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April 28, 2011

Turning a Misspelling into a Fabrication

People can get pretty desperate. One example of how desperate they can get played itself out on Snapshots, when a commenter attempted to discredit an article we linked to a few days ago. The original article quoted an official from the Red Cross as stating there was no humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. The person quoted is named as Mathilde Redmatn, deputy director of the Red Cross in the Gaza Strip.

A few hours after CAMERA posted a link to the article, a commenter stated that the article was false because there was no one by the name of “Mathilde Redmatn�? working for the Red Cross. A similar statement appeared on the Mondoweiss blog.

Interestingly enough, even the Mondoweiss blog entry acknowledged that there was someone working for the Red Cross with a similar name. A commenter, who disagreed with the premise that there was no humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip still had the presence of mind to acknowledge that Redmatn’s name got misspelled in the course of the article being translated from Hebrew into English.

Given Snapshots' interest in the accuracy of the article in question, CAMERA contacted both the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Jerusalem and the IDF website article’s author, Rotem Caro Weizman. The ICRC confirmed that it does in fact have a Mathilde De Riedmatten in its employ – and her title is ICRC Deputy Head of Sub Delegation in Gaza.

And Ms. Weizman confirmed that the name ‘Mathilde Redmatn’ was indeed mistranslated from the Hebrew into English.

Ms. Weizman stands by her story and barring a denial from the Red Cross, it seems reasonable to conclude that the quote is, in fact, accurate.

As to the complaints about a humanitarian crisis taking place in the Gaza Strip, commenters should take it up with Mathilde De Riedmatten.

Posted by at April 28, 2011 04:34 PM

Comments

As was pointed out in the article:

- We know from the UN’s March update that a majority of Gazans are food insecure and rely on aid.

- We know that Gaza’s fishermen are limited to fishing within 3 miles of the shore, in a stretch of water heavily contaminated with raw sewage. (Incidentally this raw sewage also contaminates Gazas “nice beach�?)

- We know that 35% of agricultural land is off limits to farmers, unless they wish to find death at the hands of the IDF, and this doesn’t take into account agricultural land rendered inoperable as a result of the #### ########.

- We know that 90% of drinking water extracted from the aquifer is brackish and fail’s to meet the WHO’s standard for drinking water.

Now, we could tell the people living under those conditions that this isn't a humanitarian crisis, or we could tell them that it IS a humanitarian crisis - but would it really change anything?

Posted by: Tim Haughton at April 29, 2011 07:10 AM

- We know from the UN’s March update that a majority of Gazans are food insecure and rely on aid.

Thats true for 50% of the worlds population. Get a bloody clue. This is even more ironic given the fact that after the Israelis withdrew from Gaza the Pals torched all the farms and hot houses left behind. They'd rather starve then use something left by a Jew.

- We know that Gaza’s fishermen are limited to fishing within 3 miles of the shore, in a stretch of water heavily contaminated with raw sewage. (Incidentally this raw sewage also contaminates Gazas “nice beach�?

Incidentally, where does that sewage come from? Maybe the pals should stop crapping in the ocean.


- We know that 35% of agricultural land is off limits to farmers, unless they wish to find death at the hands of the IDF, and this doesn’t take into account agricultural land rendered inoperable as a result of the Gaza Massacre.


Gaza Massacre? No. What happened in Gaza was that Hamas got a good case of whoop-ass. The 20,000 Tamils murdered by the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka... that was a massacre.

Fool.


- We know that 90% of drinking water extracted from the aquifer is brackish and fail’s to meet the WHO’s standard for drinking water.

That's Israel's problem? Maybe instead of investing in rockets and mortars the Pals should modernize their water treatment facilities.

Now, we could tell the people living under those conditions that this isn't a humanitarian crisis, or we could tell them that it IS a humanitarian crisis - but would it really change anything?


No, cuz either way Hamas is a cruel Islamist dictatorship that couldn't give a rats ass about there people's comfort.

Is that really the best apologia you could come up with?

Please tell me you have better. Or do you enjoy embarrassing yourself in a public forum, Tim?

