Bombed by Terrorists, Denounced by Inquirer

    Another Arab terrorist bombing, another editorial by the Philadelphia Inquirer demanding Israeli concessions. The routine is as familiar as it is outrageous.

    The same day that it reported the latest Jerusalem bombing, in which 5 Israelis were murdered and 192 injured, the Inquirer ran a lead editorial placing most of the blame for the hostilities on Israel. After offering the standard lip-service condemnations of the bombing. the editorial denounced Israel's anti-terrorism tactic of temporarily barring Arabs in the territories from entering Israel. The Israeli Army uses the tactic as a means of preventing bombers from entering the Jewish State disguised as laborers; but the Inquirer dismissed that danger as less important than the possibility that closing off the territories might be "destroying the Palestinian economy."

    Furthermore, the Inquirer insisted, "Mr. Netanyahu must be pressed to follow through on the steps Israel promised to undertake in the Oslo peace accords." Sounds like a reasonable demand--except for the fact that Netanyahu already has fulfilled Israel's obligations in the Oslo accords, including surrendering most of Hebron, releasing imprisoned Arab terrorists, providing funds to the PLO, and offering further territorial withdrawals.

    The Inquirer editorial added: "Mr. Netanyahu must be convinced" --one wonders what sort of tactics for "convincing" the Inquirer has in mind-- "that it's time for confidence-building steps, not empty rhetoric." No acknowledgment that the Netanyahu government has already undertaken numerous concessions and confidence-building steps. No reference to the fact that Yasir Arafat, not Benjamin Netanyahu, is the one whose rhetoric deserves our scrutiny--Arafat's rhetoric of war, which incites Arabs to murder Jews.

    But that wasn't all. Trudy Rubin, the longtime critic of Israel who authors many of the Inquirer's unsigned editorials about the Mideast, also contributed a lengthy, signed op-ed in the same day's newspaper. Was it just a coincidence that the themes of Rubin's signed op-ed were identical to the themes of the unsigned lead editorial?

    It's perfectly understandable "why Arafat hasn't been eager to help the Israelis," Rubin asserted. Arafat signed a deal with Yitzhak Rabin in which "Israel would give back West Bank and Gaza territory that would eventually become an unarmed Palestinian state," but now Arafat finds himself faced with a new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, "who has viewed Arafat as a bitter adversary...Netanyahu's vision of a final settlement could never add up to a functional economic or political state."

    Rubin's "explanation" for Arafat's behavior is nonsense from beginning to end. The Oslo accords that Arafat signed with Rabin did not promise the creation of a PLO state, armed or unarmed. Indeed, Prime Minister Rabin himself repeatedly expressed his opposition to PLO statehood. Furthermore, Netanyahu's positions are not the cause of either Arab terrorism or Arafat's refusal to combat Arab terrorism. During the administrations of both Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, Arab terrorists were blowing up Israeli buses and shopping centers, in even greater numbers than under Netanyahu. And Arafat's refusal to outlaw, disarm, or extradite terrorists, his failure to change the PLO Covenant, and his constant "jihad" speeches, all date back to the days of Rabin and Peres, long before Netanyahu was elected. But then again, Trudy Rubin is not known for mentioning facts that might interfere with her political agenda.

    Two days after the Inquirer's editorial assault on Israel, however, there was a partial ray of light. Inquirer correspondent Barbara Demick authored a rare report about the PLO's hostile anti-Israel propaganda activity. She described how children at PLO-run summer camps are indoctrinated with anti-Israel hatred and given military-style training; PLO television and radio broadcasts incite violence against Israel; and even Palestinian Arab quiz shows feature questions that glorify the murderers of Jews. The editors of the Inquirer appropriately made Demick's report a front-page story, and included a helpful box listing excerpts from PLO television programs and Arafat's pro-terrorism speeches.

    Unfortunately, Demick's dispatch did include several reminders of classic Inquirer bias. For example, the Arab officials she interviewed --who tried to explain away the hostile propaganda-- were given 31 lines of space to make their case, while the Israelis she interviewed were give only 9. And when Demick referred to the 1978 Tel Aviv Highway massacre of 1978 (the subject of one of those quiz show questions), in which Arab terrorists slaughtered 34 Israelis, she called the murderers "Palestinian commandos" (rather than terrorists) and even-handedly reported that "34 Israelis and Palestinian commandos were killed" in the attack, as if all of them were victims.