#omissions

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

Omissions in BBC report on Jenin counter-terrorism operation

On January 30th the BBC News website published a report by Raffi Berg about a counter-terrorism operation which had taken place several hour

by Hadar Sela

On January 30th the BBC News website published a report by Raffi Berg about a counter-terrorism operation which had taken place several hours earlier at the Ibn Sina hospital in Jenin.

The report tells BBC audiences that:

“Israeli forces have killed three members of Palestinian armed groups in a hospital in the occupied West Bank. […] Hamas, an armed Palestinian Islamist group which is fighting a war with Israel in Gaza triggered by its unprecedented attacks on Israel on 7 October, said the Israeli forces had “executed three fighters”, including one of its members. Another armed group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, said two of those killed were its members and were brothers. It added that one of them had been receiving treatment at the hospital.”

“In a joint statement, the IDF, Shin Bet, and police said the leader of the terror cell, Muhammad Jalamneh, 27, had been in contact with Hamas officials abroad. He was previously injured while preparing a car bomb attack, armed other operatives for shooting attacks, and planned “a raid attack inspired by the events of October 7,” according to the statement.

Jalamneh was also reported to be a spokesperson for Hamas’s military wing in the Jenin camp.

A handgun on Jalamneh’s body was seized during the raid, the IDF said.

The IDF named the other two operatives as brothers Muhammad and Basel Ghazawi. Muhammad was involved in shooting attacks at Israeli troops in the West Bank while Basel was a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group, according to the military.”

The BBC’s report promotes a second-hand quote from the director of the hospital:

“They executed the three men as they slept in the room,” the hospital’s director, Dr Naji Nazzal, told Reuters. “They executed them in cold blood by firing bullets directly into their heads in the room where they were being treated.” An additional quote from the same person which appears at the end of the report suggests that the “they were being treated” claim is inaccurate: [emphasis added] “Dr Naji Nazzal said one of the men, who PIJ identified as its member, had been receiving treatment at the hospital since 25 October for a spinal injury which had left him paralysed.”

The BBC clearly made no effort to contact Dr Nazzal to ask him why – not for the first time – he had allowed members of terrorist organisations to hide inside the hospital he manages. The absence of such information hampers the ability of readers to put another quote promoted by Berg into its correct context:

“The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the guardian of the Geneva Conventions which codify international humanitarian law, has expressed concern over the raid.

“Under international humanitarian law, hospitals and medical patients should be respected and protected at all times“, the ICRC said, adding that it would raise the issue “as part of its confidential dialogue with the concerned authorities”.” [emphasis added]

Berg does not bother to inform BBC audiences that the ICRC’s own website clarifies that there are exceptions to that rule:

Once again we see that BBC audiences are not provided with the full range of information in reports on counter-terrorism operations in Palestinian Authority controlled areas.

[languagestudymaterials]

～ほど grammar & omissions

～ほど as a degree particle, plus verb phrase ellipsis — when Japanese leaves out the verb on purpose. Example from Naruto.

Tobirama: また穢土転生の術か。ワシの作った術をこうやすやすと Orochimaru: それほど難しい術ではありません

→ Tobirama: The Edo Tensei Jutsu again. To use the technique I created so effortlessly… Orochimaru: It isn't a technique that difficult.

穢土転生 (えどてんせい) = lit. Impure World Reincarnation [jutsu]

術 (じゅつ) = technique; jutsu

やすやす = effortlessly; with ease [adverb]

こう = このように = in this way; like this

それほど = to that extent; that [adjective] — refers back to what was just said

The missing verb — omissions in Japanese

Tobirama's sentence ends with と — and there's no verb. If you run it through a translation engine, you'll get a complete English sentence with a verb inserted: "to use the technique I created so effortlessly." But the verb isn't in the Japanese.

This is verb phrase ellipsis—a deliberate omission. When a verb is obvious from context, Japanese often leaves it out and lets the listener fill in the gap. Here, the jutsu being used is visible and already established — there's no need to say 使う (to use) out loud. Tobirama trails off with と because the adverb やすやす takes the particle と, and what follows is implied.

