The Minnesota Daily’s Editor in Chief Shane Hoefer once told me his newspaper is dedicated to a fair solution to the problem in the Middle East, and is not in any way anti-Semitic. Frankly, after reading the Daily this entire year, I can say its editorials are neither fair nor balanced and smell strongly of racism.
The year started with an editorial accusing Israel of trying to kill Yasser Arafat and continued with an obituary to Palestinian nationalist Edward Said. Then the Daily blamed Israel for ruining peace by building a border with Palestine. It found fault in Israel’s plan to withdraw from Palestinian territory and blamed Israel for killing terrorist leader Ahmed Yassin.
Each of these editorials is not horrible in itself, but taken together, they point to Israel as the sole reason for Middle East strife.
Not a single editorial questioned terrorist organizations
targeting innocent civilians or
accused Arafat of stealing more than $1 billion from hungry
and desperate Palestinian families. Not a single editorial condemned the use of Red Cross ambulances to transport Palestinian terrorists and explosives or decried the use of Palestinian children as human bombs by
terrorist organizations.
Why does the Daily editorial board ignore these gross violations of international law, human rights and rights of the child
by Palestinian organizations? Why is Israel the only country
in the world being criticized? Surely the gross human rights
violations in Arab dictatorships such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia deserve much more attention than the minor violations of this little Jewish democracy. How
can the Daily ignore the genocide of half a million people in
Sudan by its Muslim dictatorship while investing so much attention on fewer than 2,000 victims in the Arab-Israeli conflict? More people died in a single week of bombing in Afghanistan than in the 16 years of Israeli-Palestinian war. Does Israel deserve so much criticism?
It doesn’t, what we are seeing is a new manifestation of the oldest hatred. Adolph Hitler and his associates blamed all of the world’s illnesses on the Jewish people; it does not seem surprising that the world’s illnesses are now being blamed on the only Jewish state. The method remains the same: demonize, delegitimize and destroy. First criticize everything Israel does and everything it doesn’t. No country is perfect – it shouldn’t be that hard. Place an economic boycott and let half a billion Arabs overrun 6 million Jews. Once the Jewish people have nowhere left to run you might as well rebuild all those useful ovens that were decommissioned 60 years ago.
Does this scenario sound a
bit extreme? Maybe not; criticism of every Israeli policy is now a routine occurrence. Many in Europe and the United States question whether Jews should be afforded the right for self-determination. Professors here in Minnesota maintain that Israel has no right to exist. And economic boycott of Israel is a growing movement on campuses today. There is no doubt Israel will not survive this “divestment” and will be quickly overrun by the neighboring Arab dictatorships. Today’s editorials will excuse the bloodshed tomorrow.
Koby Nahmias is a biomedical engineering graduate student. He welcomes comments at [email protected]
