Let’s be fairer to Israel in reporting on the Middle East

JOANNE PRIVES

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Transcribed from the clipping

The American media devote an inordinate amount of coverage to the stalled peace process in the Middle East. Invariably, Israel is accused of being “obstructionist” (Speaking Out essay, June 2).

Chairman Arafat has lived up to none of the provisions of the Oslo accords, although the media rarely, if at all, call attention to PLO transgressions: ■ The PLO charter still calls for Israel’s destruction. ■ The PLO per capita has more armed “policemen” (about a 1-to-40 ratio) than any other country. ■ Some diplomats reportedly abuse their immunity by transporting arms across borders. ■ Children’s programs on PLO TV routinely glorify violence and hate vs.

Israelis. ■ Arafat’s Arabic speeches continually call for Israel’s end and the abrogation of treaties. We do read about Palestinians living in ghettoes and camps but not that Muslim rulers have intentionally interned them there since 1948 for propaganda purposes.

We read nothing about Arafat’s homes in Gaza and Jericho, his proposed domiciles in Nablus and Bethlehem or his plans for a multimillion-dollar mansion. There are 158 members of the United Nations. Libya, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Cuba and North Korea, all sponsors of terrorism, are among the 157 who can seek a seat on the Security Council.

Only Israel is ineligible to serve a term; its Arab neighbors, particularly Saudi Arabia and Iraq, refuse it membership in the regional alliance, a prerequisite for the Security Council. This isolation also excludes Israel from UNICEF, the World Court, the Commission of Human Rights and the Economic and Social Council.

Recently, 80 U.S. senators and more than 100 House members wrote President Clinton, urging his administration to cease its one-sided pressure on Israel. John Loftus and Mark Aarons in their book, The Secret War Against the Jews, assert that the “largest single obstacle to peace in the Middle East is the secret bias of Western government against the Jews.”

Peace negotiations between mature nations are not conducted under threats of violence. Differences can be resolved only in an atmosphere of compromise. Stated positions are negotiable, not grounded in concrete, a democratic principle seemingly foreign to the Arabs. Peace with Egypt is a mockery of Sadat’s and Begin’s Camp David vision.

Tourism and trade have not flourished, intellectual interchange is nonexistent. Peace with Jordan is illusory. More than 20 Arab nations surround the thin sliver of territory that is Israel. In a half dozen defensive wars, Israel has captured land and reunited Jerusalem. Now she is accused of “occupying territory.”

No other nation has been called upon to return land won in defensive wars. Territorial concessions can push Israel to the brink of national suicide. Israel’s security concerns are grounded in the reality of a sea of hostile neighbors and the potential for atomic weapons in the hands of rogue nations like Iran and Iraq. Israel has but to lose one war to cease to exist.

Who among us would trade places with an Israeli citizen and face the daily threats to life?

How this transcription was made

Date and publication rest on the collector's slide label; no masthead, folio or printed dateline appears on this clipping, and nothing on it contradicts the label. Adjudicated against the printed page: Nothing printed identifies the paper or the date. I checked the full page, the head and the foot at 5x: the only standing type is the department label 'GUEST ESSAYIST' above the author's name and the italic tagline at the foot naming 'a national organization b Unresolvable from this scan. Nothing contradicts Maria's label either — the essay answers a 'Speaking Out essay, June 2', which only puts it after 2 June 1998. Ingest as label-only provenance or hold; do not record it as folio- or masthead-verified.

Context added by this archive

A photograph of Prives runs with the essay. No Israeli-Arab vocabulary whatsoever: in this writer’s map there are Israelis, Arabs who surround Israel from outside, and Palestinians kept in camps by Muslim rulers. The one-fifth of Israel’s citizens who are Arab have no place in the geography the essay describes.

Cite this clipping

"Let’s be fairer to Israel in reporting on the Middle East," Democrat and Chronicle, 15 June 1998. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1998-036. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1998-036