The Weekly Standard has given us a
good example highlighting the difference between what is natural and what is
artificial, what is Palestinian and what is Israeli, what is journalism and
what is quackery. Its own Tom Gross wrote: “Media Gets Pope's Abbas Comments
Wrong,” an article that was published on May 17, 2015 in the online edition of
the Weekly Standard.
In fact, if you compare the Tom
Gross article with the blog of someone who goes by the name Eliyahu m'Tsiyon –
whom Gross calls an astute Italian speaking observer – you'll find that the
Gross article is an almost verbatim repetition of the m'Tsiyon article, written
a day earlier. This one came under the title: “New York Times Lies about Pope
Calling Mahmud Abbas 'an Angel of Peace'”.
Despite the fact that he is
repeating what someone else wrote, Tom Gross admonishes the major news outlets
such as the New York Times and the BBC for repeating agency copy such as AP,
AFP and Reuters without verifying it. And so, he sets out to set the record
straight by doing what m'Tsiyon does, which is to distort an incident that did
occur, and then mix it with a heavy dose of his own opinion … except that the
Gross opinion turned out to be heavier than that of m'Tsiyon.
Here is that infamous passage:
“Pope Francis told President Abbas 'may you be an angel of peace,' effectively
saying that if Abbas would take the decision to accept one of the peace offers
that various Israeli prime ministers have made to him, he could be an angel of
peace.” The response to this passage is that effectively speaking, it is pure
Jewish trash.
Having expressed his slightly used
but refurbished and enhanced opinion, Tom Gross now complains that dozens of
prominent news outlets falsely said that the Pope had said Abbas was an angel
of peace. He gives a few examples of what they said, and then does this:
“Contrast the headlines in the New York Times with those in the Italian press.
For example, the headline of La Stampa is: “Pope embraces Abu Mazen and bids
him to be an angel of peace,” a translation of the Italian version: “Il Papa
abbracia Abu Mazen: sia un angelo della pace,” which is a correct translation.
However, two things must be
mentioned here. The first is that most other Italian newspapers, including
TuttoperLei, for which Gross provides a link, have this headline: “Lei sia un
angelo della pace” and not simply “sia un angelo della pace,” the difference
being the addition of the innocent looking “Lei”. Second, I must admit it has been
nearly 55 years since I last spoke Italian (which I used to speak fluently,)
but I still remember enough of it to understand most of what I read, and to
remember the quirk that pertains to the verb “essere” which is Italian for “to
be”.
To say in Italian: sia un angelo,
is to mean be an angel. To say: lei sia un angelo, does not mean you BE an
angel; it means you ARE an angel. This is why TuttoperLei elaborated on what
the Pope said: “Ho pensato a lei: che lei possa essere un angelo della pace,”
which AFP translated as: “I thought of you because you are an angel of peace.”
Had the agency translated it literally, and had it taken into account the
quirks of the Italian language, the English version would have sounded like
this: “I thought of you: that you could be the angel of peace” in the sense of:
you could well be the angel that we've been waiting for.
To reinforce that point of view,
TuttoperLei as well as the other Italian newspapers immediately followed the
latest saying of the Pope with what he had told Abbas last year when he visited
Bethlehem. He put it simply and outright at the time: “You are a man of peace.”
And so, what would be worth recalling at this point is what happened after the
Pope said those words to Abbas.
It was reported (in whispers only)
that true to character, the Israelis cried on the shoulder of the Pope, asking
him to extend the same compliment to Prime Minister Netanyahu. But the Pope
could not do that without betraying every precept of decency that Christianity
stands for. And so he settled on extending the compliment to the more
acceptable Shimon Peres who was then President of Israel.