Max Fisher, formerly of The Washington Post and current content director for Ezra Klein's Vox, today published an in-depth article which explores the striking asymmetry regarding casualties in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
He begins this article with the paragraph and graphic below:
It's no secret that the death tolls in the Israel-Palestine conflict are lopsided, with Palestinians far more likely to be killed than Israelis. But just how lopsided is driven home by looking at the month-to-month fatality statistics, which the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem has been tracking since September 2000. Those numbers also tell some important stories about the conflict, how it's changed, and maybe where it's going.
It's a fairly straightforward piece by Fisher, which quantifies and analyzes how the "conflict" is not so much a war as a lopsided affair between a militarily sophisticated entity country and an oppressed people.
How did David Frum, who is a senior editor at The Atlantic, respond to the article? This is how:
Frum to Fisher: Never enough dead Jews for some.
This is Frum's version of screaming "anti-Semite!" reflexively and libelously. It is a disgusting and wholly absurd display by somebody who holds a high-level journalistic position at a major publication.
This type of behavior should have repercussions, and should be censured. Not just for the libeling of Fisher, but for the diluting of a real, and persistently dangerous prejudice by using it as a slur, as a way to shut down debate.
True, Frum didn't use the words "anti-Semite." But he did something even more pernicious: he accused a fellow journalist of anti-Semitic, genocidal inclinations for publishing a statistical analysis.
This sort of stuff must stop. It's not polemical. It's irresponsible.
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David Harris-Gershon is author of the memoir What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist Who Tried to Kill Your Wife?, recently published by Oneworld Publications.