http://musliminsuffer.blogspot.com/
bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
=== News Update ===
Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs : Special Report
What Christians Dont Know About Israel
By Grace Halsell
May/June 1998, pages 112, 126
American Jews sympathetic to Israel dominate key positions in all areas
of our government where decisions are made regarding the Middle East. This
being the case, is there any hope of ever changing U.S. policy? President
Bill Clinton as well as most members of Congress support Israel and they
know why. U.S. Jews sympathetic to Israel donate lavishly to their campaign
coffers. .
The answer to achieving an even-handed Middle East policy might lie
elsewhere among those who support Israel but dont really know why. This
group is the vast majority of Americans. They are well-meaning, fair-minded
Christians who feel bonded to Israel and Zionism often from atavistic
feelings, in some cases dating from childhood.
I am one of those. I grew up listening to stories of a mystical,
allegorical, spiritual Israel. This was before a modern political entity
with the same name appeared on our maps. I attended Sunday School and
watched an instructor draw down window-type shades to show maps of the Holy
Land. I imbibed stories of a Good and Chosen people who fought against
their Bad unChosen enemies.
In my early 20s, I began traveling the world, earning my living as a
writer. I came to the subject of the Middle East rather late in my career.
I was sadly lacking in knowledge regarding the area. About all I knew was
what I had learned in Sunday School.
And typical of many U.S. Christians, I somehow considered a modern state
created in 1948 as a homeland for Jews persecuted under the Nazis as a
replica of the spiritual, mystical Israel I heard about as a child. When in
1979 I initially went to Jerusalem, I planned to write about the three
great monotheistic religions and leave out politics. Not write about
politics? scoffed one Palestinian, smoking a waterpipe in the Old Walled
City. We eat politics, morning, noon and night!
As I would learn, the politics is about land, and the co-claimants to
that land: the indigenous Palestinians who have lived there for 2,000 years
and the Jews who started arriving in large numbers after the Second World
War. By living among Israeli Jews as well as Palestinian Christians and
Muslims, I saw, heard, smelled, experienced the police state tactics
Israelis use against Palestinians.
My research led to a book entitled Journey to Jerusalem. My journey not
only was enlightening to me as regards Israel, but also I came to a deeper,
and sadder, understanding of my own country. I say sadder understanding
because I began to see that, in Middle East politics, we the people are not
making the decisions, but rather that supporters of Israel are doing so.
And typical of most Americans, I tended to think the U.S. media was free
to print news impartially.
"It shouldnt be published. Its anti-Israel."
In the late 1970s, when I first went to Jerusalem, I was unaware that
editors could and would classify news depending on who was doing what to
whom. On my initial visit to Israel-Palestine, I had interviewed dozens of
young Palestinian men. About one in four related stories of torture.
Israeli police had come in the night, dragged them from their beds and
placed hoods over their heads. Then in jails the Israelis had kept them in
isolation, besieged them with loud, incessant noises, hung them upside down
and had sadistically mutilated their genitals. I had not read such stories
in the U.S. media. Wasnt it news? Obviously, I naively thought, U.S.
editors simply didnt know it was happening.
On a trip to Washington, DC, I hand-delivered a letter to Frank
Mankiewicz, then head of the public radio station WETA. I explained I had
taped interviews with Palestinians who had been brutally tortured. And Id
make them available to him. I got no reply. I made several phone calls.
Eventually I was put through to a public relations person, a Ms. Cohen, who
said my letter had been lost. I wrote again. In time I began to realize
what I hadnt known: had it been Jews who were strung up and tortured, it
would be news. But interviews with tortured Arabs were lost at WETA.
The process of getting my book Journey to Jerusalem published also was a
learning experience. Bill Griffin, who signed a contract with me on behalf
of MacMillan Publishing Company, was a former Roman Catholic priest. He
assured me that no one other than himself would edit the book. As I
researched the book, making several trips to Israel and Palestine, I met
frequently with Griffin, showing him sample chapters. Terrific, he said
of my material.
The day the book was scheduled to be published, I went to visit
MacMillans. Checking in at a reception desk, I spotted Griffin across a
room, cleaning out his desk. His secretary Margie came to greet me. In
tears, she whispered for me to meet her in the ladies room. When we were
alone, she confided, Hes been fired. She indicated it was because he had
signed a contract for a book that was sympathetic to Palestinians. Griffin,
she said, had no time to see me.
