NPR Sees Tit for Tat Violence
“Tit for tat” is defined as “an equivalent given in retaliation,” or “giving back exactly what one receives.” Sheera Frenkel, reporting on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” cites alleged “tit for tat” violence between Israelis and Palestinians:
Over the past several weeks, Israelis and Palestinians have engaged in tit-for-tat violence that has left civilians dead on both sides in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
But her own description of the violence on both sides belies the “tit for tat” canard. Her next words are:
In Gaza, Palestinian militants have fired more than 60 rockets into southern Israeli communities over the last week, injuring at least two Israelis. The IDF has responded with targeted attacks against Palestinian militants. But in one exchange on Tuesday, an Israeli tank misfired and killed four Palestinian civilians in a home close to where the militants had been firing missiles. The IDF said that four militants were also killed in that attack. (Emphasis added.)
In other words, Palestinians indiscriminately set bombs and fire rockets at purely civilian targets, with no military target nearby, ie commit war crimes. Israel attacks Palestinian terrorists who are firing rockets at Israeli civilians, and who use the cover of their own civilian population to do so. As a result, the unfortunate Palestinian civilians exploited as human shields by Palestinian terrorists are killed. Tit for tat?
Moreover, among the civilians dead in the West Bank in the last few weeks (unmentioned by Frenkel), were the five members of the Fogel family — parents Udi and Ruth, and their three children, Yoav (11), Elad (4), and Hadas (3 months) — who were brutally stabbed to death in their sleep. Perhaps Frenkel omits this particularly odious atrocity (even by Palestinian standards) because it, more than anything else, undercuts the tit for tat lie.
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