Likening Israel's [Non-]Violation of Court Injunction to 'Naqba'

Columnist Bradley Burston takes the false charge to a new level

TS..
CAMERA Snapshots..
16 January '13..

Given that the news pages of Ha'aretz are falsely reporting that Israel violated a High Court injunction by evacuating Palestinian protesters from a tent camp in the controversial E-1 area, it comes as no surprise that their Op-Ed columnists are doing no better. Columnist Bradley Burston takes the false charge to a new level, charging that Israel's alleged violation of Justice Neal Hendel's injunction is no less than a "Naqba"(!). He writes that according to Prime Minister Netanyahu the protest camp:

needed to be destroyed despite a High Court order that appeared to give the new villagers six days to remain on the site. But in a peculiarly contemporary reinterpretation of the Naqba, the police announced that the injunction only applied to the tents. The people could be taken out. In the dead of night.

It's a pity that Burston didn't actually read the court injunction before he spouted off hysterical "Naqba" comparisons. The Palestinian protesters' lawyer did read the document, and accurately characterized it. As the Jerusalem Post reported:

Attorney Tawfiq Jabareen who represented the Palestinians explain this to the High Court of Justice when he secured a temporary injunction against the outpost’s removal on Friday.

But the court’s language spoke of the tents, not the people, and added that security factors could shift the decision, Jabareen said.

So it's not just a police claim that the injunction applied only to the tents. In fact, this is the case. For the benefit of Burston and his colleagues, here is the link to Justice Hendel's injunction. The injunction states (CAMERA's translation):

After studying the petition I hereby impose a temporary injunction according to clause 1 -- preventing the evacuation or destruction of tents that were erected by the petitioners on a-Tur lands, east of Kfar al-Azeem, unless an urgent security need arises.

The respondents [the state] will respond to this temporary injunction within six days.

Traditionally, journalists read a court injunction before they report on it. Burston apparently prefers a peculiarly contemporary reinterpretation of journalism.

Link: http://blog.camera.org/archives/2013/01/haaretzs_burston_likens_israel.html

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