NYT CAN'T DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN TERRORISTS AND THOSE DEFENDING SELVES

"Narrow Moral Precipice" Between Israeli Security and Palestinian Terror Attacks? (TimesWatch.org)

Jerusalem bureau chief Steven Erlanger has a Travel story in Sunday's edition on the land he covers for the paper. But just as in his hard news reporting, Erlanger's comparison of Israeli soldiers and Palestinian terrorists carries a disturbing ambivalence:

"Peace is much spoken of here. But at times, as I race along the narrow moral precipice, running between a military checkpoint and a suicide bombing, I think of the old Russian proverb: 'We shall struggle for peace so hard that not a tree will be left standing.'"

Erlanger discusses the Israeli security fence:

"I try to see the barrier from both the Palestinian and the Israeli points of view. But whatever its utility, it's an ugly scar on the mental and physical landscape of the city, and beyond. Israel insists one minute that it's temporary, and the next that it's a prospective border. Palestinians excoriate it for annexing land they consider theirs, but many Jerusalemites, Palestinians who have lived here for generations, hate it for cutting some of their neighborhoods from the central city, forcing them to use checkpoints."

But does Erlanger really try to see things like the wall and security checkpoints from both sides? Here's what he wrote about an Israeli checkpoint in January 2005:

"Current checkpoints were thrown together in 2000 after the violent Palestinian uprising, known as the second intifada. The experience, monitored by various groups like Machsom Watch (machsom means checkpoint in Hebrew), is often humiliating, with young soldiers sometimes treating individuals with contempt."