Some Voices From The D-MSM (Democratic Mainstream Media Complex)

 Here is David Myers' (Professor of Jewish history at UCLA) Op-Ed in the 10/9/23 Los Angeles Times.  "The Palestinians do not pose a serious threat to the existence of Israel, but they can inflict grave damage on the Israeli body and psyche.  They are not going to disappear.  Nor are they going to surrender their claims to self-determination.  And they are not going to give up the fight against Israel's dehumanizing occupation of 56 years."  He goes on to state that Israel "cannot batter Palestinians into submission."

Notice the deft sleight of hand by subtly interchanging "Palestinians" for "Hamas."  Hamas does need to disappear.  There can be no peace when they have only one goal - the killing of all the Jews and thus the elimination of Israel.  This attack by Hamas was different from all prior ones.  Israel must make Hamas disappear, for the good of Israel, for the good of the people of Gaza, and for the overall good of the Middle East.  

Allow me to remind Professor Myers that Israel vacated Gaza in 2005.  Hamas then won the election in 2006.  Hamas has allowed no further elections.  Hamas could have built a thriving civil society, with the assistance of Israel and the US and some of the Arab countries.  Instead, since 2006 they have non-stop sent missiles and rockets flying into Israel.  

Here is a news article in the 10/26/23 New York Times, on page 8.  In the first paragraph we are told:  "Fuel shortages in the Gaza Strip have grown so dire that the U.N. agency that has helped feed, school and shelter Palestinians there for decades said Wednesday that it might have to start shutting down operations."  The U.N. agency referred to is UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.  

Do not expect anyone at the New York Times to ask why, of the millions of displaced persons (refugees) from around the world following WWII, only the Arabs of Palestine are still referred to as "refugees."  Do not expect anyone at the New York Times to ask why the UN has a special agency just for the Arabs who were displaced.  And definitely do not expect anyone at that paper to ask why the duly elected government (Hamas) has not been taking care of their people - the people of Gaza - since they were elected in 2006.  (Answer:  they spend all their money on armaments and cement and wiring in order to build miles and miles of tunnels into Israel, all with the goal of killing as many Jews as possible.  Much of the food and electrical power goes to Hamas fighters.)

In the 10/22/23 New York Times is this Op-Ed by Thomas Friedman:  "Israel Is About to Make a Terrible Mistake."  Here is Friedman's plan:  "We can help, we can even insist, that our Arab and European allies work to create a more effective, less corrupt and more legitimate Palestinian Authority in the West Bank that, after some transition in Gaza, could help govern there as well.  But not without a fundamental change in Israeli policy toward the authority and the Jewish settlers."  Notice the burden of doing something is always put on Israel.

Mahmoud Abbas was elected President of the PA in 2005, for a four year term.  But his term got extended "indefinitely."  Clearly, there is a problem with both Hamas and the PA.  What "transition" in Gaza?  Friedman talks about getting rid of the Hamas leadership.  It requires more than that.  All of their military infrastructure must be destroyed.  All of the Hamas armaments - missiles, rockets, mortars, machine guns, etc. - must be destroyed or confiscated.  Friedman says the US "can even insist" that our Arab and European allies work to create a better government for the Palestinians.  Yes, because the Arab governments all have such a positive record of creating free and democratic societies.  And the Europeans?  They probably think that Hamas can be persuaded to be a reliably peaceful entity.

Here is Nicholas Kristof in the 10/12/23 New York Times:  "...I'm appalled by the sympathy that some Americans and Europeans have shown for a misogynist and repressive terror organization like Hamas.  If you care about human rights, you want to see Hamas eliminated."  Yes!  He got that right.  But then he followed up with:  "Yet dismantling terrorist organizations can be harder than it looks, and can raise troubling moral questions about collateral damage."  And this is where Kristof is completely wrong.  

Turn to the next post for some voices from the conservative media, and a further discussion as to how these D-MSM commentators are getting it wrong. 

   

Today's Los Angeles Times: Jews Feel The Left "Let Us Down," After Hamas Attack

There could not be a more instructive article for my fellow Jews who are on the Left.  Per the Times, one Jewish person (age 31) said he was active in J Street in college.  J Street is a left-wing Jewish organization which, in this writer's opinion, does not seem to favor the existence of Israel.  Says the Times of this individual:  "He was shocked by how quickly friends mobilized for the Palestinian cause while failing to condemn the attack (that slaughtered over 1400 people)."  And this:  good people he never considered antisemitic suddenly seemed "supportive of Jewish genocide."

