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Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Parsing Bad RachelA - did she call for "genocide"?

The anti-Israel left is putting on a big show of fake disgust at a blog post by Rachel Decter Abrams (wife of Elliott Abrams, half sister of John Podhoretz) where, they claim, she is advocating genocide against Palestinian Arabs.

They then go on to demand that any group or person associated with her denounce her awful, terrible, rhetoric.

As is usual (with both sides), this is an attempt to score political points more than any real expression of outrage. However, it is worth looking at exactly what Rachel Abrams wrote.

Here is the entire post:

GILAD!!!!!!!!!!

He’s free and he’s home in the bosom of his family and his country.

Celebrate, Israel, with all the joyous gratitude that fills your hearts, as we all do along with you.

Then round up his captors, the slaughtering, death-worshiping, innocent-butchering, child-sacrificing savages who dip their hands in blood and use women—those who aren’t strapping bombs to their own devils’ spawn and sending them out to meet their seventy-two virgins by taking the lives of the school-bus-riding, heart-drawing, Transformer-doodling, homework-losing children of Others—and their offspring—those who haven’t already been pimped out by their mothers to the murder god—as shields, hiding behind their burkas and cradles like the unmanned animals they are, and throw them not into your prisons, where they can bide until they’re traded by the thousands for another child of Israel, but into the sea, to float there, food for sharks, stargazers, and whatever other oceanic carnivores God has put there for the purpose.

Admittedly, the last paragraph is a very poorly written run-on sentence, and not easy to parse.

Here I will put in parentheses and color to try to clarify Rachel's meaning and extract her asides and asides to asides from her main point:

Then round up his captors (the slaughtering, death-worshiping, innocent-butchering, child-sacrificing savages who dip their hands in blood, and use women [those who aren’t strapping bombs to their own devils’ spawn and sending them out to meet their seventy-two virgins by taking the lives of the school-bus-riding, heart-drawing, Transformer-doodling, homework-losing children of Others] and their offspring [those who haven’t already been pimped out by their mothers to the murder god] as shields, hiding behind their burkas and cradles like the unmanned animals they are,) and throw them not into your prisons, where they can bide until they’re traded by the thousands for another child of Israel, but into the sea, to float there, food for sharks, stargazers, and whatever other oceanic carnivores God has put there for the purpose.

To make it easier, I'll take out the extraneous stuff:

Then round up his captors - the savages who dip their hands in blood, and use women and their offspring as shields - and throw them not into your prisons, where they can bide until they’re traded by the thousands for another child of Israel, but into the sea,...

A little analysis shows that this must be the correct intention. Her use of dashes as parentheses show that "women and offspring" are being used as human shields by the terrorists, although she makes an exception for those who are terrorists in their own right ("those who aren't strapping bombs..." and "those who haven't already been pimped out...")

In short - Rachel Decter Abrams was calling for the death of Gilad Shalit's captors, period.

While admittedly the sentence structure is terrible, before someone accuses another of genocidal intent, it would behoove them to make an effort to actually read what was written. Otherwise, the accusation is simply slander.

But I have a feeling that these poseurs who are so quick to accuse another of genocidal intentions will not have the ethics to admit that they were wrong, and to apologize to her. Ethics are for the other guys.