subscription to Ha'aretz for its anti-Israel position that was published this Friday in Hatzofeh and distributed widely via Internet, Linor wrote:

"When Gideon Levy charges Israel with changing Marwan Barghouti from a peace lover to the organizer of suicide attacks, this is as logical an interpretation as claiming that the wave of attacks on September 11 was a Mossad plan. Once he told me in a private conversation that he would not drive a hundred meters to save the life of a settler, and it appears to me that his loves and hates have stained for a long time his heart touching reports from the occupied Palestinian territories. . . . He is one of the few Arab affairs correspondents in the world who doesn't know Arabic, doesn't understand Arabic and doesn't read Arabic. He makes due with simultaneous translation."

Levy's reports never indicate that he is using a translator, nor the identity of the translators. Not only can translators filter the message. If they themselves are part of a group (for example Fatah) they can prevent, by their very presence, interviewed Palestinians from straying from the Palestinian propaganda line.
Last week one of the parents of a young Gazan shahid declared he would kill the Palestinian who sent his son to his death the moment he finds out who did it. Such remarks do not find their way into Levy' reports.

Like Amira Hass, Levy's goal is to besmirch his country. Frimet Roth recently critiqued Hass like this:

The crucial element in the Hass formula is the lack of context. Roadblocks exist for no reason. Searches are conducted on soldiers’ whims. Financial troubles are caused solely by Israel's unjustified entry restrictions. Children killed by IDF fire are never used as “human shields” by Palestinian gunmen. Innocent Israelis have not been murdered by ruthless terrorists. Palestinian children have not had explosives strapped to their bodies. And unarmed Palestinians never aid and abet the terrorists.

Mrs. Roth's point about human shields is important because as Alan Dershowitz recently pointed out in a Q & A at the Jerusalem Post:

The law certainly does need to protect innocent civilians. The first step it should take is to recognize that it is a war crime for terrorists to hide among civilians, thereby requiring democracies to choose between allowing the terrorists to continue to kill innocent civilians in a democracy or taking military action which will often result in some civilian casualties. The fault for all civilian casualties in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict lies exclusively with the Palestinian terrorists, who deliberately create a situation in which civilians will be killed.

And it's not just freelance terrorists who introduce themselves into civilian populations endangering them, it's part of a concerted effort led by the PA itself as Palestinian Media Watch documents:

An article this week in the official PA daily, reported that children are aiding terrorists in the following combat support roles:

“In spite of family members’ warnings, groups of children are spreading around the [Gaza] camp, both to pass on information to the resistance and to bring them water.”
(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 11, 2004)

It should be stressed that supplying water and gathering information for terrorists in active combat zones, puts these children in life-threatening situations and has led to the deaths of many children. Note that the term “resistance” is used by the PA leadership and media to refer to all terrorists, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and others.

These two combat support roles are precisely the roles taught in PA schoolbooks. A 6 th grade schoolbook teaches PA children to follow the example of a young child, who according to Islamic tradition, fulfilled these combat support roles. According to this tradition while Muhammad and his companion Abu Bakr hid in a cave, Abu Bakr’s young daughter aided them by passing them information about the enemy and giving them water. The schoolbook teaches children to see themselves in similar roles with such language as: “Asma, Abu Bakr’s daughter, was my age when she played a role...” and immediately asks the question: “What role can I play ...?”

And it's not just that the PA encourages the surrounding of terrorists with civilians that leads to many of the children's deaths. The PA ensures that other children are endangered needlessly. There's an Israeli organization, Save A Child's Heart that treats children from around the world who have heart problems. About a third of the children treated are Palestinian. But according to an article about this incredible organization, the PA won't allow the doctors to come back an oversee the recovery of the children.

Since September, when Palestinian and Israeli hostilities resumed, Cohen and his team have operated on 27 Palestinian children. Cohen is saddened that the Palestinian Authority’s government won’t allow him to speak to their local doctors about vital follow-up care, as he does with other doctors around the world. But he prides himself on the personal relations he has developed with the parents and children. "Everybody is the same the world over," Cohen says. "All the parents want is a healthy kid."

There is no reason for the PA to refuse these contacts. Unless it's more important for children to die than to allow Israelis to help. Of course Arafat & co also encourage childrent to expose themselves to violence so there's no harm in preventing children from getting the treatment they need.
That's especially so if there the likes of Gideon Levy and the *other* "Soccer Dads" who are willing to whitewash the exploiting of children in order to demonize the Jewish state by dishonestly taking the exaggerated claims of the Palestinians at face value. If these people cared about Israeli children who were killed, they would focrefully protest each death instead of treating to us a cliched and phony statement that they condmen violence on both sides. The only lives that matter to these people are the non-Jewish ones.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Posted by SoccerDad at October 22, 2004 02:23 AM | TrackBack