Ben Lynfield of the Christian Science Monitor did a story on settler outposts recently. The CSM has a feature called ‘Reporters on the Job’ that’s intended to add background to such news reports. Here’s what Lynfield submitted on this story:
Correspondent Ben Lynfield set off Thursday on a tour of Israeli outposts with Dror Etkes, a member of “Peace Now” as his guide. Mr. Etkes monitors the removal and expansion of the settlements. “It was a really hot day. We’d been walking around in the blazing sun,” says Ben. “After taking a look at the Givat HaTamar outpost on the West Bank, we we were thirsty, and Dror was struggling a bit with his principles,” says Ben.
The conundrum: If he buys a drink from a settler outpost, he is contributing to the economic well-being of a project that he’s opposed to.
On this day, thirst won out. “We stopped at a little store in Efrat, another settler outpost, and he emerged with bottles of mineral water and orange juice,” says Ben.
Efrat, a ‘settler outpost’?! Actually, there are about 10,000 people living in Efrat, which is one of the largest and most established West Bank communities, and is situated in non-controversial Gush Etzion.
Is Lynfield so woefully misinformed regarding his own subject matter to believe that Efrat was defined as one of the ‘settler outposts’ slated for dismantling under the road map?
Comments to Christian Science Monitor: click here
And lest one believe Lynfield was referring to some outgrowth of Efrat, this is how Peace Now themselves define an ‘outpost’:
The term “outpost” refers to any area, (generally on a hilltop), with a number of structures, that is totally separated from the closest permanent settlement. The distance between an outpost and a permanent settlement can be a few hundred meters, however a majority of the outposts tend to span a number of kilometers. These outposts wish to become de facto settlements in their own right. Each outpost collects its own taxes, has its own secretariat and absorption committees, etc.