Posted by: Stuart Weinstein at April 30, 2011 07:51 AM

Let's see if Tim Haughton is willing to publish this reply on MondoWeiss (I used username "jinx" on mondoweiss, replying to user "Chaos4700"...then exposing lies from other mondoweiss users; Tim would be quite the hypocrite not to publish this, as he complains to other mondoweiss users that pro-Israel websites refused to publish his lengthy rebuttals):

No, this ICRC rep exists, and hasn't retracted her statement about "no humanitarian crisis in Gaza" nor anything else AFAIK:

1. Palestinian-Police's site says she's an ICRC rep: www.police.ps/en/index.php?mod=article&cat=PoliceNews&article=696

2. ICRC itself also admits her existence:
www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/interview/2011/palestine-israel-interview-2011-05-19.htm

...so where is DBG's "total bullshit," Chaos4700?
Many of the anti-Israel people replying to (and reposting) this story are the bullshitters, e.g. here we have Chaos4700 claiming that timhaughton's story means that DBG are "total bullshit[ters]" -- what have they bullshitted about?
. . . You (and seafoid when he says "The 'interview' is obviously bullshit") can't prove Weizman (the interviewer) bullshitted about Redmatten's existence, nor that Weizman bullshitted about Radmatten stating that there's "no humanitarian crisis in Gaza" & other statements: and BTW...

Redmatten was also quoted as criticizing Hamas actions, calling them humanitarian crimes, so here are 2 ICRC webpages with a similar position to Redmatten's position that "all" or "both" sides, not only Israel, must be more careful not to commit humanitarian crimes -- contrary to many people here giving 100% of the blame to Israel for war-crimes: www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/interview/israel-palestine-interview-281208.htm www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/news-release/palestine-2-news-130109.htm
...so Schmuel's claim (on mondoweiss), that "the spin -- balance between the actions of Israel and of Hamas [is one of the things] inconsistent with previous ICRC statements" is contrary to the last 2 ICRC webpages which DO have a "balance" of blaming "both parties" or even "all" parties; yet none of mondoweiss's regulars points that out to Schmuel.

None of the regulars on mondoweiss corrected Chaos4700 (nor Schmuel, nor article, nor seafoid...) despite that Chaos4700's is the 2nd comment on this article -- a sign that mondoweiss's regulars are brainwashed (drinking each others' kool-aid: i.e."intellectually incestuous"), IMHO.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

I see "the simple, reciprocal understanding that if you [timhaughton] provide the information, I [Chaos4700 and others] will -- not only "print it" and parrot timhaughton's original story -- many of the anti-Israel crowd even DISTORTED timhaughton's original story until the claims from many anti-Israel bullshitters were that the IDF journalist (Weizman) & other journalists (allegedly) were lying to protect Israel.
(NOTE: mainstream reliable journalists aren't making that mistake, as they don't take credence from a hack like timhaughton, whose hyperbole in this blog is beyond belief, and IMHO his semantics only encouraged his comrades to make such distortions. Also, Tim, did you ever think of the ways some journalists might have fact-checked her existence & still got her name misspelled such as: Israelis have no vowels nor double-consonants & thus should be expected to miss that type of misspelling, and Western journalists might have called-in to confirm her existence & thus would also miss the misspelling; the Palestine-Police also misspelled her name www.police.ps/en/index.php?mod=article&cat=PoliceNews&article=696 SO I GUESS THE PNA POLICE MUST BE IN ON THE PRO-ISRAEL CONSPIRACY: declare a national emergency! :-) More seriously, a misspelling/mistranslation does not affect the SUBSTANCE of a story.

. . . So Noam Chomsky's critique of bullshitters --which timhaughton was nice enough to call attention to-- who magnify each other's bullshit "without question" is applicable to the anti-Israel crowd in this case, and in contrast I can't CONFIRM any bullshit as being applicable to the mainstream journalists...in this particular case.

Actually, many such as a "SandraW" and "mountain birds"/"mountainbird" on other websites went beyond Chaos4700 in the bullshit department. These people are a DISGRACE, and even most of the obtuse & dishonest anti-Israel historic revisionists I've seen are usually more careful & sly than the OBVIOUS lies that Mathilde doesn't even exist or a refusal to acknowledge that ICRC blames Hamas too for crimes that have caused Gaza's humanitarian situations (NOTE: I think everyone objective should hesitate to use the loaded-words of humanitarian "crisis" unless they create an immutable definition, applicable worldwide, of what they consider a "crisis" to be; I'd just call every unique case a "humanitarian situation" rather than using a "check-box," just as Tim also stated on other webpages that as a doctor can't apply just 1 checkbox to diagnose his patient, we can't apply a simple check-box to unique geopolitical situations; reality is more complex than that).

Posted by: Reply to mondoweiss users at June 19, 2011 06:56 AM

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