PrintAugust 29, 2010
NY Times dishes out pro-Palestinian propaganda under false colors
Readers of the New York Times expect to find a variety of views in the Sunday "Week in Review" section, which is as it should be. But they also are entitled to accurate bios of outside authors whose writings appear in the paper. Nor should the Times countenance patently factual distortions and errors in such writings. Unfortunately, the Times flunks both these tests in an Aug. 29 article by Ali Abunimah, "Hamas, the I.R.A. and Us"
The Times identifies Abunimah only as author of "One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse." That sounds worthy of further perusal. After all, who isn't for ending this protracted conflict?
However, what the Times fails to point out in its identification of the writer, is that his one-state solution, coupled with his insistence on a "right of return" for millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants, would eliminate Israel as a Jewish state. It would establish Palestinian rule from the Jordan to the Mediterranean -- a glaring omission by the Times, which flunks a basic transparency test about the real views of the writer. His prescription doesn't seem so "bold" or catchy when its contents are examined in the light of day. Israel most likely wouldn't agree to commit suicide, so why trumpet his book as a peacemaking formula?
As for the main theme of Abunimah's article -- that U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell succeeded in getting a Northern Ireland peace agreement by bringing aboard Sinn Fein and its IRA terror organization, while he risks failure by keeping Hamas out of direct Israeli-Palestinian talks -- doesn't square with the historical record.
The Good Friday peace accord came to fruition only after Sinn Fein capitulated to firm demands by London, Washington and Dublin that its IRA terror wing first had to agree to go out of business permanently -- by decommissioning all its weapons under international supervision. Only when this occured was a path cleared for a power-sharing agreement between Catholics and Protestants in Ulster. When Hamas similarly folds its tent as a terror group, then and only then can it become a partner in the peace process -- as Mitchell rightly insists.
Real -- not fabricated -- history favors Mitchell, not Abunimah or the Times.
