Letter to the Woodstock Times
Eyeless in Gaza
So, eight residents of the Woodstock area are going to Gaza to report on what’s going on there, bringing with them nothing in the way of credentials except closed minds and a fervent hatred of Israel and Jews in general. The Crazy Eight will surely be, like Samson, eyeless in Gaza, and will see only what they want to see. Who is paying for their trip and arranging it, I wonder. Iranian money?
Why aren’t they going to Sderot and interviewing Israelis terrorized by the 7,000 rockets raining down upon them in recent years?
In Gaza, will they try hard to free Gilad Shalit, illegally imprisoned by the Hamas terrororists? Who want to trade him for hundreds of imprisoned Palestinian terrorists? Isn’t that disproportionate?
Actually, a professional journalist, Tom Gross of the Wall Street Journal, recently toured the West Bank and found that the largest city, Nablus, was bursting with energy and showing signs of great prosperity. As for checkpoints, he drove from Jerusalem to Nablus without going through any Israeli checkpoints. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu has removed them all -- ever since the Israeli security services were allowed, in recent years, to crush the intifada, restore security to the West Bank, and set up the conditions for the economic boom that is now occurring.
In Gaza too, Gross wrote, the shops and markets he saw were crammed with food and goods.
The head of the Nablus stock exchange explained to Gross
why there is no rush on the part of the Palestinians to declare statehood: Ordinary Palestinians need the Israeli Defense Forces to help protect them from the Hamas terrorists, as their own security forces aren't ready to do so by themselves yet.
“The truth,” Gross concluded, “is that an independent Palestine is now quietly being built, with Israeli assistance.”
Make no mistake, the Crazy Eight and their sympathizers are so closed-minded and prejudiced that they believe that Israel can do nothing right and the terrorists can do nothing wrong. Last year, when Israel offered to create a Palestinian state on 97% of the West Bank (with 3% of pre-1967 Israeli land being added, to make up the shortfall), Mahmoud Abbas refused. “In the West Bank we have a good reality,’ Abbas told a Washington Post reporter. “‘The people are living a normal life.”
That’s why the protestations of the Israel-haters about their just being anti-Israel and not anti-Semitic are so clearly false. They ignore the horrible misdeeds of the evil Palestinian terrorists and blame Israel and the Jews for everything.
What motivates people like the Crazy Eight? Typically they’re life’s losers, abject failures; they didn’t succeed in their careers or their personal lives. They carry seething anger within them. If it weren’t Israelis they’re resentful of, it would be Catholics…or African-Americans…or Etruscans.
And their thinking is so shallow, their knowledge so pitiful. Einstein was opposed to a Jewish state? Well, an article in a recent issue of the Atlantic (December) quotes from an Einstein letter: “I am, as a human being, an opponent of nationalism. But as a Jew, I am from today a supporter of the Zionist effort.” Would the Israel-haters change their minds if they had read this? Well, prejudiced people generally don’t read The Atlantic. Too nuanced for them.
The casualties when Israel attacked Gaza were disproportionate? Isn’t an army supposed to limit the loss of its soldiers? I’m glad so few Israelis died. I wish fewer Palestinian civilians had died, but what should we expect, when their combatants hide out in apartment houses and schools?
As for Bill Campion of Mt. Tremper, who make the bizarre accusation that I abused St. Francis: The Greeks had a word for him. Meshugana.
And as for those people blaming me for “name-calling,” I would like to say in my defense that Hitler and Stalin were monsters, Senator Lieberman is utterly contemptible, Sara Palin is an idiot, and Glen Beck is a hitherto unknown and particularly disgusting new form of life. Oh, and that name-calling is often appropriate.
Anyway, I wish the Crazy Eight godspeed. And I hope they love Gaza so much that they never return here.
Warren Boroson
Woodstock
So, eight residents of the Woodstock area are going to Gaza to report on what’s going on there, bringing with them nothing in the way of credentials except closed minds and a fervent hatred of Israel and Jews in general. The Crazy Eight will surely be, like Samson, eyeless in Gaza, and will see only what they want to see. Who is paying for their trip and arranging it, I wonder. Iranian money?
Why aren’t they going to Sderot and interviewing Israelis terrorized by the 7,000 rockets raining down upon them in recent years?
In Gaza, will they try hard to free Gilad Shalit, illegally imprisoned by the Hamas terrororists? Who want to trade him for hundreds of imprisoned Palestinian terrorists? Isn’t that disproportionate?
Actually, a professional journalist, Tom Gross of the Wall Street Journal, recently toured the West Bank and found that the largest city, Nablus, was bursting with energy and showing signs of great prosperity. As for checkpoints, he drove from Jerusalem to Nablus without going through any Israeli checkpoints. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu has removed them all -- ever since the Israeli security services were allowed, in recent years, to crush the intifada, restore security to the West Bank, and set up the conditions for the economic boom that is now occurring.
In Gaza too, Gross wrote, the shops and markets he saw were crammed with food and goods.
The head of the Nablus stock exchange explained to Gross
why there is no rush on the part of the Palestinians to declare statehood: Ordinary Palestinians need the Israeli Defense Forces to help protect them from the Hamas terrorists, as their own security forces aren't ready to do so by themselves yet.
“The truth,” Gross concluded, “is that an independent Palestine is now quietly being built, with Israeli assistance.”
Make no mistake, the Crazy Eight and their sympathizers are so closed-minded and prejudiced that they believe that Israel can do nothing right and the terrorists can do nothing wrong. Last year, when Israel offered to create a Palestinian state on 97% of the West Bank (with 3% of pre-1967 Israeli land being added, to make up the shortfall), Mahmoud Abbas refused. “In the West Bank we have a good reality,’ Abbas told a Washington Post reporter. “‘The people are living a normal life.”
That’s why the protestations of the Israel-haters about their just being anti-Israel and not anti-Semitic are so clearly false. They ignore the horrible misdeeds of the evil Palestinian terrorists and blame Israel and the Jews for everything.
What motivates people like the Crazy Eight? Typically they’re life’s losers, abject failures; they didn’t succeed in their careers or their personal lives. They carry seething anger within them. If it weren’t Israelis they’re resentful of, it would be Catholics…or African-Americans…or Etruscans.
And their thinking is so shallow, their knowledge so pitiful. Einstein was opposed to a Jewish state? Well, an article in a recent issue of the Atlantic (December) quotes from an Einstein letter: “I am, as a human being, an opponent of nationalism. But as a Jew, I am from today a supporter of the Zionist effort.” Would the Israel-haters change their minds if they had read this? Well, prejudiced people generally don’t read The Atlantic. Too nuanced for them.
The casualties when Israel attacked Gaza were disproportionate? Isn’t an army supposed to limit the loss of its soldiers? I’m glad so few Israelis died. I wish fewer Palestinian civilians had died, but what should we expect, when their combatants hide out in apartment houses and schools?
As for Bill Campion of Mt. Tremper, who make the bizarre accusation that I abused St. Francis: The Greeks had a word for him. Meshugana.
And as for those people blaming me for “name-calling,” I would like to say in my defense that Hitler and Stalin were monsters, Senator Lieberman is utterly contemptible, Sara Palin is an idiot, and Glen Beck is a hitherto unknown and particularly disgusting new form of life. Oh, and that name-calling is often appropriate.
Anyway, I wish the Crazy Eight godspeed. And I hope they love Gaza so much that they never return here.
Warren Boroson
Woodstock
Labels: Israel Gaza
posted by WarrenBoroson at 1:21 PM
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