Word of the week: chutzpah
July 31st, 2006 by ktula
chutzpah |ˈhoŏtspə; ˈ kh oŏtspə; -spä| (also chutzpa or hutzpah or hutzpa)
noun informal
shameless audacity; impudence.
ORIGIN late 19th cent.: Yiddish, from Aramaic ḥu ṣpā.
That is the word i would use to describe the excuse given by an Israeli defense force spokesman on the massacre of 56 Lebanese civilians, including 34 children, by a bomb dropped by an Israeli jet.
“We don’t know what the people were doing in the basement. It is possible they were being used as shields or being used cynically to further Hizbullah’s propaganda purposes.”
What were those people doing in the basement? Instead of accepting the responsibilities for the monstrous act of killing those civilians, he has the chutzpah to question why they were hiding in the basement. Worse, he even attempted to shift the blame to the Hizbullah by claiming that they “were being used as shields” to “further Hizbullah’s propanganda purpose.”
May be they were hiding in the basement because they thought it was the safest place in the house to avoid being killed by Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of southern Lebanon? Or may be because they had nowhere to go since Israel had bombed and destroyed all the routes out of southern Lebanon? Could it be that they did not want to be like those who were killed and maimed by Israeli fighters-bombers in their cars in their attempts to escape north after heeding Israel’s advice to abandon their homes?
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