Gaza Militants Risk 'Holocaust': Israeli Minister

[ Middle East News Service Comments: Virtually every news media in the country is reporting the story below which is taken from the Sydney Morning Herald. My colleague Shraga Elam, an Israeli journalist living in Switzerland, a winner of Australia’s Gold Walkley Award and, for anyone interested, a fierce anti-Zionist supporter of the Right of Return etc, has already dealt with the faulty translation overnight:

The British Guardian and the foreign news agency have obvious difficulties in understanding Hebrew and magnified accordingly the statement of Matan Vilnai, Israel's deputy war minister. The intentions of the Israeli government are for sure bad, but still Vilnai is not that honest to admit that Israel is bring an Holocaust upon the Palestinian people.

The following translation is correct, but its interpretation is wrong:

"The more Qassam [rocket] fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger Shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves," Matan Vilnai, Israel's deputy defence minister, told army radio."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/29/israelandthepalestinians1

Other than the Guardian claims that word "shoah" designates not only the Nazi Judeocide but means "catastrophe" generally. E.g. "shoah atomit" means "atomic catastrophe".

Nevertheless it is obvious that the Israeli government and army leaderships prepare something very sinister for the Palestinians in Gaza.

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Yesterday in the Israeli Channel 10 TV, Vilnai did not want to disclose the plan, but made it clear that it is very bad and that there will be many Palestinian casualties.

Actually it is very safe to assume that the Israeli army plans to implement the same strategy it used in Lebanon in 2006 and hope that this time it will work.

This means that there will be a massive bombardment of Gaza strip and hundreds of thousands of civilians will flee to Egypt.

Afterwards it would be easier for the Israeli army to apply the German Wehrmacht‘s strategy against the Warsaw ghetto of burning or destroying in a different way the Palestinian strongholds.

Another Israeli expert talked about the imprisoning of tens of thousands. Of course he did not mention the word concentration camps."

- End of Elam quote-

I don’t necessarily agree with the scenario Elam paints, even though it is plausible. Where I do agree with him is in translation. Shoah is a common Hebrew word for catastrophe and is not exclusively used for the Holocaust. The other obvious thing is Vilnai is not a big mouth, whatever he has in mind he wouldn’t brag about it in advance.

- Sol Salbe
- Melbourne Australia

Gaza Militants Risk 'Holocaust': Israeli Minister

Isabel Kershner in Jerusalem
March 1, 2008
Sydney Morning Herald

ISRAEL'S Deputy Defence Minister, Matan Vilnai, said yesterday Palestinians were bringing a "holocaust" upon themselves by stepping up cross-border rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.

"The more Qassam fire intensifies, and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger holocaust because we will use all our might to defend ourselves," Mr Vilnai told Army Radio.

His comments came after militants in Gaza fired at least eight imported Katyusha-style rockets at Ashkelon, on the Israeli coast. Israel warned that Hamas's use of the more sophisticated rockets could trigger a full-scale invasion.

Ashkelon has been an occasional target of these longer-range rockets, but never of so many in one day. The attack scored a direct hit on a house there for the first time.

More….
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/gaza-militants-risk-holocaust-israeli-minister/2008/02/29/1204226991688.html

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