A couple of items from Ha'aretz:Jewish Terrorists Plant Bomb at Palestinian High School; 15 InjuredAlready Planning to Serve the "Interersts of the Iraqi People"

One more:Ha'aretz Rips Fox"News;" Notes That Israeli Cable Seems to Want Fox as Sole International "News" Provider

Marsden provides an interesting link. I wonder how easy it would be for a Jewish volunteer militant to get unharmed into Jenin of all places and plant a bomb in a high school there. Is there a record of a Jew who could make it alive out of Jenin without a tank? That would provide of a fascinating link. I however liked more the link about a guy from the future who came to make money in the stock market.

ppauper:The article was changed by Ha'aretz. Unlike the current, internally inconsistent article that relays police claims that "there is no evidence" right before stating that the group in question had claimed responsibility (I guess there are different standards of evidence in Israel when Jewish terrorism as opposed to Palestinian terrorism is alleged: the Jewish terrorists have to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that they are responsible, but Palestinians just have to be related to an alleged terrorist to be shot on sight), the original article accepted the Jewish terrorist group's claims.If we were cynical, we might think it a little odd to lead a story with a statement that the group that claimed responsibility for a terrorist attack could not be proven to actually have been responsible. We might even think that, by reporting in that way, news media in Israel's patron state might have good cover for not picking up the story, as they seem indeed not to have done. And we might also wonder how much sense it makes to jump to the conclusion that someone willingly brought a bomb to his school.zerdna:I'm not sure what the current curfew situation is in Jenin, except that Five villages near Jenin were reportedly put under curfew at the beginning of February. But I suspect that you exagerate the difficulty of Jews in moving around the Occupied Territories -- maybe a member of the IDF did it.Anyway, if indeed the terrorist group sent emails to reporters' beepers, it would seem to be an easy and journalistically obvious thing to do to compare the time of the emails to the time of the blast, in order to provide an idea of whether the group was reacting to a reported bombing or had prior knowledge. Of course, this detail was overlooked in the later article.Jenin's mayor apparently reported that shrapnel found at the bomb site indicated that the device was Israeli-made. But he may be lying or he might not know what he's talking about.Also, there was apparently a similar bombing six weeks ago:QuotePolice are also investigating a bombing in the courtyard of an Arab boy's school in the Arab neighborhood of Sur Bahir six weeks ago. The bomb was small and did little damage, but could have been far more serious had not a teacher noticed a suspicious object and warned students away. Because of the similarity to the recently foiled attack in A-Tur, police suspect that the same group may have carried out the Sur Bahir attack.I recall also a report of a bomb disguised as a toy and left in Gaza for kids to find.But of course, it's more plausible that homemade bombs have just become the "in" thing for Palestinian kids to bring to school -- we know how crazy those people can get!

I never went to Israel and don't follow the situation there. However, there are some simple truths. All of the population in Palestine buys into the argument you like to propel -- that it is moral and fair to kill Israeli civilians because they are "quasi-soldiers". I think that's the term you used. There are hundreds of palestinians who volunteer to go to Israel and blow themselves up to do that. It doesn't make any sense for me that they will let an Israeli to walk out of their city alive. Moreover in Jenin, where the fiercest fighting with Israeli army occurred. Bomb was made in Israel. So what? Someone could have stolen it or bought it from an Israeli. Chechens buy part of their ammunition from Russian soldiers and army officials and do it in quantities. Someone sent a page about Jewish group being responsible. So? Could be ten different explanations. What the page said is irrelevant. What if it said "the bomb is a vengeance from the planet Alfa Centavra. I am Fantomas"? Finding the actual sender of the page is relevant.I think it's possible that some palestinian kids have access to bombs. There gotta be bomb factories and places where explosives are stored and this is not some gated area with a yellow sign "Caution: bombs to blow up Israelis".

The problem with this us that of any terrorist act, it is not really connected with the issue of what the group are trying to achieve. If you kill a soldier, the enemy has one less, but kill his kids and you have a more effective soldier. Thus most terrorism simply isn't rational enough to allow you to guess who actually did it. As American experience shows, lots of weapons left lying around mean kids will play with them. Many US kids are killed by each other in such play, so it isn't that implausible that a Palestinian kid picked up his brothers "toy" and decied to impress his mates at school.However, this is Israel we're talking about, not the USA. In the USA one would expect the authorities to investigate the incident with a view to finding the truth. The idea that Israel would try very hard to hunt down an extremist group or even admit to their "success" isn't all that realistic. Sadly, the fact of who did it is largely irrelevant. Palestinians will assume it was Israelis backed to some extent by the government, and Israelis don't really care too much if there are a few less Palestinians. If I were a friend of Israel this would contribute to my fear for Israel's long term survival. America survives a murder rate that is beyond the dreams of Bin Laden, because the structure is basically sound, and even when it goes wrong the USA is big enough to survive a lot of malice and incompetence. Israel is small and increasingly corrupt. The more the police think that their duty is to protect the "state", not its citizens the less stable that state will be. Ask Iraqis, they will tell you how well an efficient secret police defend your people.One day, soon, there will be the "wrong sort" of Jewish Israeli. They will suffer horribly at the hands of the state because there aren't the checks and balances that smarter states employ.

MobPsycho: why do you think the murder rate in the US is so high?They're stupid, bored and have way too much time on their hands? Wrong? Ah, shucks, was worth a try though.

