Friday, October 16, 2009

Koutsoukis Corrupts The News

One Jason Koutsoukis who is Middle East correspondent for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald thinks that "Religious extremism is not exclusive to Islam".

But Koutsoukis corrupts the news.

Here fom Australia:

...''Actually, we live a mad house,'' said [Minister Benny] Begin, with the clear implication that Israel was the only sane nation among them.

Yet where else in the Middle East is there such a fusion of religion and politics?

[where else? Iran. Egypt. Libya. Syria. Jordan. Heck, there's another 15 states at least who define themselves as "Islamic" and either don't permit and discriminate otherwise against Jews - in Jordan we can't purchase property there and in Egypt, God help you if you are a Copt]

The lines between the two are so blurred in Israel that it has prevented the country's legislators from formally adopting a constitution for the past 61 years.

[gee, a 20% minority is that powerful? so, should we be afraid of a 20% Muslim minority? but in Israel, that seething haunt of political/religious extremism, Arabs have the right to vote in Knesset elections and even harangue and incite against Israel as the state of the Jewish people]

Begin himself, in almost his very next breath, then did what every Israeli politician – secular or religious – does when they start defending Israel's right to occupy the West Bank: he weaved together history as told by the Old Testament, with facts on the ground. The land of the West Bank, which he referred to exclusively by the biblical names of Judea and Samaria, was the ''cradle of Jewish civilisation'', Begin argued.

[yes, but it is, even if you are an atheist or not that well schooled in history]

Therefore no Israeli leader, Begin reiterated, should ''relinquish'' this land to the Palestinians, and no one had any right to demand that Jews should stop settling this land.

...religious extremism is not exclusive to Islam. Israel has its own Jewish extremists that Begin is happy to ignore. People who are settling the land of ''Judea and Samaria'' because they believe they are acting on God's explicit wishes.

Are these people dangerous?

[do we whip women, kill them for morals crimes, cut off their hands? are we an established theocratic obscurantist regime like them or certainly noo worse than Bible Belt America - and a lot less for sure]

...A year ago, religious extremists detonated a pipe bomb at the front door of the distinguished Israeli historian Professor Ze'ev Sternhell... [how does he know that? no one has been arrested.]

How far would such people go if Israel ever moved to evacuate the West Bank and start evacuating settlements? [well we did Gaza with no bloodshed. maybe Judea & Samaria will be much more robust but why doesn't he go with the norm?]

When I asked Begin if he was concerned about the fusion of religion and politics in the settler movement, he simply dodged the question.

His bottom line was that because Jews have a strong historic link to the land of West Bank, they have a perpetual right to live there.

...But as the recent weeks of rioting across East Jerusalem, and the bitter backlash against Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' mishandling of the Goldstone Report suggests, the grass roots of Palestinian society seem to have reserved their perceived right to use armed resistance to achieve their national goals.

[reserved? or postponed? and why no mention of that fanatic extremist exploition of the Temple Mount by irrational Muslims?]

And his most specious illogical unfactual remark:

Ignoring the effects of 42 years of military occupation with specious arguments about religious extremism is a good way to prolong the Israel-Palestinian conflict, not end it.

Poor Australians. Free press?

6 comments:

local oy said...

how does he know that? no one has been arrested.]


izzat so? mebbe dis is how he know dat. yr gettin' slow, old man, this is your backyard.

http://israeljustice.com/news2.asp?key=176

YMedad said...

you may be in violation of the gag order but nevertheless, I should have written "no one has been found guilty of that act"

st. stephen said...

gag order? what gag order? we don't need no steenking gag order. are we not cyber-characters and therefore free to do as we wish in virtual reality? no trees were killed to publicize this message.

Yochanan said...

I did a search on Mechon-Mamre.org for Samaria. In the Tanakh, it seems to be referring to a city, not a region. Do you know around when the name Samaria started to be applied for the region?

YMedad said...

Try II Kings 17:-

24 And the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Avva, and from Hamath and Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel; and they possessed Samaria, and dwelt in the cities thereof.

"Cities [pl.] of Samaria" - Samaria is a name of a region.

Yochanan said...

Thanks