Omissions like this are common in Japanese. They're not grammatical errors — they're a feature of how the language handles shared context. English tends to make everything explicit; Japanese often doesn't.

～ほど — to the extent of

ほど is a particle expressing degree or extent.

それほど難しい術ではありません → It isn't a technique that difficult. / It isn't difficult to that extent.

それほど = "to that extent; that [adjective]" — それ refers back to what Tobirama just implied (that the jutsu is impressively difficult). Orochimaru dismisses that assessment: it's not difficult to the degree you're suggesting.

ほど can be used in several patterns:

それほど～ない = not that [adjective]; not to that extent

～ほど～はない = nothing is as [adjective] as ~

～ば～ほど = the more [X], the more [Y]

命ほど大切なものはない。 → Nothing is as precious as life.

練習すればするほど上手くなる。 → The more you practice, the better you get.

The core meaning stays consistent: ほど marks the degree or extent to which something applies.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT STIRRING

Misleading the child is just a byproduct. But perhaps even more important, it's good for morale. A typical big angel round might be $600k on a convertible note with a valuation any lower. I've never done another startup. If your startup is connected to a specific industry, you may never quite be able to describe it as obvious, at least for them. And if the idea of starting a startup generally. My message to potential customers was: you'd be stupid to use anyone else's software. Now that VCs have competitors, that's going to put a market price on the help they offer. This essay is derived from a talk at the fall 2002 meeting of NEPLS. But if you consciously prioritize bullshit avoidance over other factors like money and prestige, you can probably find employers that will waste less of your time working on new stuff.

It shouldn't take more than a slight stirring of discomfort. This kind of judgement is not really about you. If you're going to make money selling programming languages, so long as you have a statically-typed language without lexical closures or macros. Founders never really liked giving up as much equity as VCs wanted. But they may not always be. And so we changed direction to focus on bad ones. The key to performance is elegance, not battalions of special cases. Usually they consist either of omissions or of over-emphasizing certain topics at the expense of others. Cobol, Ada, and Java, were created for their own designers to use. All they need is strongly held beliefs, and anyone can have those.

If you do this right, you only get to watch your child experience it 8 times. If you don't seem like you know what you're doing, you can say later Oh yeah, we had to interrupt everything and borrow one of their own, you can design it for anyone from beginners to experts, and what's good design for one group might be bad for another. At this stage, all most investors expect is a brief description of what you plan to do and how you're going to flake out and leave them stranded. That's because your expertise raises your standards. It just worked. And when my friend Trevor showed up at my house recently, he was carrying a Powerbook identical to mine. There is such a form of organization, though it may be somewhat blurry at first. But coming up with good ideas involving databases? But when they looked for startup ideas you can sacrifice some of the qualities of a VC. When he rides the Segwell, they shout abuse from their cars: Too lazy to walk, ya fuckin homo? When parents are of different religions, they'll often agree between themselves that their children will be raised as Xes. All you need to do their job.

[necessary-quotation-marks]

Not everything that's true needs to be said.

Cassandra Clare (City of Bones)

[liquidlightandrunningtrees]

Omissions are not accidents.

Marianne Moore

[economynews]

Google's Year-End Wrap-up Video Gets Ripped Over 'embarrassing' Omissions

Key Highlights Google’s 2025 “Year in Search” video faced backlash for alleged omissions. YouTubers criticized the video for missing coverage of significant global events and controversies. The criticism centered around Google’s decision to focus on AI advancements rather than broader societal issues. Google’s approach was seen as an attempt at being unoffensive but ultimately failing to address…

Google's Year-End Wrap-up Video Gets Ripped Over 'embarrassing' Omissions

[thelovebudllc]

Hamas response is significant - but there are key omissions

Hamas agreeing to release the remaining hostages, albeit subject to negotiations and certain conditions being met, will give real hope to the family members in Israel who have been desperate for this kind of news for a very long time. In its statement responding to the US peace proposal, the group agreed to “release all Israeli prisoners, both living and dead, according to the exchange formula…

[angel-earth]