Editor,
You published two letters from the Middle East Peace and Justice Alliance in Tuesday's Daily Lobo. Lori Rudolph decries that the Palestinians are "overlooked and falsely represented as terrorists by our media." Katherine Hughes-Fraitekh provides the usual weary indictments of Israel, including a new one - the inability of Christian Palestinians to access their holy places in Jerusalem.
Rudolph has it wrong. The Palestinians have been afforded an extremely favorable press. The BBC and CNN International, including Christiane Amanpour, slavishly detail alleged Israeli abuses while barely mentioning Palestinian irredentist hatred, anti-Jewish indoctrination of children and homicide bombing of civilians. The New York Times routinely provides pro-Palestinian stories and photos.
Answering Hughes-Fraitekh, I point out that the Palestinians and other Arabs have received cruel treatment not from Israel but from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria. They encouraged the Palestinians to reject the U.N. partition of 1948 and leave the land until the Arab conquering armies had finished with the Jews. When this failed, these nations did not absorb these people as Israel did with Sephardi Jews exiled from all over the Levant.
Instead, they used the Palestinians as pawns, making them a refugee class. The descendants of the Palestinians who stayed, numbering 1.4 million, are now Israeli citizens. In September 1970, King Hussein of Jordan, fearing overthrow of his monarchy, attacked and expelled the Palestinians with some 7,000 to 8,000 dead. On Feb. 2, 1982, Hafiz al-Asad's Syrian army quelled a revolt by the Muslim Brotherhood, slaughtering about 20,000 in the city of Hama. Now that Gaza is judenfrei, Hamas and Fatah fight their own civil war, blaming Israel for their plight. Christians are being forced out, and worse, from their traditional cities - Bethlehem and Jerusalem - by Muslim extremists, not by Israelis.
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Donald Gluck
UNM Israel Alliance
