Israeli Soldier Wounds Five in Hebron

 
     This is a critique of an article written by Alan Sipress which
appeared in the January 2 1997 Philadelphia Inquirer.

	In his article about Noam Freedman, the unstable 
Israeli soldier who wounded 5 Arabs in a futile effort to 
prevent Israel from giving up Hebron, Alan Sipress omitted 
the statements by settlers who condemned the shooting.  
Instead he wrote that "The shooting yesterday underscored 
the fear of many Palestinians that a greater threat is posed by 
the settlers and more than 1,000 Israeli troops deployed 
around the Jewish colonies".  By omitting the statements of 
the settlers who condemned the attack, Alan Sipress 
reinforced the impression that the settlers as a whole were a 
danger to the Arabs.  The following is the statement by the 
Yesha (Judea, Samaria, and Gaza) council  that Mr. Sipress 
omitted:

"The murder of innocent people is not only vile, but 
weakens the Jewish populace in Yesha, and that of Hevron 
in particular... "  

	Mr. Sipress also omitted an Arutz Sheva interview 
on January 1 1997 with the Executive-Director of the Yesha 
Council Foreign Desk Yechiel Leiter who stated: 

"It is a disgusting and unjustifiable act which I condemn. It is 
forbidden by Jewish Law, and by any moral standard. The 
act is politically stupid, and will only further setback the 
goals and ideals of the settlement movement as a whole... To 
conclude that there are extremists on both sides and that 
innocents on both sides face equal danger is ludicrous. We 
didn't hear any condemnations by Mr. Arafat or his 
associates after the Tzur family murder. We saw a mock 
trial; this fellow will obviously not be given a mock trial. 
This isn't organized terror as it is within the Palestinian Arab 
community. This is an individual. He claimed that he tried to 
stop the process and the signing. If anything, he achieved 
only the opposite."


 
					Submitted by: 
 
					Mark Feinstein 
 
	

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