Exaggeration or Deception? — What Herb Thinks

Now everybody is mad at Israel.

Monday night an Israeli F16 attacked a Gaza housing district killing a top Hamas offical, Salah Shehadeh, his aid and 15 civilians — including innocent children.

Then, to make matters worse, the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, stood up and boldly announced to the world that his military action was a great success.

Needless to say, Sharon’s unwise choice of word’s provided gasoline to an already spreading emotional firestorm. Palestinians began flooding into the streets demanding revenge and Hamas leadership issued a public promise that their organization would be quick to provide it.

Immediately, the entire international community joined voices in expressing their outrage at Israel for attacking a housing district where civilian deaths were inevitable. Even Israel’s strongest supporter, American President George W. Bush, issued a statement condemning the Israeli action.

It looked like things couldn’t get worse for Israel. But, thanks to an EU diplomat, they did get worse. The EU diplomat claimed that he had just achieved a cease-fire agreement from Hamas and an announcement was soon to be made. In other words, Hamas had finally agreed to stop the suicide bombings in Israel. Now, thanks to this Israeli attack in Gaza, the cease-fire agreement with Hamas had been canceled.

The news of the Israeli bombing and the resulting canceled cease-fire swiftly spread through the European media. Now, in the eye’s of most Europeans, Sharon was clearly exposed as the bad guy. Some reports even went so far as to claim that Sharon intentionally did something to stop the cease-fire.

But, wait a minute. Now it turns out, according to reports coming out of Israel, there was no imminent cease-fire in the works from Hamas or anyone else. In fact, it is being said the EU diplomat may have exaggerated greatly.

This brings up an interesting question: Why would any diplomat want to exaggerate things — even a little — at the very time when emotions on both sides of the Middle East conflict were peaking?

Is it possible the diplomat may have had something to gain by exaggerating? If so, what? Since he was working for the EU, perhaps the better question is, what could the EU heads gain by such an exaggeration?

Could it be, by making Sharon into the bad guy, the EU leaders would now be vindicated for their continued support for Arafat? If this proves to be the case, it may not be exaggeration this EU diplomat was guilty of.

It may be deception.

— Herb Peters
7/26/02