Ha’aretz‘s Levy Numerically Challenged
It has been reported before that Gideon Levy, an Arab affairs writer for Ha’aretz, does not understand Arabic, cannot read it and cannot speak it. But an Op-Ed by Levy this week reveals for the first time that numbers might be equally challenging for him. He writes:
Israel can no longer continue to mouth slogans about security, after seven years in which it killed 4,267 Palestinians, 861 of them children and teens, in comparison to 467 Israelis who were killed, according to data from B’Tselem.
In actuality, according to B’Tselem, the number of Israelis killed in the last seven years is 1,025 — more than double the amount that Levy claims. B’Tselem’s casualty statistics are readily accessible here.
In a separate Ha’aretz Op-Ed, Yoel Marcus misleads in an Op-Ed Tuesday, writing that President Bush’s:
road map begins with a Palestinian commitment to halt terror, but also with an Israeli commitment to dismantle settlements.
While the “road map” calls for the limited dismantling of certain “settlements outposts” and a freeze on settlement growth, there is no general requirement “to dismantle settlements” as Marcus suggests. Specifically, Phase I of the plan says:
+ GOI [Government of Israel] dismantles settlement outposts erected since March 2001.
+ Consistent with the Mitchell Report, GOI freezes all settlement activity (including natural growth of settlements).
As most observers are aware, “settlement outposts” and “settlements” mean two vastly different things. The former refers to the small off-shoots of established settlements; they are often located on empty hilltops, entail a caravan or two, and were erected without official Israeli approval. The settlements, on the other hand, refer to the large, established communities housing thousands of people, and are legal under Israeli law. Marcus would have been correct were he to have said that the road map begins “with an Israeli commitment to dismantle some settlement outposts.”
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