Believing what you want to believe

You know what they say about a lie being half way round the world before the truth has its boots on...

This sentence by Con Coughlin is the perfect example of that:

The unfortunate, and unworthy, comments made last week by the Israeli deputy defence minister, Matan Vilnai, who said the Palestinians faced a "bigger holocaust" than those suffered by the Jews in Europe during the Second World War if they did not desist from their rocket attacks, provoked widespread protests from Israelis, and Mr Vilnai has been obliged to apologise.

Vilnai said:

‘The more Qassam (rocket) fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they (the Palestinians) will bring upon themselves a bigger “shoah” because we will use all our might to defend ourselves'.

Reuters translated the Hebrew word ‘shoah’ as ‘holocaust’. But ‘shoah’ merely means disaster. In Hebrew, the word ‘shoah’ is never used to mean ‘holocaust’ or ‘genocide’ because of the acute historical resonance. The word ‘Hashoah’ alone means ‘the Holocaust’ and ‘retzach am’ means ‘genocide’. The well-known Hebrew construction used by Vilnai used merely means ‘bringing disaster on themselves’.

 

As a subsequent Reuter’s story reported, Vilnai's spokesman said:

‘Mr. Vilnai was meaning “disaster”. He did not mean to make any allusion to the genocide.’ Israel's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Arye Mekel, added: ‘Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai used the Hebrew phrase that included the term 'shoah' in Hebrew in the sense of a disaster or a catastrophe, and not in the sense of a holocaust.’

But this grotesque mistranslation has given Hamas a propaganda gift which they lost no time exploiting:

Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said of Vilnai's comments: ‘We are facing new Nazis who want to kill and burn the Palestinian people.’