When page A6 says something

When allegations of the IDF’s conduct first emerged, Yaacov Lozowick observed:

Haaretz has just launched a series (so they say) of articles in which soldiers who fought in Gaza tell of wrongdoings. I’m linking to the first article here, and may link to the next. As war crimes go, these stories published so far are not particularly horrendous; they tell of lax orders and lack of care, not of an intention to kill civilians, but let’s see what the next installments tell. I expect Haaretz will publish the whammies in their weekend (=Friday) edition.

Friday has come and gone and Yaacov hasn’t yet followed up. But Ethan Bronner of the New York Times has.

On Friday, Ethan Bronner of the New York Times reported on allegations of misconduct on the part of the IDF during the recent war against Hamas. (I previously blogged about it here.) For the most part he did little reporting on his own. He mostly repeated the information that appeared in the Ha’aretz article. In one case he apparently interviewed someone new.

Amir Marmor, a 33-year-old history graduate student in Jerusalem and a military reservist, said in an interview with The New York Times that he was stunned to discover the way civilian casualties were discussed in training discussions before his tank unit entered Gaza in January. “Shoot and don’t worry about the consequences,” was the message from the top commanders, he said. Speaking of a lieutenant colonel who briefed the troops, Mr. Marmor said, “His whole demeanor was extremely gung ho. This is very, very different from my usual experience. I have been doing reserve duty for 12 years, and it was always an issue how to avoid causing civilian injuries. He said in this operation we are not taking any chances. Morality aside, we have to do our job. We will cry about it later.”

Bronner gives no idea where he came upon Mr. Marmor. Was he one of those who was profiled by Ha’aretz? I doubt that Bronner came upon him randomly. But Marmor’s account serves to add credibility to the charges in Ha’aretz.

Before that Bronner also reported something else.

It was clear that Mr. Zamir felt that his concerns, which he had raised earlier in a letter to the military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, had not been taken seriously and that was why he published the testimonies.

I’m not going to comment on Zamir’s allegation until later, so just file it away.

Before we go to the followup, I just want to point out the fine print at the bottom of the article.

A version of this article appeared in print on March 20, 2009, on page A1 of the New York edition.

In one of his followups, More Allegations Surface in Israeli Accounts of Gaza War

The account, in the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper, expanded on shorter excerpts printed Thursday in Haaretz and Maariv, a center-right newspaper, and came from a taped conversation among Gaza war veterans at an institute that prepares soldiers before their service. After the materials were published, the military advocate general began an investigation into the allegations.

The director of the institute where the discussion occurred, Dany Zamir, published the accounts in his newsletter and leaked them to the newspapers to draw attention to what he considered to be troubling revelations. Mr. Zamir is known to be on the left of Israel’s political spectrum.

He is quoted in the excerpts as saying to the soldiers who spoke: “I think it would be important for parents to sit here and hear this discussion. I think it would be an instructive discussion, and also very dismaying and depressing. You are describing an army with very low norms of value, that’s the truth.”

There is a lot here to comment on, but first of all describing Mr. Zamir “be(ing) on the left” is a bit of an understatement. Here’s what Herb Keinon wrote in a must read analysis for the Jerusalem Post.

Zamir, in an interview on Israel Radio on Thursday, said that the soldiers from Operation Cast Lead who spoke at the meeting reflected an atmosphere inside the army of “contempt for, and forcefulness against, the Palestinians.”

Zamir himself appears in a 2004 book titled Refusnik, Israel’s Soldiers of Conscience, compiled and edited by Peretz Kidron, with a forward by Susan Sontag. The book, which earned commendation from no less a personage than Noam Chomsky, includes a section by Zamir, described as “an officer in the reserves from Kibbutz Ayelet Hashahar who was sentenced to 28 days for refusal to serve in Nablus and now heads the Kibbutz Movement’s preparatory seminary for youngsters ahead of their induction in the army.”

“With stupid resolve and the smugness of the all-knowing, primitive preachers and unbridled nationalists are leading and misleading us to calamity, while Pompeii is preoccupied with watching boxing matches and with banquets in advance of the disaster,” he wrote.

This is an extreme left-wing position for an Israeli. (Contrast Bronner’s delicacy here with the Times’ penchant for referring to an Israeli party that believes in territorial compromise as being “far-right.”) And perhaps it’s the reason that that the Chief of Staff was apparently unimpressed by Zamir’s allegations at first. Zamir, though, knew that there were local and foreign media who would happily publicize his allegations without scrutinizing their source.

But Keinon concludes:

That was what Zamir wrote in 1990, reprinted in 2004. The testimonies of the soldiers that he brought to the public’s attention seem to corroborate – what a coincidence – his thesis.

Exactly, Zamir has a pretty big axe to grind with Israeli society. And yet his own beliefs didn’t become part of the story at all. Bronner didn’t investigate whether the allegations were true or if they were the result of some understandable confusion during combat, he just looked for sources to corroborate Zamir’s thesis that the misconduct was a result of some flaw in Israel’s national soul.

But there’s something that’s very telling here. This followup claims that the second day of Ha’aretz coverage was more complete. But if you look at the bottom the article you see the following words:

A version of this article appeared in print on March 21, 2009, on page A6 of the New York edition.

So the more complete article is buried in the first section of the paper but the initial article was front page news. I think that Bronner’s acknowledgment of Zamir’s political leanings, plus the less prominent position suggest that Bronner and/or his editors realized that this story may not be as damning as Ha’aretz does. If the followup was really more complete, it should also have been on page A1.

Anyway, Zamir has provided Bronner with the fodder for another article about the influence of religion in Israeli society. I’m not going to address it, however My Right Word has made a few observations about a related story. Elder of Ziyon deconstructs the Bronner article head on.

I don’t know the truth about the allegations, but neither, apparently does Ethan Bronner. And yet he accepts them as the premises for three articles.

Others who have commented on the issue include Barry Rubin (at Augean Stables), Daled Amos. Meanwhile Random Thoughts and Elder of Ziyon take on Richard Falk.

Crossposted on Yourish.