Reporting on Rumors Spreads Rumors, Israeli Edition
I was combing through my various Israeli and Jewish RSS feeds (I have three dozen feeds intermingling in my Google The Reader) when I stumbled upon the following headline in the Israeli National News:
Swedish Tabloid: IDF Kills Arabs to Trade their Organs
For those ignorant few of you who aren’t familiar with the intricacies of Israeli society and culture, the IDF is the Iraeli Defense Forces — their armed forces, if you will (and I won’t). According Israel National News, a Swedish tabloid paper Aftonbladet is erroneously reporting that IDF soldiers are killing Arabs in Judea and Samaria (those are actual places in Israel… the Bible, come to life!) and, apparently, are cutting up the bodies, removing organs and selling said organs on the black market.
Two questions arise here. Question #1 — So what? A little organ harvesting never hurt anyone.
And question #2 — if your chief concern is over Aftonbladet spreading a false rumor about Israeli troops, why are you furthering that rumor by writing a story about it?
Even the smallest of midget school children (such as Hans Klein, the one-foot tall German first grader) know that the best way to stop the spread of a rumor is to stop talking about it.
Observe the following passage taken from the Israel National News piece:
The report, which appears under the heading, in quotes, ”Our sons plundered for their organs,” begins with snippets from a transcript of an FBI recording of a Jewish man who was arrested in July, in connection with a corruption scandal in New Jersey involving elected officials, rabbis, money laundering and illegal organ trading.
Immediately after providing a short description of the FBI’s suspicions against that group, reporter Donald Boström takes his readers across the ocean to discuss the organ trade in Israel, without explaining what connection there may be between the two matters. He describes “a strong suspicion” among Palestinians that young men’s organs were harvested by the IDF “as in China and Pakistan.” Boström repeats that this is “a very serious suspicion” and suggests that the International Court of Justice should open an investigation into it.
Sound logic, for certain. But Israel National News writers, are you familiar with the Internet term “TL;DR“? The term stands for “Too Long; Didn’t Read” and your article, as exemplified by the passage above, suffers from an acute case of “TL;DR” (thankfully for the article, Israel has universal health care).
A Jew-hating Google-r (or is it Google-e?) isn’t going to stumble upon (or Stumble Upon) your article, read the above passages and exclaim, “Well, it looks as if there is no basis for this darned Israeli organ harvesting rumor. Now I’m going to click on some banner ads and check out the Israel National News’ wonderful Weekly Caricature section!”
No, they’re going to read the above passage and see the following terms, bolded in their mind: Our sons plundered for their organs – Jewish man – arrested — rabbis — money laundering and illegal organ trading — organ trade in Israel — young men’s organs were harvested by the IDF — China — Pakistan.
Heck, think of it this way — you actually translated the Swedish article into English. That means had you not written this article, only non-English speaking anti-Semites could spout off about alleged IDF organ harvesting rings. Now you’ve brought the English-speaking ones into this. Isn’t that how the Holocaust began? Someone look that up for me, please. Thank you kindly.
What should you take away from all this? Two things — if you would wish a false rumor would dissipate, just ignore it. And also, the IDF is harvesting organs. Crazy, I know, but I read about it in an Israeli newspaper, so it MUST be true.