Lieberman Puzzles the Cape Times

While the addition of Avigdor Lieberman's right wing Yisrael Beiteinu party to the Israeli government has created concern in many quarters over the future of the peace process, it seems to have left the Cape Times, one of South Africa’s leading newspapers, totally bewildered.

In one of the most bizarre news reports I have ever read, the Cape Times manages to contradict itself three times on Lieberman’s position on territorial compromise with the Palestinians. This is truly a remarkable feat considering that the report is all of 44 words long.

The article is entitled ‘Party in favour of cessation voted into cabinet’. The word cessation means an end. It is derived from the Latin verb cessare meaning to stop. Its use in the context of this article is absurd. Lieberman is not talking about halting anything. I suspect that it was an embarrassing diction error. The word they intended to use was secession. It is derived from the Latin verb secedere meaning to withdraw. It’s a forgivable mistake even if my school Latin teacher Mr Wolf would not agree. (Not everyone had 5 years of Amo, Amas, Amat drummed into them).

Now if one wanted to be utterly pedantic, one could argue that while secession may have been an appropriate word in say 486AD to refer to the Roman military retreat from Gaul, today it has a slightly different political connotation. More than just withdraw it has come to mean formally leave an organisation, alliance or territorial union. The use of this word implies that Israel and the West Bank are part of some sort of common political entity from which Lieberman wishes to pull out like the Basque separatists wish to do from Spain. This is totally misleading. Israel has never formally annexed the West Bank. It is not part of any political union or alliance with the Palestinians. Nevertheless we get the Cape Time’s general point that the article is about a party in favour of territorial withdrawal which has joined the Israeli cabinet.

The first line of the piece however totally contradicts the intended meaning of the headline. It reads

‘The Israeli cabinet voted overwhelmingly yesterday to bring into the government a hawkish party the Yisrael Beiteinu party that opposes ceding territory to the Palestinians’.

And then to confuse matters even more the article concludes

‘and he wants to redraw Israel’s borders to exclude many Israeli Arabs.’

I cannot for the life of me work out how one can redraw borders to exclude many Israeli Arabs and at the same time be opposed to ceding territory.

While these errors are not material, I do think that they highlight the poor quality of the journalists at the Cape Times. On a linguistic level these amateurish mistakes are extremely embarrassing. Are articles not edited before being published? And if so what does it say about the English skills of the editors?

But it also shows a total lack of understanding of Israeli politics. Lieberman’s position of being pro significant territorial compromises but being a hardliner on security (a position I don’t entirely agree with) is too nuanced for the journalists at the Cape Times to grasp or get across to their readers. This makes them totally unqualified to report on the complex Middle East conflict.

Update at 03/11/2006
Soccerd Dad points out that the New York times also has a problem with Lieberman.

Lieberman himself responded: A New Road for Israel

Comments

[brett]

Well spotted there Mike. I fear that the overwhelming majority of readers would have missed that though. You are 100% correct. It is an indictment of the poor quality of editing on their behalf. As per usual the thrust of editorial teams is anti-Israel - big surprise. There are a handful of vociferous proponents of Israel trying to hold back this tidal wave of hatred. Bravo Mike!