The Feed: Can Israel Find the Water It Needs?
World Business [BU, page 7] 8/09/08 [published in Sunday's NYT]
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/business/worldbusiness/10feed.html?ref=todayspaper
By Andrew Martin
An informative report about the water shortage in Israel. Although it's in the Times' World Business section, experience has demonstrated that no special interest section, magazine or television show -- no matter how seemingly off-topic -- is immune from misinformed commentary on Israel.
Martin explains there's a worldwide shortage. "Some oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia are now shopping for farmland in more fertile countries like Sudan and Pakistan." Israel is among the nations, says Martin, "more determined than ever to increase their own food production."
Martin details Israel's acheivements, like modern drip irrigation and treated sewer water for irrigation, which is seen by Israeli officials as a solution. Some see a more dire situation -- citing droughts and global warming.
There's really no bias apparent in the piece, however, there is a bizarre and disturbing word choice that's becoming far too commomplace.
Martin features a few Israeli farmers to color his report. He begins the article describing a "souvenir" in the office of Doron Ovits, a farmer in Israel's south, and that this souvenir highlights "the challenges of farming in Israel". The souvenir is a "mangled piece of metal, and Mr. Ovits says it came from a rocket that landed in a field recently, lobbed from the nearby Gaza Strip." The last mention of rockets is the next sentence, "but Mr. Ovits may have a bigger long-term problem than rockets." Thus is the nifty segue to irrigation.
I'll go out on a limb and guess Mr. Martin -- not Mr. Ovits -- used the verb "lob" to describe how the rocket wound up on Mr. Ovits's farm. We are not told who "lobbed" it into Israel from the Gaza Strip. We just know it wasn't really fired or shot -- which is usually how rockets get someplace else. "Fired" or "shot" also convey malice. Someone typically lobs something to give it sort of a soft touch...like your friend might lob you your car keys from across the room. He wouldn't fire it or even throw it; that might take out your eye. Then not only does he have no ride home, he has to go with you to the ER.
A softball is an object most people associate with a lob, not a rocket. This, however, will continue to be the verb of preference for many in the media, lest readers get the false impression that Gazan rockets may come in at dangerous speeds... and god forbid take out an eye.
DB
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To take a term from baseball, good eye, DB. It is amusing to see how in the most innocuous pieces on Israel, the country is shortchanged or misrepresented and its enemies are referred to in mild terms.
ReplyDeleteI would have liked to see a quote from the Israeli government in the piece.
I agree that "lob" is a mild term and the sentence deserves a more active verb like "launched" or "fired," accompanied by whichever group(s) did the firing.
ReplyDeleteNonetheless, I don't know how worthwhile it is to focus on this singular word, particularly because its definition is suitable for the sentence: to fire (a missile, as a shell) in a high trajectory so that it drops onto a target.
What I find more aggravating is that this article seems like it may go under the "Heralding the Jewish state's failures and weaknesses" category.
This article is really highlighting a global issue and it seems that Israel was "arbitrarily" chosen to be the main example.
Not the most enlightening article.