New York Times Comments on Israel, Hilarity Ensues
We guess when you're the paper of record, you can afford to be bold:
This really is a textbook case in the myriad ways that extremists can hijack an entire population. No reasonable person can doubt that the Hamas attacks hurt the Palestinians more than the Israelis.
By "extremists hijacking an entire population," the New York Times means all those Palestinians voting for Hamas. Is it really a hijacking if the people being hijacked are not only cheering and asking to come along, but are willing to pay for the ride?
That is exactly the kind of violence that has given the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, the ammunition to destroy the Palestinian police force, freeze the movement of ordinary Palestinians throughout the occupied territories and seal disputed land behind Israel's new security fence.
Ignorance is bliss. The security fence is a Labor idea, not a Likud idea - it is initially pushed on Sharon by Peres and Ben-Eliezer. But facts shouldn't get in the way of a good story, which here is that Sharon cynically used the Palestinian massacres of entire Israeli families as a pretense for dismantling Palestinian society (as opposted to, say, the idea that Sharon went into the West Bank to find the terrorists and their weapons so that they would be unable to, you know, continue murdering entire Israeli families).
Meanwhile, Israel's extremist right wing is doing its own hijacking. While polls show most Israelis support the withdrawal of 8,500 Gaza settlers, you wouldn't know it from the noise being made in Jerusalem.
Yeah, that also turns out not to be true:
A new survey of Israelis conducted this week indicated public support for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral 'disengagement' plan had dropped below 50 percent for the first time...
And the poll includes all Israelis, including Arabs, so that among Jews it would appear that opponents are reaching parity with proponents of 'disengagement.'
Conclusion: either the New York Times editorial page is filled with anti-Israel hysterics, or they don't know what "hijack," "hurt", and "most" mean.
This really is a textbook case in the myriad ways that extremists can hijack an entire population. No reasonable person can doubt that the Hamas attacks hurt the Palestinians more than the Israelis.
By "extremists hijacking an entire population," the New York Times means all those Palestinians voting for Hamas. Is it really a hijacking if the people being hijacked are not only cheering and asking to come along, but are willing to pay for the ride?
That is exactly the kind of violence that has given the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, the ammunition to destroy the Palestinian police force, freeze the movement of ordinary Palestinians throughout the occupied territories and seal disputed land behind Israel's new security fence.
Ignorance is bliss. The security fence is a Labor idea, not a Likud idea - it is initially pushed on Sharon by Peres and Ben-Eliezer. But facts shouldn't get in the way of a good story, which here is that Sharon cynically used the Palestinian massacres of entire Israeli families as a pretense for dismantling Palestinian society (as opposted to, say, the idea that Sharon went into the West Bank to find the terrorists and their weapons so that they would be unable to, you know, continue murdering entire Israeli families).
Meanwhile, Israel's extremist right wing is doing its own hijacking. While polls show most Israelis support the withdrawal of 8,500 Gaza settlers, you wouldn't know it from the noise being made in Jerusalem.
Yeah, that also turns out not to be true:
A new survey of Israelis conducted this week indicated public support for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral 'disengagement' plan had dropped below 50 percent for the first time...
And the poll includes all Israelis, including Arabs, so that among Jews it would appear that opponents are reaching parity with proponents of 'disengagement.'
Conclusion: either the New York Times editorial page is filled with anti-Israel hysterics, or they don't know what "hijack," "hurt", and "most" mean.
