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« Series 87 | Main | Radio Books »

The Return of Holger Jensen?

Longtime Denver newspaper readers - of whom there seem to be fewer and fewer every year - will remember someone called, "Holger Jensen" who used to edit the Rocky's foreign coverage. Jensen had a thing about Israel. He didn't much like it. Eventually, his bias got the better of him when he allowed it to overwhelm his journalistic ethics and he printed an easily-fact-checkable-and-yet-un-fact-checked slander against Ariel Sharon. The Rocky had no choice but to can him, and he was last seen writing fishing articles.

This morning, the Rocky has printed what is easily one of the most dishonest pieces of Islamist propaganda ever to disgrace its pages. Then again, "dishonest" and "Islamist propaganda" are quite reundant.

Rima Barakat accuses Israel of deliberately murdering a random, innocent, Palestinian family for the crime of practicing for the 4th of July. She then calls on the world to hold the Jewish community here in the US accountable for this. Really.

Barakat begins with a bill of particulars against the IDF. Here's how it starts:

The latest massacre in Gaza of 18 members of the Athamna family, including eight children, who were sleeping in their beds, is another example of the level of contempt with which the Israel government views Palestinian lives. The regular use of disproportionate firepower against a trapped population not only violates international law but also contradicts the basic civilized conduct of any responsible government.

One might well think that the "basic civilized condust of any responsible government" would include preventing its citizens from launching armed missiles into schools, homes, cars, ice cream stands, and whatever other "soft targets" are in their way. One might be forgiven for thinking they include not launching cross-border raids to capture and murder soldiers. But such strictures apparently don't apply to the Hamas government of the Palestinian territories.

Of course, I suppose it's possible that the IDF troops, seeing a group of small children picking strawberries, just decided to pick up and machine-gun them all, although if they wanted the strawberries, they probably could have just taken them after the kids were finished.

No, this tragedy, like so many others, is a result of deliberate cynical Palestinian strategy - the placement of Qassam rocket launchers in civilian areas, in order to maximize the deaths of their own people for propaganda purposes. People like Ms. Barakat are mouthpieces for this sort of calculating blood libel, making hay on the deaths of the very people they purport to support. People like Ms. Barakat ought to be ashamed of themselves, yet apparently are beyond shame.

In fact, the Palestinians in question make use of the very humanity of the Israeli soldiers - which they then seek to deny. The Jerusalem Post reported the other day that masses of people flocked to the home of a targeted Hamas murderer, in order to prevent him from being killed or arrested by Israeli troops. I know Gaza has turned into a large school for martyrs, but my guess is that most of those people were there knowing they were safe from the depradations of the IDF.

Israel justifies these attacks as military responses to a simple homemade device called the Qassam "firecracker" rocket. But Israeli politicians do not believe that the Qassam creates a threat to Israeli security. In fact, Shimon Peres, has commented that "This hysteria over the Qassams must end."

Well, when you're quoting Shimon Peres, you know you've run out of options. I'm surprised she just didn't go all the way and quote Jimmy Carter. Let's make a deal - when the Qassams stop killing people in Sderot, and turning that and other border settlements into ghost towns, Israel will stop trying to uproot them. Until then, it's not really up to a government whose charter foresees the complete destruction of Israel in every paragraph to decide what constitutes a security threat.

Brutality has never brought peace to any country or people. Slavery, apartheid and Nazi concentration camps have eventually brought ruin and disgrace upon the perpetrators. All acts of mass slaughter of innocent civilians must be condemned by people of all faiths.

A special responsibility sits with people belonging to the Jewish tradition. After all, these atrocities continue to be committed in their names. It is time that they stand up and defend the Jewish faith from being associated with acts of heartlessness. We have yet to hear even a whisper of disapproval coming out of the American Jewish leadership. This silence from the Jewish community about Israeli atrocities is unconscionable.

One might well conclude that yes, in fact, Palestinian brutality, from Arafat to Abbas to Hamas, hasn't really gotten the Palestinians very much, and that they might want to take a different tack.

