MisQuotables

Philly.com has picked up my piece on the Gaza withdrawal for their Blog Cabin feature. [Pats self on back] But, and you knew one was coming, they Dowdified my comments in a rather interesting fashion.

A Blog for All
http://lawhawk.blogspot.com

Israel is withdrawing from Gaza. ... I fear that this move will do nothing to stop the bloodletting. ... Israel's leaders may believe that by withdrawing from Israel, it would leave the nation more easily defensible, by easing the burden on the Israeli Defense Force to defend scattered outposts in Gaza, and that is true. However, it also means that Israel would have no presence in Gaza, which would be free to expand its terrorist activities toward Israel unfettered by Israeli convoys, troop deployments and roadblocks. This could also set up an ultimate confrontation between the Palestinian Authority and Israel should the Palestinians attack from Gaza. With no Israelis in Gaza, the attack would signify that Palestinians have absolutely no inclination to coexist with Israel, and could push the conflict into an open war, which the Palestinians cannot hope to win.

Funny, but those weren't my best lines. This one was:

Israel has conceded land at every opportunity and each time the Palestinians seek more, pushing Israel further into a corner without any tangible sign that the Palestinians ever intend a peaceful coexistence.

That happened to be the crux of my argument - that Israel doesn't have a partner in peace, and Sharon's Gaza withdrawal is predicated upon that fact.

And wait for it. Philly.com didn't quite get my comment straight either. This is what I said in the original:

With no Israelis in Gaza, the attack would signify that Palestinians have absolutely no inclination to coexist with Israel, and could push the conflict into an open war, which the Palestinians cannot hope to win (except that the Palestinians would be able to rely upon the moral equivalent tones and media bias against Israel to win the propaganda war while losing on the battlefields as Arab armies have done in each conflict against Israel).

It's curious that the media would leave out the part in which I castigate the media for their anti-Israel bias. I state that the Palestinians could conceivably win this conflict on the backs of the media and moral equivalence, yet the same media leaves that part out of their quote. Shocking. I know.

UPDATE:
I know that these kinds of media pickups are meant to be brief, but it still is curious how the editors sliced off the last sentence which commented on media moral equivalence.