Anyone following the news about Hamas’ attempt to invade Israel has seen in the Santa Fe New Mexican a generally more balanced coverage.
That’s on the news pages. Sure, there have been errors – calling these “peaceful protests” or “demonstrations” gives the US reader visions of Martin Luther King or Mohatma Gandhi. This, of course, misstates the intent of the Hamas leadership’s actions. But given the media’s historically generally biased approach to excuse Palestinian incitement against Israel and then condemn Israel’s response to protect its citizenry, the coverage in the Santa Fe New Mexican (through wire services) has generally been better than in the past. The SF Reporter has had no news coverage of the Hamas attempts at invading sovereign Israel – only a repugnant, extremely bigoted cartoon we blogged about the other day.
The opinion pages are another story.
An excellent summary of Hamas’ actions was written by Ronen Manelis, the Israel Defense Forces spokesperson, in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal (see the article on their website here; if you don’t have a subscription you can access the excellent article as a pdf The Truth About Hamas and Israel – WSJ). Read this well-written summary of the facts and then write an op-ed or letter to the editor.
Take Action – Write to the New Mexican
Except for a few incoherent letters-to-the-editor from Gerald Rosen (May 15) and Lenny Tischer (May 18), The New Mexican opinion pages generally have been quiet – until yesterday (Sunday, May 20) when the following cartoon was on the front page of the opinion section of the print edition (we couldn’t find it on the website), and a letter by Barbara Allen Kenney appeared underneath. Write a letter to the editor or op-ed: letters@sfnewmexican.com setting the record straight. Tips on writing letters and op-eds can be found elsewhere on our website.
There are a number of explicitly wrong implications of this cartoon:
- The Embassy move to Jerusalem had nothing to do with the initiation and continuing rioting by Hamas’ attempt to invade Israel.
- Hamas sent children, women, and the disabled to the frontlines as illegal human shields. If you did this with your children you’d be arrested for child abuse.
- All Hamas commanders and operatives were behind the human shields as a second wave to attempt to breach the fence, dressed as civilians. They were directing the human shields.
- Israelis did not shoot at retreating individuals, as this cartoon depicts. They had explicit rules of engagement and used tear gas, warning leaflets, rubber bullets, bullhorns, and other attempts at crowd control before using live fire.
- Most of those injured were attempting to sabotage the fence, or were throwing grenades, trying to plant IEDs, using firearms, or in other ways creating mortal threats to Israeli soldiers or sovereign Israeli property.
- The fence being defended sits 30-50 meters inside Israel. Once protesters go up to the fence they were on sovereign Israeli territory. The purpose of the fence cutters/bombers was to breach the fence, invade Israel, and kill as many Israelis – men, women, or children – as they could find. And some kibbutzim work their farms within yards of the fence.
- The cartoon shows no damage to the hundreds of acres of Israeli farm fields and forests burned by the Gaza participants.
- Hamas itself has verified that over 50 of the 62 killed rioters this past Friday were Hamas terrorists/operatives attempting malign activity.
Hamas’ explicitly stated purpose has been: (1) to breach the border fence, (2) to flood Israel with invaders who wish to “take back” their land, and (3) kill as many Israelis as they can reach by whatever means necessary. Should Israel really not defend its citizens?
Critics of live fire have not stated what else Israel might do to defend its borders that it has not already attempted – they simply state Israel hasn’t done enough. Why? For the same reason a handful of hardcore anti-Zionists in Santa Fe (most of whom are, based on international and US State Department definitions, anti-Semites) have mischaracterized what has happened in Gaza as (a) peaceful protesters, (b) a popular uprising, (c) Israel’s sole responsibility for deaths, (d) Israel’s sole responsibility for hardship conditions in the Gaza Strip, and even, invoking the age-old blood libel canard (e) Israel’s bloodthirsty war against the Palestinians (see our last posting on the anti-Semitic SF Reporter cartoon).
An example of these critics is Barbara Allen Kenney. Here is her letter that appeared Sunday, May 20, 2018.
Any fair view of the Palestinian dispute with Israel can see the unfairness of the allegations in this letter, the most ridiculous of which is, “Extremist leaders on both sides have created the impasse, but Israel…bears the greater burden by dint of its power to effect a lasting and just peace.”
Israel can’t impose a peace. If it could do so unilaterally and have been accepted by the international community and the Palestinians it would have. But, of course, the world (UN, EU, so-called non-aligned) would have condemned them for doing so unilaterally and the Palestinians would not have accepted it.
It’s the Arab-Palestinian leadership that has rejected five – count them – 5 real offers of peace since 1937.* Kenney rales against “the seeds of division and rancor” while spreading her own alternative facts and opinions. The continued “blockades, checkpoints” of Gaza is only partly correct – there are no checkpoints in Gaza. The blockade started after the terrorism by Gazans in the early 2000s. Anyone who visited Israel from 1967 to about 1987 witnessed no blockade or checkpoints – we could freely move from Israel to Gaza and back, purchasing fruits and vegetables and other Gazan-made goods. The border fence and blockades went up in earnest after the first and during the second intifada to prevent terrorist acts like Hamas- and Fatah-sponsored suicide bombers infiltrating Israel and killing Israelis by the hundreds.
Hamas wants to destroy Israel and the Palestinian Authority won’t even come to the table. Does Kenney want the Israelis to simply apply beneficent paternalism and expect the Palestinian Arabs or the world to accept it?
The only moral exile in Kenney’s letter is her own either profound ignorance of the history and sociology of Hamas and the Arab campaign against Israel, or willful disregard of the facts. She perpetuates a fictional narrative of propaganda purposefully falsified by the Palestinian leadership. All one needs to do is read the Hamas covenant, or listen to the words of Hamas leaders to understand their true intentions of this latest attempt to invade Israel.
*The five offers were in 1937, 1947, 1967, 2000, and 2008.
SFMEW is a beneficiary of the Jewish Federation of New Mexico
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