Saturday, November 04, 2006

The BBC and Israel: Efficacy

I've come across an interesting piece that reveals the need for careful parsing of everything said by the BBC (as these folks could already tell you).
The story is from a link at the bottom of the BBC World News page called...

Force Questioned: Deep Skepticism in Israel over efficacy of Gaza raids

So you click on the link and you get...

Efficacy of Gaza Raids Questioned

The Israeli operation in Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza has the stated aim of stopping militant rocket fire, but in Israel there is deep scepticism that military force will achieve this.

It seems clear enough.......
Except that during the next 17 sentences of the article the only questioning of the use of force you get is this lone sentence...



Some Israeli security analysts, however, believe that the problem cannot be resolved by military force.
That's it. No actual quoting of "Some Israeli security analysts" or even naming them.
In fact most of the article consists of people with these sort of ideas


"What we need is a large military operation to capture the Gaza strip and destroy the terrorist infrastructure," says Yuval Steinitz, a member of the Israeli parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee.
So the header sentence really should read...

"...in Israel there is deep scepticism that a small military force will achieve this, as opposed to a full scale invasion."

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