The article states that, in parts of the "far left" "significant air-time has been given to the view that Israel is a colonizing force and therefore violence against it is justified."  And we are told:  "Some have adopted the Hamas position that all Israelis are legitimate targets by virtue of being on land where Palestinians lived before Israeli statehood in 1948."  (The article also refers to Hamas "militants" rather than "terrorists," as much of the D-MSM also does.  But that's a topic for another day.)

Allow me to pause here for a few comments.  The article does not explain how modern day Israel came about; how the United Nations voted to partition the land of the British Mandate into a Jewish state and an Arab state.  The article does not mention that Jews have always lived on that land, for thousands of years, notwithstanding the fact that foreign conquerors often expelled large numbers of the Jewish people.  The implication is that all the land was Palestinian land, and the Jewish state only came about because of the Holocaust.  Never mind the Balfour Declaration of 1917, contained in a letter by UK Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild.  It was the British who controlled the land after the defeat of the of the Ottoman Empire in WWI.  And the Ottomans controlled the land before WWI for nearly 400 years.

The 1917 Balfour Declaration says, in pertinent part:  "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people..."  Do not be misled by the name "Palestine," often considered a derivative of Philistine.  Yasser Arafat popularized the term "Palestinian" as a way to refer to the Arabs of Palestine.  Of course, Jews have long known the area as Israel, and Judea and Samaria.  Jews lived throughout the area known as "Mandatory Palestine," during the period of British control following the end of WWI up until the founding of modern day Israel in 1948.

The Times article goes on:  "But as a minority group that is by and large white, American Jews...have also struggled to find their place in the new hierarchy of identity politics, where racial categories have become short-hand for the oppressed and the oppressor."

Allow me a further comment.  Could there be a better example of the evil of "identity politics" than that expressed in the above paragraph?  Jews are white, therefore they must be oppressors, and therefore they must be dealt with by violence.  This focus on one's "identity," whether racial, ethnic or religious, ignores the most important characteristic of all - good values and morals.  Where is the morality of those who celebrate the deaths of innocent civilians, even little babies.

The article goes on to quote a young 22 year old Jewish graduate of NYU, who describes himself as a "socialist, progressive leftist."  Said this young man:  "The Palestinian people have exhausted all other options except for violence."  While not explicitly supporting Hamas, he does say "I do support violence as an answer to settler colonialism against oppressed people."  

My comment.  I would guarantee that this young man knows absolutely nothing about the history of the Middle East.  What he does know is the left-wing propaganda that his professors drilled into him.  Here is a question I would ask him:  Imagine, with all your left-wing and pro-Palestinian beliefs, that you found yourself in one of the border towns of Israel adjacent to Gaza.  Maybe visiting a grandparent.  As Hamas terrorists come into their home and start spraying bullets, what are your final thoughts?  Are you thinking:  "I'm so glad that my grandparents and I are about to be slaughtered?"  Are you wondering why they did not ask you if you sided with them before murdering you?  

You see, young man, you are no different from me - a conservative, pro-Israel Zionist.  No different because we are both Jews, which makes us worthy of being murdered.  Said one "progressive" Rabbi who often criticizes the Israeli government:  Antisemitism is so "embedded" in society, that "people cannot even see it."  And she said this telling comment:  "Our human ask is that people give a damn when we die."  Well, Rabbi, as we have seen with the pro-Palestinian rallies on our college campuses, and in cities throughout our country and throughout the world, many do NOT give a damn when Jews die.  How many gave a damn during the Holocaust?  And in case anyone needed a reminder, Jew haters in Sydney, Australia were heard shouting "gas the Jews."

My final comments.  I honestly do not know if any of these left-wing Jews understand that their party has become a leftist party.  It is not a liberal party.  It adheres to leftist ideas of identity politics, with one's identity telling us everything we need to know about someone.  It adheres to the idea of "intersectionality," as if every cause of the Left has equal merit.  But worst of all, it has removed one's ability to think, to reason, and to see right from wrong.  Many young Jews (as the man in the first paragraph) are now struggling with people they considered to be friends, but who have come out strongly for the Palestinians, with no condemnation of the atrocities committed by Hamas.

If you know me, I would always try to explain to people why they are wrong, why they have lost their humanity if they refuse to condemn even the murder of babies.  But if they persisted in their evil beliefs, they would never be friends with me again.