In Tuesday’s New York Times, Ethan Bronner reported that Israel is planning to build 700 new housing units in Jerusalem, a decision which has angered the Arabs and contradicted Obama policy which sees such construction as counter-productive to peace talks. Mr. Bronner wrote nothing about the refusal of Hamas or Hezbollah to recognize Israel as a legitimate state, nor did he mention that Mahmoud Abbas has announced his intention not to run for another term of leadership of the West Bank, leaving Israel in the strange position of wondering who there is to negotiate with. Instead, our reporter opted for a brief historical background to the problem between Israel and its neighbors:
The 1947 United Nations Plan for the Holy Land divided it into two states, one Jewish and the other Palestinian, with Jerusalem - holy to Christians, Muslims and Jews - as a separate international entity. But the war that broke out over Israel’s declaration of independence left armistice lines running through Jerusalem….
The passive phrase ‘the war that broke out” implies that this was a mutual battle or an act of spontaneous combustion. Bronner chose to exclude the seminal point that after the UN voted yes on Israel’s sovereignty, five Arab nations - Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria - invaded Israeli territory and initiated that war, along with the subsequent wars in which belligerent, vanquished Arabs ceded territory. He chose not to remind us that though Arabs live as citizens in Israel, they demand that all Arab land or what they construe as future Arab land (Jerusalem) be judenrein.
Wednesday’s Times features a photo of 85 year old holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein, on a hunger strike in Cairo to pressure Egypt to open its borders to Gaza. Thoughtfully, Hedy has brought along crayons and other art supplies for the young Gazan Hamasniks, perhaps not realizing that Palestinian children play with real guns as they learn to be suicide bombers and shaheeds at military camps. No one asked Hedy what she did or brought for Israeli children who were the targets of thousands of Gazan missiles in the years preceding Israel’s eventual defensive response to those assaults. No one asked Hedy why she, who was blessed enough to survive the Nazis, was willing to self-destruct on behalf of Palestinians instead of the hundreds of thousands of Sudanese who are being raped, mutilated and killed by Muslims. But Hedy is probably a Times reader herself whose positions regarding Israel and Arabs are strongly colored by that very fact.
Sadly, what comes across in watching the news get slanted, is how naive liberal Americans continue to be. Even after 9/11 and the myriad smaller attacks by Muslims on American soil, after the foiled or aborted attempts of Islamic suicide bombers on planes, after the international bombings by radical Islam of trains, planes, buses, hotels, synagogues, cafes, schools, after the continued slaughter in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, after the ongoing piracy by Somalia - Americans are still being asked to believe that tiny Israel is the most significant impediment to peace in our time. Hitler persuaded much of the world that Jews were the essential target for elimination; now radical Islam continues that ideology. Instead of emphatically stressing that a nuclear Iran along with jihad are the most important threats to the security of the west, the Times continues to supply its readers with an endless supply of marginalia regarding “the little satan.” While they concentrate on this, on the ever-diligent need to worry about the rights of Khalid Sheikh Mohamed in our judicial system, and the fear of a backlash against Nigerians in America - radical Islam continues to lure more stunted men to its cause - the submission of all of us to its benighted rule.
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