J.J. Goldberg April 28, 2006

Due to an inexplicable editor’s lapse, an editorial in last week’s print edition, “Mad Logic,” mistakenly stated that the April 11 suicide bombing in Tel Aviv had been carried out by the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and not by Islamic Jihad. In fact, it was Islamic Jihad, considered an Iranian client group, that claimed the deed.

The editorial’s point was that the bombing was one of several recent incidents that showed Iran’s ability and determination to cause mischief in the Israeli-Palestinian arena. The third paragraph attempted to show that even though Islamic Jihad was not the author of the Tel Aviv bombing, the attack was indirectly linked to Iran. In fact, of course, it was directly linked to Iran, and the third paragraph may simply be ignored. Our apologies.

A second, unrelated lapse led to the omission of a phrase in the lead editorial, “Rise Up and Remember.” The editorial recalled the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of Passover 1943, “a mad, hopeless act of desperation and defiance” in which several hundred teenagers, members of socialist and Zionist youth movements armed with pistols and grenades, took on “elite units of the world’s most feared army.”

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We had meant to call it “a mad, hopeless act of desperation and defiance and, yes, of terrible beauty.” Those words are from the W.B. Yeats poem “Easter 1916,” describing another hopeless rising that took place in Dublin, exactly 27 years before Warsaw. On that morning, 90 years ago this week, a few hundred Irish socialists and nationalists took on the British army and paved the way for the rebirth of the Irish nation. There is no comparison between the two events, except this: In both places, a handful of brave men and women offered their lives, hoping to light a spark so that others might live free.

Our point was that in every generation, the acts of a few determined souls, however hopeless they seem in the moment, can change the course of history. We urge readers to take that lesson to heart and to turn out en masse in Washington on April 30 for the march to save Darfur. Rise up and go.

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