((((((( CAMERA Snapshots Update: Danny Zamir Slams New York Times )))))))

2009.04.06 23:27:34


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http://blog.camera.org/archives/2009/04/danny_zamir_slams_new_york_tim.html

The New York Times has come under criticism from a number of sources
(including CAMERA) for the way it mishandled rumors of misconduct by
Israeli troops in Gaza. But the source of the most recent round of
criticism is likely to raise some eyebrows.

Danny Zamir, the head of the pre-military academy who brought together
some of his graduates for the now infamous chat about the Gaza
fighting, slammed the New York Times and other news outlets for
twisting the soldiers' conversation in order to make "mendacious
claims of policies that involve so-called war crimes."

He wrote Tuesday in the Jerusalem Post:

"A number of articles published recently in The New York Times
quoted or were based on words spoken by myself and by graduates of the
pre-army leadership development program which I head (the "Rabin
Mechina") - graduates who participated as combat soldiers in Operation
Cast Lead and who met recently to process personal experiences from the
battlefield.

"Both explicitly and by insinuation, the articles claim a decline
in the IDF's commitment to its moral code of conduct in combat, and
moreover, that this decline stems from a specific increase in the
prominence of religious soldiers and commanders in the IDF in general,
and from the strengthening of the position of IDF Chief Rabbi Avichai
Ronsky in particular.

"It was as if the media were altogether so eager to find reason to
criticize the IDF that they pounced on one discussion by nine soldiers
who met after returning from the battlefield to share their experiences
and subjective feelings with each other, using that one episode to draw
conclusions that felt more like an indictment. Dogma replaced balance
and led to a dangerous misunderstanding of the depth and complexity of
Israeli reality. The individual accounts were never intended to serve
as a basis for broad generalizations and summary conclusions by the
media; they were published internally, intended for program graduates
and their parents as a tool to be used in the process of educating and
guiding the next generation."

You can read the rest of the column here.


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