Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

Media Matters - NY Times reported civilian causalities “decline[d] sharply” in Baghdad, ignored ethnic cleansing as possible cause, November 4, 2007

A November 2 New York Times article on recent American and Iraqi casualties in Iraq reported that “[a]lthough violence persisted outside Baghdad, civilian casualties in the capital appeared to decline sharply recently, with 317 civilians killed in October,” adding that this number represented “a drop of more than 50 percent from August, when 656 civilians were killed, according to statistics gathered by the Interior Ministry.” Yet the article did not mention that ethnic cleansing may account for the decrease in civilian casualties, as noted by a number of other media outlets — including McClatchy Newspapers, the Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post — and the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) director of international affairs and trade, Joseph A. Christoff. During an October 30 House Appropriations Committee hearing regarding a recent GAO study that found that overall attacks in Iraq have declined, Christoff told the committee that the GAO’s figures do “not tak[e] into consideration the fact that there might be fewer attacks [on civilians] because you have ethnically cleansed neighborhoods.”

PM: I’m Beitar fan, but I detest violent brutes who booed Rabin, Haaretz, November 5, 2007

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Monday condemned Beitar Jerusalem soccer fans for booing during a pre-game moment of silence Sunday marking mark the 12th anniversary of the assassination of former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Fans also sang songs of praise to Rabin’s assassin Yigal Amir, later telling an Army Radio audience that they strongly supported the murder and that it was “good for Israel.”

Olmert, a diehard Beitar supporter since childhood, said Monday that he “detests these brutish and violent people who, I’m sorry to say, are a sizable sector of the fans.”

Speaking to a convention of business executives, Olmert said “I want to state in the clearest, angriest terms, that this behavior - not of a small group, as some would like to minimize it, but of a large, loud, influential and raging group - was wicked and unbearable.”

Trial Nearer for Shiite Ex-Officials in Sunni Killings - New York Times, November 5, 2007

BAGHDAD, Nov. 3 — An Iraqi judge has ruled that there is enough evidence to try two former Health Ministry officials, both Shiites, in the killing and kidnapping of hundreds of Sunnis, many of them snatched from hospitals by militias, according to American officials who are advising the Iraqi judicial system….

The Iraqi investigation has confirmed long-standing Sunni fears that hospitals had been opened up as a hunting ground for Shiite militias intent on spreading fear among Sunnis and driving them out of the capital. Even before the case, Baghdad residents told of death threats against doctors who would treat Sunnis, of intravenous lines ripped from patients’ arms as they were carried away, and of relatives of hospitalized Sunnis who were killed when they came to visit.