I'm going to copy a bit of the bombing article, in case Ha'aretz decides to alter it again. This is how it opens:QuotePolice doubt claim Jews bombed Palestinian high schoolIsraeli police and security officials maintain there is no evidence indicating a Jewish extremist group was responsible for the bombing of a Palestinian school in the northern West Bank on Wednesday.Take a close look at that. It's a true journalistic gem! Mind you, this is not a follow-up article; this is, as of now, the only report Ha'aretz has online of the incident. Mind you also that Ha'aretz is a pretty good newspaper, and the nearest thing to objective, with regard to the Palestinian situation, available in the mainstream Israeli media (and more objective in many ways than mainstream US media!).But look -- look! -- at how this article opens. Here is The Guardian's (NOT an American paper) article on the same matter:Playground bombing injures 20 PalestiniansThe Guardian article begins withQuoteA bomb, which may have been planted by Jewish extremists, exploded in a West Bank school playground yesterday, injuring 20 Palestinian children.Note that it begins with a description of an event, with one clause indicating the relevance of the event to a bigger matter. Contrast this with the Ha'aretz article, which opens by telling us that "Israeli police and security people maintain there is no evidence indicating a Jewish extremist group was responsible...," and then says only that the event that this is all about is a bombing at a particular place on a particular day. Can you see how remarkable this styling is? Now, if this were a follow-on article, it might make sense, journalistically, to report in this way: the original article is about the bombing, and the follow-on article is about the possibility of the involvement of this Jewish terrorist group. But this is not a follow-on article! This is all you get from Ha'aretz's English online version on the event (The Jerusalem Post seems to have ignored the whole thing)! I can see that it makes sense, politically, to report in this way, if you want -- as indeed I expect the writers and editors of Ha'aretz do want -- to keep things that might jeopardize Israel's "special relationship" with the US from being picked up by the US media. But I can't see that it makes a lot of sense in objective journalism.Maybe its a new frontier in journalism. The same sort of styling can be used to introduce any sort of bad news: "Israeli police find no evidence linking a Jewish extremist group to..." You fill in the blank. "20 car pile-up in Kentucky?" Sure. "Errant bomb in Baghdad market?" Why not? "Tooth decay?" Works for me. Why, I think I might start using this style, just to see if I can catch a hint of how it makes sense!Note also that it is a Jewish "extremist" group. Ha'aretz certainly avoided an unfortunate term there! I wonder how often it reports on Palestinian "extremist" groups?Also, "Israeli police and security officials?" Hello? Isn't this event generally outside of their jurisdiction? Why did they go out of their way to make the remarkable claim about an event that is not their direct concern, other than to provide Ha'aretz with its interesting openning sentence. And, even ignoring that a claim of responsibility is not seen as evidence of any sort by these stalwart Israeli police and security officials, why have they said "we have no hard evidence" (as they apparently actually said, according to the Guardian article, and not "there is no evidence," as Ha'aretz -- apparently falsely -- reported them as having said) about something that they haven't really investigated at all? Are there other events that they would like to announce that they have no hard evidence about? Crimes in Australia? Tooth decay?Could even zerdna and ppauper be stupid enough not to recognize that there is something a little odd about this Ha'aretz article? Maybe we'll find out! Have at it, gentlemen.

QuoteOriginally posted by: zerdnaAll of the population in Palestine buys into the argument you like to propel -- that it is moral and fair to kill Israeli civilians because they are "quasi-soldiers". I think that's the term you used.I don't think I've ever used that term. Anyway, that is not the argument that I like to "propel." I would describe my argument as being that the Palestinians have been denied justice, in property stolen from them, in subjugation forced upon them, in violence that they are routinely subjected to. Efforts at securing justice for them in peaceful manners have been systematically blocked, whether by Israeli intransigence or by US Security Council vetoes. The argument I like to "propel" is that when you are not offering a peaceful manner by which someone may secure the correction of an egregious injustice, you also have no place condemning whatever he does to secure it on his own, except maybe to say that as a practical matter his method won't work.QuoteBomb was made in Israel. So what? Someone could have stolen it or bought it from an Israeli. Chechens buy part of their ammunition from Russian soldiers and army officials and do it in quantities. Someone sent a page about Jewish group being responsible. So? Could be ten different explanations. What the page said is irrelevant. What if it said "the bomb is a vengeance from the planet Alfa Centavra. I am Fantomas"? Finding the actual sender of the page is relevant.I think it's possible that some palestinian kids have access to bombs. There gotta be bomb factories and places where explosives are stored and this is not some gated area with a yellow sign "Caution: bombs to blow up Israelis".Sure, zerdna, sure. If you do enough mental gymnastics, you can explain your way out of anything. The real question is, what is most likely? And generally, what is most likely is something that doesn't require the mental limberness that you are so willing to exert. I'd like to think that responsible, objective journalists would report first of all what is generally agreed to as being true, and next to report the most likely of the things that are subject to uncertainty, and only lastly -- if at all -- to report the triple-bank shots that paint the prettiest picture for one group or another.

MP, I have to disagree with you on one detail. Trafficking in drugs and stolen firearms is not, by any means, a 24/7/365 vacation. It is a full time job.There is an erroneous perception that individuals who are engaged in black market activities aren't really doing any work. The fact is that anyone who is successful in these industries is probably working harder than 99% of small business owners.