Thursday, December 04, 2003

HIPJ in Crimson Magazine

The Crimson magazine featured HIPJ this week in it's story entitled "You Say You Want a Resolution" about campus dialogue on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The article said a lot of things, but perhaps its greatest contribution will be our new nickname for Suvrat: the fastidiously polite Raju.

It also goes on to catalogue the history of the conflict between HIPJ and HSI reproducing pretty accurately what Suvrat and I told the Crimson reporter. Among other things it quotes the (IMHO) rather disgusting email that an HSI member sent to Suvrat and provides some free publicity for the blog.

In the comments on the blog the article contends

The Weblog�s first news summary featured a link to a Zmag.org article comparing the Israeli Defense Forces to the Nazi military.

This requires some qualification. First of all, it was not the news summary it was in a seperate post which was just highlighting an article in Z-Magazine in which Justin Podur, a frequent contributor there who writes about everything from Colombia to Globalization, was basically quoting an official from the Israeli Defense force out of Ha'aretz. Here is the paragraph in contention:

Do you know that in fighting the Palestinians Israel has patterned itself on the wrong side of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising? Did you read the quote from the unnamed 'senior IDF official' in Ha'aretz on January 25, 2002, who said "If the mission is to seize a densely populated refugee camp, or to take over the casbah in Nablus. the commander. must first analyze and internalize the lessons of earlier battles, even, however shocking it may sound - how the German army fought in the Warsaw ghetto." Did that shock you as it did me? Did you wonder why he called it the 'German army' instead of the 'Nazi army'? I did.

Comparing "Israeli Defense Forces to the Nazi military" clearly isn't the focus of the article (the Crimson doesn't claim that it is but a casual reader might take that as the implication) and furthermore the only comparison of the IDF to the Nazi army is done by way of an IDF officer quoted in Ha'aretz.

Please zealously post any other thoughts or descriptions of inaccuracies in the comments below.

Posted by: Phil at 10 : 54 PM | Comments? (181) | LINK

Thursday, December 04, 2003 HIPJ in Crimson Magazine

Thursday, December 04, 2003

HIPJ in Crimson Magazine