Who Ended the Cease-Fire in Israel/Palestine? Part 2: The View From Israel's Security Agency by Shiko Behar

The otherwise simple, straightforward question raised at 3QD (“who ended the cease-fire in Gaza?”) has now also been explored by mainstream global venues, such as CNN, which no sane person can deem unfriendly to Israel. While this development perhaps merits few additional thoughts on the issue, it is important to keep sight of the whole situation at stake: the question raised vis-à-vis the NYT is certainly intriguing – and might even help some to better understand tendencies in Israel/Palestine news coverage; yet its importance significantly pales amid Gaza’s more recent developments. Of these, foremost are the horrific civilian deaths. Bearing this in mind, I still feel some urge to verbalize the one main issue that a week ago transformed me into an irksome-nerd unearthing the sequence of events producing the breakup of the short-lived Israel/Hamas cease-fire: this issue was, and remains, the arrogance and pompousness of the NYT editors who – in what appears to be a rather majestic sloppiness – have propagated what was supposed to be an informed and important editorial into one devoid of the most basic properties it should (and must) have embodied: critical skepticism, and modesty and humbleness, on the on hand, and minimal journalistic balance, on the other....