At 09:21 PM 5/30/02, Wirt Atmar wrote:
>No, it's an Israeli invention, one that was picked up by the Israeli
>apologist lobby in the United States (William Bennett, William Safire, etc.).

Neither William Bennett nor William Safire are employed by the Israeli
government or media. Who in Israel do you credit with this invention?

>In the months prior to the use of the phrase, "homicide bomber," a
>not-so-subtle campaign had been in force to by these people to discredit the
>commonly used journalistic phrase "cycle of violence". They waged a concerted
>effort on the Sunday morning talk shows and in the editorial pages of the
>major newspapers to denounce the "cycle" phrase, saying that it provided a
>moral equivalence between the actions of the Israelis and the Palestinian
>response, where there was none at all.

You are right; there is no moral equivalence between terrorists who strap
explosives to their bodies and blow themselves up in hotel lobbies, pizza
parlors, and discos, where they know the vast majority of casualties will
be civilians, especially women and children, and the soldiers of the IDF,
who target the terrorists, using every method possible to avoid civilian
casualties.

>Because that minor campaign did not seem to make as much of a dent in public
>opinion as they had hoped, a second coordinated campaign was launched to use
>the term "homicide bomber." Ari Fleischer did use the term on April 13th and
>it was immediately picked up (or had already been agreed to be used) by Fox
>News, a news network renowned for its lack of deep thought, however I doubt
>that Fleischer's use of the term was accidental. William Bennett and William
>Safire are well received by the current administration.
>
>The term "homicide bomber" had been in use in Israel proper for several
>months prior to Fleischer's announcement, as evidenced by these web pages:
>
>
>http://www.israelmybeloved.com/news/media_monitor/020305_attacks_response.htm
>      http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0lqk0
>
>The Israeli government has always understood the power of words and deeply
>believes that whoever controls the language, controls the situation.

I searched the above links. The first site belongs to the International
Christian Zionist Center, hardly affiliated with the Israeli government or
the media. The second is the site of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
A search of their site turned up only one use of the term "homicide"
bomber, and that came in a news briefing that was sent out on May 20, 2002.
The MFA's report on the most recent attack, on May 27, refers to a
"suicide" bomber who murdered a grandmother and her infant granddaughter in
an ice cream parlor in Petah Tikva.

The Israeli government may understand the power of words, as you say, but
they have failed miserably in making good use of this power. If you
frequent Israeli media sites, you will see that the public as well as the
government are constantly in turmoil over how Israel can better present
itself in the "public relations" war. If Israel was even half as successful
as the Arab countries, there would not exist the enormous amount of
ignorance regarding Israel and the IDF that necessitates the discussion we
are currently engaged in.

Joe Berliner

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