A Symbolic Attack

[BPSCG]

More newspeak from Reuters:

Fatah gunmen torch Hamas offices in the West Bank

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Fatah gunmen torched Hamas offices on Tuesday as violence escalated between followers of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and rival Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.​

Members of Abbas's Fatah movement set fire to two Hamas offices in the towns of Salfit and Qalqilya in the West Bank, witnesses said. Fatah gunmen also fired at a facility belonging to Hamas in the city of Nablus. Nobody was hurt in the incidents overnight, which followed an arson attack by Fatah gunmen on Haniyeh's office at the Palestinian parliamentary building in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Monday evening.​

Hamas and Abbas have been locked in an intensifying power struggle since the Islamists took control of the government in March after trouncing Fatah in parliamentary elections.​

Tension has exploded repeatedly in the Gaza Strip, where Hamas has its main powerbase, and gun battles have killed at least 20 Palestinians. The violence has spilled into the West Bank, Fatah's stronghold, in the form of a series of arson and shooting attacks against Hamas offices. Fatah called it revenge for a Hamas assault on a security headquarters in Gaza.... In the Monday night attack on the parliament building in Ramallah, gunmen set fire to Haniyeh's office, tossed furniture out of windows and fired shots inside the complex. It was a symbolic attack on Haniyeh, who is unable to visit Ramallah due to Israeli travel bans and so holds court in Gaza.​

Emphasis mine. Setting fire to an office is a symbolic attack?

 

[brodski]

More newspeak from Reuters:
Emphasis mine. Setting fire to an office is a symbolic attack?

Yes- it a was a "symbolic attack on Haniyeh", as they knew that he wouldn't be there, but it was a *real* attack on his offices. Haniyeh was in absolutely no danger from the attack, but it is clear that the attack was "aimed" at him.

 

[HarryKeogh]

like in the way the attacks on the WTC* were symbolic (aside from real...obviously) as they represented our evil, capitalist ways.


*not that terrorists did it, of course.

 

[Elind]

Perhaps we could say that setting mines on a public beach in Gaza was symbolic of the need to have an excuse to restart their war, officially that is?

Symbolically speaking, it was the Israelis that forced them to do it, right?

 

[Skeptic]

Well, more generally, the Arab goal is the destruction of israel, but it is a symbol of a brave fight of indigenous people against evil foreign colonialism, so never mind the tiny details like what the brave fighters for freedom are really fighting for, i.e., a second holocaust.

Putting aside the fact that it isn't even remotely accurate a describe the Palestinian struggle as "anti-colonialist" in this way, even symbolically, this tendency to support cliched symbolism over the lives of millions of innocents (as long as those innocents are nobody you know and are killed far away, of course) is quite common in certain circles in the west.

It's the same crowd that in the past supported the USSR as a symbol of progress--and never mind the gulags and firing squads and secret police, or that sees Che Guevara as a hero--and never mind the thousands of deaths he caused.

 

[brodski]

Well, more generally, the Arab goal is the destruction of israel, but it is a symbol of a brave fight of indigenous people against evil foreign colonialism, so never mind the tiny details like what the brave fighters for freedom are really fighting for, i.e., a second holocaust.

Putting aside the fact that it isn't even remotely accurate a describe the Palestinian struggle as "anti-colonialist" in this way, even symbolically, this tendency to support cliched symbolism over the lives of millions of innocents (as long as those innocents are nobody you know and are killed far away, of course) is quite common in certain circles in the west.

It's the same crowd that in the past supported the USSR as a symbol of progress--and never mind the gulags and firing squads and secret police, or that sees Che Guevara as a hero--and never mind the thousands of deaths he caused.

Can you explain what any of this has to do with the op?Perhaps it would help if you looked at the whole of the sentence BPSCG quoted "It was a symbolic attack on Haniyeh, who is unable to visit Ramallah due to Israeli travel bans and so holds court in Gaza." What Reuters is trying to get across is that although the attack was on the office of Haniyeh, Haniyeh was in no danger, AND THE ATTACKERS KNEW THIS, as he is unable to travel to Ramallah. This is not an attempt to excuse or justify the attacks, just an attempt to give a fuller explanation of what the attack was intended to accomplish.