Whom to Believe? Well...

[Darranar]

"Whom do you believe?" asked General Ya'akov Amidror on TV with subdued anger, "the army spokesman or Hamas?"

General (reserves) Amidror is the highest religious officer in our army. In the past he has raised several public storms with some utterances denigrating secular Israelis, saying that they are not real Jews. He has a sharp mind, much above the average in the army command, and his intellect is fully employed in serving his extremist views ­ both the extremist religious and the extremist nationalist ones.

His question was intended to be rhetorical. After all, the answer is self-evident: on one side there is the IDF, "the most moral and most humane army in the world", as it calls itself, and on the other side there is a bunch of crazy murderers, so what's the problem?

But, according to Amidror himself, the reverse is happening. The world believes Hamas and does not believe the IDF spokesman. The Israeli public believes Hamas. Even cabinet ministers and Knesset members believe Hams and do not believe the army spokesman.

http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery10282003.html

[IndianaGreen]

1. What do people like General Amidror have in common with Holocaust deniers

What do people like General Amidror have in common with Holocaust deniers?

Holocaust deniers say that the Holocaust never took place. People like General Amidror believe that the only real Jews are Jews like themselves. Since the ultra-religious Jews are only about 10% of all Jews, this means that of the 6,000,000 murdered by the Nazis, only 600,000 were real Jews.

Intolerance and bigotry are shared characteristics!

Even cabinet ministers and Knesset members believe Hams and do not believe the army spokesman.

And paranoia is also quite common!

[DuctapeFatwa]

2. It depends on what you mean by "Hamas"

Although it is popular in the CrusadeMedia to use "Hamas" as a sort of catchall term for the Resistance, or for humanbombers, Hamas is not a monolith, although paradoxically, when Rantisi said that time that every home in Palestine is a Hamas household, he was not entirely incorrect.

The political wing of Hamas does a lot of things that have nothing to do with humanbombing, as does the military wing.

In addition, Israeli "covert operations" do not fail to include the military wing.

So my answer would be that I would believe the IDF every bit as much as I would believe Centcom, and with Hamas, I would believe a sincere person, even if I disagreed with some of their views, but if it is a Mosaad embed in Hamas, I would believe him as much as I believe the IDF ;)

[bemildred]

3. I rather like Sagle's term: "splodeydope".

You don't just believe anyone without knowing who they are
and what their relationship is to what they are talking about.
Even if they are not lying outright, they may well be confused
or be fools or be dupes.

The idea that you believe some fellow because of the organization
he belongs to, or that you "believe" the organization, is just a
willful abandonment of critical thinking, faith-based news reading.

All organizations lie all the time for a variety or reasons, some good
and some not, but you may be sure they do.