From Regret to Fury at London Times
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs “regrets,” but where’s the fury?
Misreporting the nuances between Israeli-U.S. relations is big lately. First, there was this JTA report about inaccurate reports by Ha’aretz‘s Barak Ravid. Now, Noah Pollak at Commentary slams Sheera Frenkel of the UK Times:
The report is entitled “US fury as Israel defies settlement freeze call,” and in case the point wasn’t made clear by the title, the piece goes on to declare that
Israeli plans to authorise the construction of hundreds of houses in the occupied West Bank sparked furious protests from American and Palestinian officials yesterday.
“Fury” and “furious protests” from the Obama administration? I hadn’t seen them mentioned anywhere else. The dictionary says that furious means “full of or characterized by extreme anger; raging.” What was the American reaction? Right there, a few paragraphs down in Frenkel’s own story, we read that:
“We regret the reports of Israel’s plans to approve additional settlement construction,” Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, said. . . . Another US official said: “In the end America will be forced to do what is necessary to bring the Israelis and the Palestinians back to the negotiation table. But the Netanyahu Government has proven difficult to work with.”
There is regret, and a belief that Netanyahu has been difficult to work with, a feeling about Obama that is surely reciprocated by the Israelis. But who could characterize this as “fury”?
Answer: Sheera Frankel of T.K. Bhat infamy.
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