Language Of The Middle East

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Many Americans are confused and misled about the
facts of the Middle East because they don't understand
the language of Israeli propaganda.

A terrorist is any Palestinian who wants to end the
Israeli occupation. A militant is anyone the Israelis kill. If
they shoot you, you are, by definition, a militant, even if
you're only 6 months old or 10 years old or 80 years old.
The Israelis never kill anybody but militants, so all of the
more than 70 Palestinian children 15 and younger shot
dead by Israeli soldiers are militants. Most civilized
countries don't think militancy is a capital offense.

Unfortunately, members of the press often adopt the
language of propaganda. They report that the Israelis
have killed 20 militants. In fact, they don't know that.
They themselves have never seen the 20 dead people.
For all they know, they might be Palestinian nuns or
pacifists. A good reporter will just report what he knows:
The Israelis say they have killed 20 Palestinians.

Recently, one of the Fox Network's foxy blondes
belligerently demanded of a Palestinian spokesman why
Yasser Arafat had not made a speech in Arabic
demanding an end to terror. When the Palestinian finally
got a chance to talk, he told her what everybody who
follows the Middle East already knows: Arafat has
condemned terrorism in speeches made in Arabic. The
spokesman even gave the blond cutie two specific dates
and occasions.

But what's important to us, as consumers of this bilge on
television, is this: I think it is a most safe assumption
that the lady, ordinarily quite pleasant and giggly, does
not speak Arabic, does not understand spoken Arabic
and does not monitor radio and television broadcasts in
Arabic. So the question is, how would she know whether
Arafat had ever made a speech in Arabic on any
subject? The answer is that she doesn't, yet she
adamantly and obnoxiously asserted that he had not
condemned suicide bombings in Arabic. Where did she
get that information? From Israeli propaganda.

It could be that these younger folks who are in-studio
types are just naive. Perhaps I can help them. All
governments lie. Some governments lie on some
occasions, some lie on many occasions, and some lie on
all occasions. The Israeli government is a world-class
liar. You can count on almost anything it says as being
all false, or partly true and partly false, or true but out
of context.

The members of the Israeli government are also the
most self-centered people on earth. To them it is
unacceptable for any Israeli to die, but perfectly OK if
any number of Palestinians die. How little value they
place on Palestinian life is illustrated by a sentence an
Israeli court gave a Jewish settler. His sentence was a
fine and community service. What was his crime? He had
knocked down a 10-year-old Palestinian boy, put his
booted foot on the child's neck and beaten him to death
with the butt of his military pistol. But as one of the
right-wing rabbis is now saying openly, a Jewish life is
more valuable than a gentile life.

President Bush, perhaps the most naive American, wants
everyone to call suicide bombers murderers. I won't.
They are martyrs. Those young Palestinians have done
exactly the same thing so many young Americans have
done - willingly sacrificed their lives for their country's
freedom. If they are murderers because they kill civilians
during a war, then Mr. Bush's own father is a mass
murderer. His war and his embargo have murdered tens
of thousands of innocent men, women and children in
Iraq. Young Bush is apparently planning to murder
more.To paraphrase the killer in the movie "Unforgiven,"
"We are all murderers, kid."

The irony is that while Bush keeps yapping at Arafat to
stop the violence, Bush himself refuses to stop the much
greater violence inflicted on the Palestinian people by
Israel. In case he hasn't noticed, there are, to use his
favorite phrase, innocent men, women and children dying
in the occupied territories because of Israeli state
terrorism practically every day.

Instead of playing self-righteous semantic games, Bush
should devote his energy to stopping the killing by
everybody, including us. He should strongly support
freedom for the Palestinians. That's the only way the
Israelis will ever have security. And he should abandon
the idea that the way to stop killing is to kill.

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