News Not Fit for the Inquirer to Print
by Michael Goldblatt
When PLO official Nabil Sha'ath was given an honorary
doctorate by the University of Pennsylvania last year, concerned members of the Jewish
community protested, pointing out that Sha'ath had called for "jihad" against
Israel, threatened "a return to acts of violence" if Israel failed to give in
to the PLO's demands, called the Hamas terrorists his "brothers," and run in an
election campaign in which his posters featured rifles and a grenade over a
map of all of Israel, labeled "Palestine." The Philadelphia Inquirer , in its
coverage of the controversy over Sha'ath and Penn, refused to quote any of
Sha'ath's pro-violence statements. So perhaps it is no surprise that the
Inquirer likewise failed to report Sha'ath's recent declaration (in an
interview with the Arab newspaper Al Hayyat al-Jadeeda on May 21) that "In the
permanent settlement, we will not agree to leave even one settler in the West Bank,
Gaza, or Jerusalem." If an Israeli leader called for the mass expulsion of Arabs
from those territories or Jerusalem, surely the Inquirer would be outraged.
But when the PLO's Sha'ath does it, there is only silence.
* * *
Most readers of the Inquirer are likely to assume that there has
not been any recent Arab terrorism against Israelis, since there have been no reports
in the Inquirer about such terrorism in many weeks. Readers would have no way
of knowing that, in fact, there were 11 terrorist attacks in Israel during a
single week in early May, but the Inquirer failed to report any of them. Among
other outrages, there were drive-by shootings at Israelis in Gush Katif (May 6),
Khan Yunis (May 6), and Elon Moreh (May 8). Arab terrorists threw firebombs at
Israelis in Nablus (May 11) and Hebron (May 8, May 9, May 10, and twice on
May 11). And a massacre of Israeli schoolgirls was narrowly averted on May 8,
when terrorists raked their van with automatic rifle fire, miraculously hitting
only the vehicle and not any of the passengers.
* * *
If Israel dismantled a Palestinian Arab refugee camp and forcibly
relocated the residents, it would undoubtedly make the front page of the
Inquirer. But when Libya recently did just that, the Inquirer ignored it.
The French news agency Agence France Presse reported on April 18 that the Libyan
government sent in soldiers to dismantle a makeshift refugee camp that
Palestinian Arabs had set up near the Libyan border. The residents were
herded onto trucks and forcibly resettled in the town of Tobruk.
Not a word in the Inquirer.
* * *
The troubling phenomenon of Holocaust denial is often in the news.
But when Arabs are the ones denying, distorting or defaming the Holocaust, the
Inquirer shows no interest. For example, the Inquirer never reported that
the number two official in the PLO, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), authored a book
claiming that the Nazis killed only one million Jews, and that "the Zionist
movement was a partner in the slaughter of the Jews." Nor did the Inquirer
report the statement issued last year by the PLO Palestinian Authority in
conjunction with Holocaust Memorial Day (Yom HaShoah), claiming that Israel
"has transformed our homeland into a big concentration camp." This year, the PLO
again defamed Holocaust Memorial Day, and the Inquirer again failed to report
it: Yasir Arafat, in a speech to the PLO Legislative Council in Ramallah on
May 11, said that as a result of the creation of Israel, "the Palestinian people
were subjected to the worst holocaust in history." Meanwhile, Ahmed Mousawe,
a leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah terrorists (whom the Inquirer calls
"guerrillas"), was asked by the British newspaper The Spectator (May 3) if he
doubted that the Holocaust had taken place. He replied, "I do not know what
is the truth about what Hitler dd. There could be many problems in killing so
may people. I am not an expert. I do not know." The Inquirer didn't report
that, either.
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