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Jani responds

Anglosphere

On Slashdot, I predicted that Jani Taskinen would respond to the outcry over his remarks:

If we follow Occam's razor then surely he would deny the words if the logs aren't true while if they are he would apologise for a sad, emotional rant. I suspect returning from his decision that he cannot work on PHP as long as Israeli Zend backs it is rather impossible at this point, but that decision in itself is respectable even for people like me who disagree with the logic (or even viewpoint) behind it. It is his right not to want to work with Israelis, but for his own sake I hope he tries to do some damage control.

And I think his PHP contributions are not the most notable background here. He's a UN peacekeeper and has in fact been stationed in Lebanon. If you think the PHP team is not going to be happy about this publicity, think of how the UN should feel when there own forces make such emotional hateful rants in public after a "friendly" fire incident - as bad as that incident may be.

And indeed he has responded:

I apologize for the wrong choice of words in "fuck jews" where it should have been "fuck israel". And of course I mean the government of Israel when I say "I'm anti-israel". I have friends who are jews and it does not bother me at all. Hopefully they don't get offended by those remarks I made.. :(

Unfortunately there is no explicit apology for the call to "nuke Israel", which is more worrisome than someone merely opposing Israel's government. However, any apology is better than none. I'm not Jewish nor Israeli so it's not for me to accept it, but it may please those who are.

Of course I still have doubt whether people demonstrating emotional outbursts in are fit for duty. In the specific case of Jani, I find it hard to find a firm position on whether his views of Israel are relevant to the UNAMA-AFG mission assisting NATO-ISAF. But I hold it possible that the UN will be more careful now to assign him to any mission in the Middle East in the future, or that Jani himself would turn down such an assignment. I'm curious, but I think this wraps matters up.

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