Word: factual
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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George Bisharat ("Questioning Israel's Morality," March 5th) commits so many factual errors through omission and distortion that I will respond only to those which are most egregious...
Serious moral questions are raised by the Israeli Commission of Inquiry's report on the Sabra and Shatila massacres, and more particularly by public reactions to it. Paradoxically, while the factual findings of the Commission establish unequivocally the grave moral turpitude of a number of Israeli leaders, the very fact of the Commission's creation and the carrying out of its duties are hailed as evidence of Israel's observance of the rule of law and respect for democratic institutions. There are some very troubling aspects to this latter view, to say the least...
First, one may challenge the conclusions of the Commission that the acts documented in the report represent no more than "carelessness," "incompetence," "indifference," "negligence," and "passivity." On the contrary, the factual record substantiates very active complicity in the massacres by the Israeli military. The direct logistical support given by the Israeli forces to the Phalangists during the massacres was hardly "passive." Moreover, considering the arms aid and years of training given by Israel to the Phalangists and other right-wing Lebanese militias--and the claim of Israel's Defense Minister Sharon that Israeli military officers had witnessed prior massacres...
...PROSE resembles Hemingway's with crisp dialogue alternating with action described in clean, factual, concise sentence. All of the stories are short and the best ones achieve a density of expression that almost approaches poetry. As in Hemingway, crucial information often has to be drawn from understated detail, especially in the stories openings: Pancake hits the ground running and his beginnings are as tightly packed with meaning as his epiphanic endings. A story as concise as "The Honored Dead" has to be re-read at least once: a tour de force of technique, the story explores the complex mixture...
...dominated by lengthy excerpts form the authors' esoteric empirical studies of student protesters, conducted largely in the early 1970s. The book's conclusions about the unique role of Jewish neuroses in fomenting unrest range from the some-what obvious to the highly suspect. Yet more important is the factual material sprinkled liberally amid the Rorschach blots and data tables: tidbits of information that will compel the curious to investigate further the New Left's strange and unfortunate metamorphosis...