I received this email from reader Ralph Zwier in Melbourne
Arnold Roth [whose daughter Malki was murdered in the Sbarro pizzeria bombing in Jerusalem last August] has had trouble here in Australia getting interviewed on our ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission). They wanted to put him together (many months ago) with the father of his daughter's murderer in an interview. It would have been a cynical and grotesque show of moral equivalence. Arnold refused. The person who Arnold was dealing with was Mr Tim Palmer, the then Jerusalem correspondent for the ABC. His immediate boss is Peter Cave, who is quite high up in our ABC.Zwier included a link to a transcript of Cave's broadcastNow Peter Cave announced on a radio program last Sunday that he and others were in Jenin at the relevant time and saw the whole thing with their own eyes, and there "probably" WAS a massacre. They denied the validity of the U.N. report. This man is very influential.
Peter Cave says: "Was there a massacre in Jenin? Well, yes there was." even though "The simple fact is that nobody really knows how many died." He really, really seems to want to believe there was a massacre, even though there is no evidence of a massacre, which "The Macquarie Dictionary and the OED define as the unnecessary indiscriminate killing or slaughter of human beings."
(The Macquarie Dictionary, I learned today, is an Australian dictionary, which also defines a "Dutch Oven" to be "a prank in which one holds another's head under the covers of a bed they have just farted in.")
Mr. Cave then goes on to equate the clean-up of the booby-trapped bomb-factories in Jenin with China's 1989 slaughter of student protesters: "Just as happened in Tiananmen Square, the uninformed and those with their own agenda, are now claiming there was no massacre. There was a massacre, a considerable number of human beings were indiscriminately and unnecessarily slaughtered. The truth was the other victim."
So it seems that the only evidence of a "massacre" in Jenin is Cave's own yearning for there to have been one. But let's adopt, for argument sake, his definition of "massacre". It would seem to fit any number of bombings that have taken place at various eateries around Israel in the last several months, where we saw some "unnecessary indiscriminate killing or slaughter of human beings" -- such as last week at the Hebrew U, or last year at the Sbarro pizzeria. But I can't find any transcript of Peter Cave calling these events "massacres". So either the truth is the victim here, or Peter Cave believes that indiscriminately killing teenage girls and college students while they're eating lunch is, in fact, necessary.
UPDATE (Aug. 11) I took a look at an official Palestinian list of casualties from the Jenin camp. Even the Palestinians own data throws cold water on any allegations about a massacre.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at August 08, 2002 05:12 PMYep, its "your" ABC.
"You" being the trendy, inner city
left for whom the Palestinians are
the latest cause du jour.
I wonder if Peter Cave would be interested in my idea for a TV show. It's a reality type show featuring him as a Jerusalem bus driver for a month, perhaps his mate Tim could play the role of the pizza chef.
This resembles the latest cartoon by T3d Ra11. On one side, it lists "dangerous places" for Israelis, and lists discotheques, pizzerias, malls, etc.
On the flip side, listing dangerous places in "Palestine," he simply lists "inside" and "outside." W/ his depiction of Israeli troops simply shooting indiscriminately.
Talk about your moral equivalence.
Posted by: Dean on August 9, 2002 12:37 AMI don't know what planet the ABC are from. One devoid of morality and good sense. I am from Australia. Our rotten left-wing media are a disgrace. Some kind of stinking psychopathology must be responsible for their wickedly perverse views.
Posted by: B Shaw on August 9, 2002 05:27 AMThis is the sort of thing that just about makes my head explode. I'll try to be near Peter Bloody Cave when it happens, although I'll settle for Turd Roil.
Posted by: Toren on August 9, 2002 02:16 PMOur ABC is being run as a workers collective in which holders of "incorrect" opinions are swiftly dealt with.
Posted by: ron robertson on August 9, 2002 02:33 PMThe ABC is a pro-socialist, pro-communist, anti-American propaganda network that is paid for by Australian tax dollars.
Posted by: paul drummond on August 10, 2002 07:43 PMGet a life.
I read Peter Cave's article and he is saying that the murder of the young Israeli soldiers was a massacre.
The point he is making is that if the Sharon Government had allowed an investigation the truth would be known. As it is it will never be known just as it was at Tiananmen Square. By the I not that Peter Cave won two Walkely Awards for his coverage of Tiananmen Square. I believe the Walkely is the equivalent of our Pulitzer Prize.
I dont agree with everything he says but he has the right to say it without us Jews showing how intolerant we can often be of the opinions of others.
Posted by: Myron Goldblatt on October 26, 2002 05:16 PM