has a different take on the peace process.
Like:
The window of opportunity for a two-state peace is closing. Before it jams shut, the Israelis need to hear the plea coming through the checkpoints. Divide the land. Divide it now. Divide it properly. Or we will all end up battling forever – over nothing but soil soaked in blood and cordite.
which is in A last chance for peace in Israel? over in The Independent UK yesterday.
Of course, he missed this incident of an acid attack on an Israeli soldier.
And then, as a true 'lover of Israel', he gets fuming of the Irgun:-
...Her [Tzipi Livni's] father was the Military Director of the Irgun, the underground Jewish militia that spent the 1930s and 40s targeting the British occupying forces and Arab civilians who were trying to prevent the creation of the state of Israel. Livni was brought up to revere their tales of blowing up marketplaces, cafés and hotels; she proudly defends them to this day.
How would Livni's parents have responded to mass punishment – blockades, checkpoints, bullets? Would they shrug and surrender? The leader of the Irgun, Menachem Begin, wrote that every British attempt to "break our backs... only made us stronger and more determined". The same is happening with Palestinian nationalists today. Stripped of a state, they are fighting for one – and every Israeli attack makes them more radical and enraged.
But does Livni see the parallel?
Let's review that.
Those targetted "Arab civilians who were trying to prevent the creation of the state of Israel" were killing innocent Jews anywhere and everywhere and especially civilians - in marketplaces, on buses, on back roads of kibbutzim, etc. In fact, more than trying to stop the creation of Israel, they preferred to kill Jews, like in Hebron where they actually were opposed to modern Zionism as a political movement and in Tzfat (Safed).
The British never negotiated with the Jews after the Mandate was in place but ordered them about and shut down the gates to the country and in the face of millions trying to get out of Europe. They unilaterally partitioned the country. Israel has been negotiating and offering and yielding constantly. There is no parallel in this comparison.
Hari doesn't know, as my grandmother used to say, "his tuches from his elbow."
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(*)
Johann Hari is a columnist for the Independent newspaper, and writes regularly for the gay magazine Attitude and the New Statesman.
Aged 28, he has already written his first book, God Save the Queen?, a critique of the monarchy, and written a play, Going Down in History, which won critical acclaim at the Edinburgh Festival.
In 2003 he was named Young Journalist of the Year by the Press Gazette awards. A Cambridge graduate, he was also the Times Student Journalist of the Year in 2000.
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1 comment:
I received HonestReporting's email on this, and I wrote a letter back to them:
What an eloquent piece of utter fantasy! In all but one paragraph, I found at least one piece of complete and utter fiction. Fiction as in "not real." By paragraph:
1) "In Palestine" - there is no Palestine. The New York Times Atlas continues to confirm this, as do the other fact books. Saying there is one or referring to a fictitious place as if it's real doesn't make it real.
2) "reducing it to rubble" - total nonsense.
3) "It is alleged that when he was the military chief of staff in 2001, he ordered his troops to fulfil [sic] a "daily quota" of killing 70 Palestinians a day" - total nonsense and a spelling error;
4) "Livni was brought up to revere their tales of blowing up marketplaces, cafés and hotels;" - did he get this from an interview, or did he take a look in Dumbledore's Pensieve?
5) "Stripped of a state," - what state where? Was there a vote that we missed? Was there a state in 1947, or was it a Mandate? Hey, aren't you friggin' British? Isn't this part of your own history? Ottoman Empire, WWI? Was the author sleeping during that class, or did the journalism major simply not take any history courses at all?
7) "It is a myth that the Palestinians were offered a real two-state solution and rejected it" - Barak, Clinton, Arafat at Camp David. We all remember the pat Barak gave on Arafat's back. The author would have been 15 at the time and more interested in the girls at school than world events.
8) "decades" - 1994 makes it one decade plus four years. The use of the word "Decades" misleads, because the Arabs had it plenty good in Israel in the Eighties. Just because the author was five years old at the time doesn't mean it didn't happen.
9) "with the Palestinians" - there were no Palestinians in the 1920s. No references, no history, no identity. They were simply Arabs, because there.was.and.is.no.Palenstine.
10) "anathemised" - Not so much a non-fact as much as it is a non-WORD. "Pariah state?" Is that what the author meant? Not true in any event. There are plenty of countries that prefer to get things from Israel, like technology, diamonds, agri products... The list goes on.
11) "civil war" - this is so ludicrous it requires no elucidation.
12) "the Israelis need to hear the plea coming through the checkpoints" It does, and it responds accordingly, by allowing humanitarian aid, medical emergencies and other essential traffic.
It also listens to the scream of rockets, the chants of "Death to Israel" and other existential threats. Perhaps if the "Palestinians" would be given the right to govern themselves within the framework of a lawful and democratic framework, namely Israeli law, they would be too busy following the law and becoming productive members of a civilized society to follow their failed path of "legitimate struggle" or whatever euphemistic nonsense they spout.
It seems that this moron ignoramus person you employ or at least reimburse hasn't grasped a fundamental of journalism, namely fact-checking. It also appears that reality for him only begins at some arbitrary starting point of his own device, with no relation to the space-time continuum that we all live in.
This "article" detracts from value of your publication, and for those of us who obviously disagree with the knee-jerk, froth-mouthed, liberalspeak, it only serves to prove that liberals simply supplant the truth with "facts" made up from whole cloth and a warped imagination. If the author wants to do another "opinion" piece about Israel, maybe you should sponsor his flight to Israel so he can actually see that the vacuousness of his nonsense.
If the author has trouble understanding any of the big words I used, have him go to http://www.dictionary.com
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