As for the call for American Jews to stop defending Israel, Barakat knows perfectly well that's not going to happen. Certainly not as long as Israel remains under existential threat from its Muslim neighbors. In fact, given Barakat's recent hosting of the Mufti of Jerusalem and representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood, such a call could be construed as a thinly veiled threat to bring that existential threat Stateside.

Ms. Barakat is apparently beyond shame. But the Rocky ought to know better.

Comments

I emailed the "News" about Barakat's column. So far they haven't called and said they'd consider publishing it. Frankly, I don't think that P.C. bunch will. It follows:
Editor,
Well, look what we have here. In Monday's "News" Speakout, is Palestinian-jihad apologist, Rima Barakat championing the misunderstood and maligned Palestinians in their noble efforts against the bloodthirsty Israelis and Americans. The same Palestinians who, just this past summer, launched hundreds of missles into Israel from Gaza; the same people who have sent their own children on suicide missions into crowds of Israelis to detonate the explosives strapped to their bodies; the same Palestinians who danced in the streets and cheered after 9/11, and the same who have called for the destruction of both Israel and the U.S.
The reader need only look at page 34A of the same paper to see the real face of these thugs. There, one will find the picture of a father using his 2-year old child as a "shield" against his adversaries. Using innocents as shields: the same tactic used in Lebanon and Iraq by their fellow terrorists.
I couldn't have been more offended by this column than had I lived 65 years ago and read one by a "German-American" extolling the humanity of Naziism.
Let me clue you in Ms. Barakat: Palestinians, and Muslims generally, will start prospering when they start loving life with as much enthusiasm as they embrace hate and death.
David Cassidy

Did you see the latest Palestinian offer? It seems that if Israel stops all violence against Arabs, they will stop the rocket attacks. Arabs will continue the armed incursions into Israel, the arms smuggling, and suicide bombers.

Israel and Jews around the world must look like prize idiots if people think that they would accept it. It's beyond stupid. It's even beyond insulting. What's going on?

What an outrage!

Sigh. My friend, I'm afraid you're attributing rational thought to these people. After living for 3 years in Toledo, with its sizeable and continually irate Muslim population, I've come to the conclusion that our thought processes are somehow doomed to take different pathways. They perceive even acts of benevolence as acts of oppression. I hesitate short of calling it mental illness, but as each new barrage from Al Jazeera assaults my sensibilities, there seems to be no more charitable label to use. And with no neuronal pathways in common, it bodes not well for any discourse, reconciliation, or cohabitation.

But Israeli politicians do not believe that the Qassam creates a threat to Israeli security. In fact, Shimon Peres, has commented that "This hysteria over the Qassams must end."

Oh, I see. The Israelis should just ignore hundreds of rockets because they cause no harm and are not considered a danger...Yeah..sure. I can't believe that this woman has the hubris to make such a statement! If those remarks are what passes as reasoned discourse on the left, then we all have a problem

The palistineans are a lost cause. It appears that only journalists have an even lower IQ. As for the papers, well, before I have any political discussions with anyone, I ascertain whether or not they actually have any knowledge of the situation. If their "information" comes from UPI, Reuters, etc. I politely decline to debate. Why bother?



  booklist

Power, Faith, and Fantasy


Six Days of War


An Army of Davids


Learning to Read Midrash


Size Matters


Deals From Hell


A War Like No Other


Winning


A Civil War


Supreme Command


The (Mis)Behavior of Markets


The Wisdom of Crowds


Inventing Money


When Genius Failed


Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking


Back in Action : An American Soldier's Story of Courage, Faith and Fortitude


How Would You Move Mt. Fuji?


Good to Great


Built to Last


Financial Fine Print


The Day the Universe Changed


Blog


The Multiple Identities of the Middle-East


The Case for Democracy


A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam


The Italians


Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory


Beyond the Verse: Talmudic Readings and Lectures


Reading Levinas/Reading Talmud