Soccer Dad

Noms de guerre etc.

Boker Tov Boulder has an extremely jarring post "Catch the bias". Initially she focuses on a picture of a little girl. The girl is identified as:

Tzacha, the granddaughter of Abu Jihad, a Palestinian fisherman from the al-Mawasi area

I'm going to go out on a limb here, but I doubt that her grandfather was a fisherman named Abu Jihad.
Abu Jihad was the nom de guerre of Khalil al Wazir, once the number two man to Yasser Arafat. In April 1988 a team of Israeli commandos - reportedly including Ehud Barak - killed Abu Jihad in Tunis. His widow Intisar and his son Jihad are both still very involved in the Palestinian herarchy.
I doubt that a simple fisherman would take the nickname of such a revered terrorist leader.
One possibility is that this is really the granddaughter of Abu Jihad but his profession is misidentified.
Another is that Gaza has a Khalil al Wazir neighborhood and the caption should read that her grandfather is from there.
At the time of his killing the Washington featured an editorial, "THE KILLING OF KHALIL WAZIR." (April 19, 1988). The editorial is notable for its moral confusion. However it started well:

KHALIL WAZIR, or Abu Jihad (''father of the holy war''), lived by the gun, had one in his hand, in fact, when he was assassinated in Tunis, reportedly by the Israelis. As the No. 2 man in Yasser Arafat's PLO and the head of its main military arm, he qualified as a terrorist, someone using violence indiscriminately, against civilians and for political effect. He believed armed struggle in this form was essential for Palestinians claiming nationhood. There can be no loose romanticizing about the man.

But then the muddle starts:

Khalil Wazir was also something besides a terrorist. He had a second role. He had established himself as a respected leader of his people and as one who personified their dream of national redemption in a land of their own. This is the difficult but undeniable fact about the PLO. It uses terrorism and, at the same time, evidently seeing no contradiction, presumes to speak for a people's dignity.

The conclusion therefore is:

Palestinians are outraged at the thought that not only does Israel refuse to acknowledge their leaders, it kills them when it can. Others are left to wonder whether there are any leaders the Palestinians can put forward who are both able to speak for their people and acceptable, as nonterrorists, to the Israelis. The latest sequence tightens this question and underlines the urgency of the American peace initiative, which has not found an answer but which is the one diplomatic operation actively looking for one.

Perhaps Israel should be outraged because the Palestinians, as reflected by their leaders, hadn't abandoned terror as a means of achieving their goals and haven't truly changed their goal of destroying Israel. Maybe that's why no "peace initiative" has gotten any traction. And maybe matters are exacerbated because so many in the west use "Palestinian outrage" or "Palesitnian frustration" as an excuse for Palestinian terror, instead of saying that Palestinian terror is illegitimate regardless of its pretext.
While we're on the subject of noms de guerre, read My Right Word's post on the subject. Another example as to how Palestinian terror is airbrushed.

If I were to tell you that when a Middle Eastern country was founded in the first half of the 20th century it created thousands of refugees and is now building a fence on its disputed border to prevent terrorist infiltrations, you might think that I was talking about Israel. You would be wrong. I am referring to Saudi Arabia. When the modern Saudi state was founded in the 1930's it conquered two provnices - Jizan and Najran - from Yemen. The Jews living in those areas were escorted out of the new kingdom and their property confiscated. What brings this to mind is Clifford May's article, "The High Cost of Gaza Housing that documents the displacement of many Jewish communities in the Middle East by the Arabs. (HT: Crossing the Rubicon2) Unlike those who have become known as Palestinians, the displaced Jews were not in any theater of combat. But they wer expelled simply because they were Jewish. Somehow that doesn't evoke the same outrage that Palestinian displacement does. And somehow, even when someone worthy like Clifford May gives this sordid history, Saudi Arabia escapes mention. (It's probably because Saudi Arabia's expulsion occurred before 1948.)

Not Quite Perfect "never get[s] tired" of making fractal art. I never get tired of viewing it. I don't wish her ill but some of she produces some of her best stuff when she's had a bad day. Her work's still quite good when things are better too.

UPDATE: I left out references to another issue that I meant to cover. Recently an article in Ha'aretz argued that there is no Torah based prohibition for a Jew to cede parts of Israel. The argument is based on a description in Melachim (Kings) of Shlomo Hamelech (King Solomon) giving a cities in the Galilee to Hiram as payment for his help. Hirhurim rebuts this, writing that a plain reading of the text is not sufficient in this case because in Divrei haYamim it says that Hiram gave cities to Shlomo. While one commentator says that that this means that they traded cities, the Abarbanel interprets it to mean that only the bounty of the cities was given to Hiram. Parshablog buttresses Hirhurim's argument with a Talmudic reference.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Posted by SoccerDad at June 29, 2005 06:12 AM | TrackBack