Israel, Passive Aggression & the New York Times
By Yousef Munayyer
Arab villages were destroyed. The state of Israel destroyed Arab villages.
Do you see the difference there? The first sentence is in the passive voice and absent of any agency. Who destroyed the villages? We are not told in the first sentence. All we are told is that the villages “were destroyed.” The second sentence does not suffer from this ambiguity. It makes clear who the active agent is, in this case, the state of Israel, and that it “destroyed Arab villages.”
