Reply #114: Do You Seriously Think, Sir, That Carries The Slightest Weight?

[The Magistrate]

There is nothing magic about treading on the ground. Most historical work and much investigation is based solely, and quite reliably, on "available sources and information". There is generally quite a lot of it about, and persons interested in what actually happened, rather than in what it would be convenient for their predisposition to have occured, consult it all and attempt to synthesize the various accounts into an accurately weighted whole.

The two points you have some difficulty accepting are statements of what the United Nations investigators concluded were facts. You may have noted that in the second of these paragraphs, the U.N. investigators state it as fact beyond question that "Palestinian militants in the camp, as elsewhere, adopted methods which constitute breaches of international law that have been and continue to be condemned by the United Nations." You may well find that fact, as well as some others, inconvenient to your view of the matter, but reality is not required to shape itself to your convenience. Persons who insist on holding one party in a conflict to a standard they do not hold the other party to cannot really expect anyone to take the charges they make seriously.

"When confronted by conflicting versions of events, choose the one that shows people at their worst."