Larry Derfner apologized and removed the offending post from his blog.
And still, Larry Derfner Was Fired By The Jerusalem Post Today
Read Derfner below, and you see that he does not see the problem:
Derfner justifies Palestinian terrorism
He just doesn't support Palestinia terrorism.
Now, people support the firing of Derfner.
Regardless of whether or not it is justifiable.
I got fired by The Jerusalem Post today. The paper got hundreds of notices of cancellations of subscription after my blog post ("The awful, necessary truth about Palestinian terror") of Sunday last week; the reason being given for my firing, though, is the substance of the essay, despite the apology I published later. A page-one notice to this effect will be published in the Post tomorrow.
My apology was to have run in the Post yesterday, but a logistical mix-up prevented it. Today the paper ran a column by Isi Liebler titled "Justifying murder – an abomination," which, like nearly all of the right-wing websites attacking my original essay (I took it down from my blog upon publishing the apology), it gives extremely short shrift to all the things I wrote that show my intent was not to encourage terror, but the opposite:
"But while I think the Palestinians have the right to use terrorism against us, I don't want them to use it, I don't want to see Israelis killed, and as an Israeli, I would do whatever was necessary to stop a Palestinian, oppressed or not, from killing one of my countrymen. (I also think Palestinian terrorism backfires, it turns people away from them and generates sympathy for Israel and the occupation, so I'm against terrorism on a practical level, too, but that's besides the point.)
"The possibility that Israel's enemies could use my or anybody else's justification of terror for their campaign is a daunting one; I wouldn't like to see this column quoted on a pro-Hamas website, and I realize it could happen.
"Still, I don't think Hamas and their allies need any more encouragement, so whatever encouragement they might take from me or any other liberal Zionist is coals to Newcastle. What's needed very badly, however, is for Israelis to realize that the occupation is hurting the Palestinians terribly, that it's driving them to try to kill us, that we are compelling them to engage in terrorism, that the blood of Israeli victims is ultimately on our hands, and that it's up to us to stop provoking our own people's murder by ending the occupation.
"And so long as we who oppose the occupation keep pretending that the Palestinians don't have the right to resist it, we tacitly encourage Israelis to go on blindly killing and dying in defense of an unholy cause. And by tacitly encouraging Israelis in their blindness, I think we endanger their lives and ours, their country and ours, much more than if we told the truth and got quoted on Hamas websites."
The above section is contained in a 1,000-word essay, but you wouldn't know it from reading the column in today's Post or in nearly any of the right-wing sites attacking me and what I wrote. You wouldn't know the nature of the apology I published last Friday, either – that I realized now that the terms "right" and "justify" in connection with the killing of Israelis were wrong, even "obscene," and that despite all the disclaimers I wrote, they gave a positive connation to terrorism, about which I find nothing positive whatsoever.
What bothers me most is not that I got fired, but that I'm not being given the opportunity to fill in the picture that's been so distorted in today's Post column and in right-wing Web commentaries. The parts of the picture being obscured or outright hidden would show that while I misspoke myself harmfully, my intent was not to support, endorse, advocate, encourage or call for terror against Israelis, but to end it. This intent was clear not only in my apology, but in my original essay. By skewing my words so badly, today's Post column, the Web commentaries and Post publishes on page one tomorrow portray a writer announcing that he wants Israelis to get killed, instead of one who's trying to stop that from happening.
Let me just add that I was told that the "great majority" of the Post staff opposed my firing. I'm truly grateful for the support they showed.
1 comment:
This is, of course, crap.
Derfner cannot claim he was misquoted. He wrote the article.
He cannot claim he didn't believe what he was writing. He wrote it!
His apology is what is false and the thought that pulling this offensive piece and saying "Oops sorry" means he's seen the error of his ways is about as real as a three dollar bill.
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