Poisoning the American mind



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DANIEL DORON Mar. 10, 2004

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My February 12th column ("NPR'S anti-Israel bias") demonstrated how National Public Radio repeatedly promoted the Arab propaganda line by distorting or ignoring facts. This drew many responses. Most felt that a warning about NPR's success in defaming Israel, especially among inexperienced, idealistic university students, was long overdue.

But even more instructive, perhaps, were the few angry responses I received from avid NPR listeners who identify strongly with the station's message and are convinced that NPR's stance against Israel is justified.

One of these listeners suggested a comparison between Israel's occupation of the Arabs and Nazi oppression. And indeed it is easy to see how NPR listeners would jump to such a conclusion. NPR regularly presents Israelis as brutal oppressors, and Israel as a gratuitous and arbitrary occupying power. NPR does not explain how the conflict came about as a result of habitual violence by Arab leadership bent on Israel's destruction and how six million Israelis are still threatened by an Arab world with more than 100 million people in 22 militant dictatorships; how Israel is constantly battered by terrorism.

Israel is actually acting with great restraint. No other country would allow its citizens to be murdered and let the murderers operate openly and survive. But let's look at a sample letter and see what anti-Israeli frame of mind NPR promotes.

A listener, Dr. Phil Brewer, writes:

Let's see, how many illegal Jewish settlements are there in Gaza and the West Bank? How many more illegal settlements and settlers are there than 10 years ago? Five years ago? One year ago? .? How many homes a month is the Israeli army demolishing this year?

Are you not ashamed to write about the "constantly repeated falsehood of Arab propagandists and their many media advocates that Israel is guilty of stealing Palestinian lands?"

The only falsehood I see is your denial of the reality of the situation.

Oh, I get it.

The Palestinians aren't really human beings. They don't have the right to anything. They've only been living on "your" land for several centuries. Now you're back, it's time for them to go.

Funny, another group of people was saying the same thing about 60 years ago. It's certainly better to be the oppressor than the oppressed. Or is it?

Okay, okay, maybe I misunderstood. Fine. Just tell me this: When someone goes to a farm that a family has owned for countless generations, bulldozes the house, the olive trees, the vineyard, makes the inhabitants leave, then builds a new house, a road, and a security perimeter for another family, just what is that called?

In my language it's called theft. What language do you speak?

HERE IS my response to Dr. Brewer:

I am not surprised that as a NPR listener you are probably not aware of certain facts. The Arab-Israeli conflict is not about territory or occupation, it is about racist jingoistic Arab dictators not wanting any Jews living in what they consider holy Muslim territory anywhere in the Middle East.

You have appointed yourself prosecutor, judge, and executioner, but this does not make your statement about the illegality of settlements truthful. I invite you to study the history of the Versailles peace conference, where a deal was struck whereby the Arabs received 99% of former Ottoman territories with the understanding that 1% will become a national Jewish home. The Arabs took the 99% and then reneged on the deal.

After Jordan was torn from what was to be a Jewish national home by the British in the 1920's, the Palestinians were offered a second independent state in 1948 and in 1999. Twice their leadership refused to accept a state, preferring to wage a war with the express aim of destroying "the Zionist entity" and throwing its Jewish inhabitants into the sea.

Palestinians waged a terror war against Israel, before Jordan lost the West Bank, which it forcibly annexed in 1948, and after the 1993 Oslo Accords freed most of them from Israeli occupation.

Hamas, as well as other Arab radicals, say openly that even if Israel withdrew to the 1967 lines, they would still continue to attack it until the whole land of Palestine was free of Jews.

You make severe accusations about Israelis going to Arab farms, destroying them and taking them over. I hope you can cite one concrete instance where this has happened. But spare us the lies of Arab propagandists (remember the fabricated charges about the Jenin "massacre").

Just cite facts. Where did it happen and when?

The fact is that to this day, 93% of the land mass west of the Jordan is empty and government owned.

There is plenty of room for many more people there, Arabs and Jews. All Israeli settlements, which occupy less than three percent of "the West Bank," were constructed on such empty lands. They displaced few Arabs.

Could you tell me what is wrong with Israelis living in disputed areas of the West bank, while more than one million Arabs are living among the Jews in land that belongs to Israel? Only bigots cannot tolerate others among them.

I leave you to deal with your own conscience regarding the not so subtle allusion you made to what happened 60 years ago, trying to draw a really dastardly comparison between one of the most horrendous atrocities in history and the Palestinian predicament, mostly self-inflicted.

I invite you to consider the proposition that there is a better way to deal with the true tragedy of the Palestinian people than by supporting dictatorships, the terrorists and criminals who call themselves the Palestinian Authority, people who have inflicted infinitely more harm and suffering on the Palestinians than anyone else ever would or could, though this is apparently not reported by NPR.

The writer is president of The Israel Center for Social and Economic Progress, an independent pro-market policy think tank. dorondun@012.net.il



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