“People ask me why I saced Douglas MacArthur (during the Korean War). The reaon was that he was insubordinate. It wasn’t because he was stupid, because if that was the case, I would have to fire ALL of the generals”.

From the AP:

The Associated Press
Sunday, March 2, 2008; 1:32 PM

JERUSALEM — An Israeli official who sparked an uproar by using the word for “holocaust” to describe what Israel might do to the Gaza Strip said Sunday his comment had been manipulated by the media but acknowledged he could have chosen another term.

In a radio interview Friday discussing Palestinian rocket fire at Israel and Israel’s military response, Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai said, “As the rocket fire grows, and the range increases … they are bringing upon themselves a greater ’shoah’ because we will use all our strength in every way we deem appropriate.”

The Hebrew word “shoah” refers to the Nazi Holocaust, but also means “disaster,” and a spokesman for Vilnai immediately clarified he meant the latter.

Nonetheless, many international media outlets translated it as “holocaust” and the statement was taken by many in the Arab world to mean that Israel was threatening the Palestinians with genocide.

On Saturday, Palestinian leaders from both Hamas and Fatah called Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip, which has killed dozens of people, a “holocaust” and “genocide.”

In Syria, exiled Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal described Israeli killings of civilians in Gaza as “the real Holocaust.”

“It’s clear to everyone that I used it to mean ‘disaster’ or ‘catastrophe,’” Vilnai said Sunday in an interview with Army Radio, charging the media with “manipulating” his words.

“You can use other words, absolutely,” Vilnai acknowledged, “but that shouldn’t divert us from the main point, which is that they are bringing a disaster on their people because of their actions.”

The amount of grandstanding in this conflict disgust me. It certainly put some of the more disgusting comments coming from Hamas into context, and that context is a poisonous one. Both sides of this conflict are utterly insane, and are adopting pride, political survival and ideology over the interests of their people.

BTW, I have a graduate degree in Hebrew literature. How much Hebrew does Melanie Phillips & the rest of the hasbara crowd have?

Melanie Philips and you are definitely on different end of the political spectrum. Nevertheless, her post is worth considering.

The mother of all mistranslations
By Melanie PHILLIPS
The Spectator
29th February 2008

http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/530786/the-mother-of-all-mistranslations.thtml

Ye gods. The BBC has put out this story:

Israel warns of Gaza ‘holocaust’

Israeli leaders are warning of an imminent conflagration in Gaza after Palestinian militants aimed rockets at the southern city of Ashkelon. The deputy defence minister said the stepped-up rocket fire would trigger what he called a ‘bigger holocaust’ in the Hamas-controlled coastal strip.

This reported remark by deputy defence minister Matan Vilnai caused widespread shock and absolute horror. For an Israeli minister to use the word ‘holocaust’ to describe a limited war of Israeli self-defence, when for Jews of all people the ‘Holocaust’ means one thing: genocide — and this at a time when the calumny of the ‘Jews as Nazis’ is rampant around the world, putting Israel and the Jewish people at risk — was simply beyond belief.

It was indeed without any credibility — because Vilnai never said it. It was an appalling mistranslation by Reuters, the source of the BBC story. Vilnai said:

‘The more Qassam (rocket) fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they (the Palestinians) will bring upon themselves a bigger “shoah” because we will use all our might to defend ourselves’.

Reuters translated the Hebrew word ‘shoah’ as ‘holocaust’. But ‘shoah’ merely means disaster. In Hebrew, the word ‘shoah’ is never used to mean ‘holocaust’ or ‘genocide’ because of the acute historical resonance. The word ‘Hashoah’ alone means ‘the Holocaust’ and ‘retzach am’ means ‘genocide’. The well-known Hebrew construction used by Vilnai used merely means ‘bringing disaster on themselves’.

As a subsequent Reuter’s story reported,

Vilnai’s spokesman said: ‘Mr. Vilnai was meaning “disaster”. He did not mean to make any allusion to the genocide.’ Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Arye Mekel, added: ‘Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai used the Hebrew phrase that included the term ’shoah’ in Hebrew in the sense of a disaster or a catastrophe, and not in the sense of a holocaust.’

But this grotesque mistranslation has given Hamas a propaganda gift which they lost no time exploiting:

Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said of Vilnai’s comments: ‘We are facing new Nazis who want to kill and burn the Palestinian people.’

At a time when the rockets continue to rain down on the southern Negev and Israel is being forced to contemplate stepping up its incursions into Gaza because of the truly genocidal assault upon its citizens by Hamas, such a mistranslation is more than an unfortunate slip. In the present explosive atmosphere, it can lead directly to an enormous escalation of violence by the Palestinians.

It is not enough for Reuters to try to cover its backside in subsequent stories. It must issue an explicit retraction, and so must the BBC. Instantly.

“If it was a Palestinian that said this, what would the reaction be?” Or something along those lines. And it’s true: if it were a Palestinian, a Syrian, an Egyptian, an Afghani, an Iraqi or even an Iranian (who is mistranslated over and over again), the press has a field day. Not for Vilnai: he seems to be on easy street even though some of his colleagues are doing major damage control.

And what I won’t like is the fact that even with this rhetoric, who is going to stop Israel from doing such a thing? The EU? The UN? Russia? The US? Right now we’re on the verge of a full scale escalation of violence between Israel and Hamas (and Islamic Jihad), and Israel could very well have a blank cheque to destroy the tiny Strip like they did to Lebanon back in 2006. Rice won’t stop it: she wants this to be another “birthpang of a new Middle East”. Bush can’t do anything and Obama is still not even the Democratic candidate yet.

What’s a Palestinian to do now?

Political expediency trumps all. In simpler English, self-interest trumps all.

Look at the case of Turkey and the Armenian Genocide. Did Israel ever condemn Turkey as it should on moral grounds, on Shoah grounds?

No, because Turkey is an ally, and a very important one at that.

Even better - Israel was a chief ally of South Africa during its apartheid years in the 1980’s. Technology transfer and trading, exchange of information on atomic weapons manufacture and raw materials all took place. You would have thought that a government of a country that (at least in America) justifies its actions with the Shoah (WW2 Jewish Genocide), that is still being paid by many nations “reparations money” for it…. perhaps one would have thought that a racist, despicable apartheid regime would be condemned.

Political expediency trumps all.
Even the use of Shoah money earmarked for survivors.
In pretty much everything, Israel does the necessary evil.
Even screwing Holocaust survivors out of their money.

The excuse?
Israel is surrounded by enemies, and we must protect it. We, the Jewish diaspora around the world. We must support it. No matter what. A small necessary evil is OK if it helps Israel. Sometimes even a big evil.

Political expediency trumps all.