Later, I met with another MacMillan official, William Curry. I was told
to take your manuscript to the Israeli Embassy, to let them read it for
mistakes, he told me. They were not pleased. They asked me, You are not
going to publish this book, are you? I asked, Were there mistakes? Not
mistakes as such. But it shouldnt be published. Its anti-Israel.
Somehow, despite obstacles to prevent it, the presses had started
rolling. After its publication in 1980, I was invited to speak in a number
of churches. Christians generally reacted with disbelief. Back then, there
was little or no coverage of Israeli land confiscation, demolition of
Palestinian homes, wanton arrests and torture of Palestinian civilians.
The Same Question
Speaking of these injustices, I invariably heard the same question, How
come I didnt know this? Or someone might ask, But I havent read about
that in my newspaper. To these church audiences, I related my own learning
experience, that of seeing hordes of U.S. correspondents covering a
relatively tiny state. I pointed out that I had not seen so many reporters
in world capitals such as Beijing, Moscow, London, Tokyo, Paris. Why, I
asked, did a small state with a 1980 population of only four million
warrant more reporters than China, with a billion people?
I also linked this query with my findings that The New York Times , The
Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and most of our nations print
media are owned and/or controlled by Jews supportive of Israel. It was
for this reason, I deduced, that they sent so many reporters to cover Israe
l and to do so largely from the Israeli point of view.
My learning experiences also included coming to realize how easily I
could lose a Jewish friend if I criticized the Jewish state. I could with
impunity criticize France, England, Russia, even the United States. And any
aspect of life in America. But not the Jewish state. I lost more Jewish
friends than one after the publication of Journey to Jerusalem all sad
losses for me and one, perhaps, saddest of all.
In the 1960s and 1970s, before going to the Middle East, I had written
about the plight of blacks in a book entitled Soul Sister, and the plight
of American Indians in a book entitled Bessie Yellowhair, and the problems
endured by undocumented workers crossing from Mexico in The Illegals. These
books had come to the attention of the mother of The New York Times, Mrs.
Arthur Hays Sulzberger.
Her father had started the newspaper, then her husband ran it, and in
the years that I knew her, her son was the publisher. She invited me to her
fashionable apartment on Fifth Avenue for lunches and dinner parties. And,
on many occasions, I was a weekend guest at her Greenwich, Conn. home.
She was liberal-minded and praised my efforts to speak for the underdog,
even going so far in one letter to say, You are the most remarkable woman
I ever knew. I had little concept that from being buoyed so high I could
be dropped so suddenly when I discovered from her point of view the
wrong underdog.
As it happened, I was a weekend guest in her spacious Connecticut home
when she read bound galleys of Journey to Jerusalem. As I was leaving, she
handed the galleys back with a saddened look: My dear, have you forgotten
the Holocaust? She felt that what happened in Nazi Germany to Jews several
decades earlier should silence any criticism of the Jewish state. She could
focus on a holocaust of Jews while negating a modern day holocaust of
Palestinians.
I realized, quite painfully, that our friendship was ending. Iphigene
Sulzberger had not only invited me to her home to meet her famous friends
but, also at her suggestion, The Times had requested articles. I wrote
op-ed articles on various subjects including American blacks, American
Indians as well as undocumented workers. Since Mrs. Sulzberger and other
Jewish officials at the Times highly praised my efforts to help these
groups of oppressed peoples, the dichotomy became apparent: most liberal
U.S. Jews stand on the side of all poor and oppressed peoples save one
the Palestinians.
How handily these liberal Jewish opinion-molders tend to diminish the
Palestinians, to make them invisible, or to categorize them all as
terrorists.
Interestingly, Iphigene Sulzberger had talked to me a great deal about
her father, Adolph S. Ochs. She told me that he was not one of the early
Zionists. He had not favored the creation of a Jewish state.
Yet, increasingly, American Jews have fallen victim to Zionism, a
nationalistic movement that passes for many as a religion. While the
ethical instructions of all great religions including the teachings of
Moses, Muhammad and Christ stress that all human beings are equal,
militant Zionists take the position that the killing of a non-Jew does not
count.
Over five decades now, Zionists have killed Palestinians with impunity.
And in the 1996 shelling of a U.N. base in Qana, Lebanon, the Israelis
killed more than 100 civilians sheltered there. As an Israeli journalist,
Arieh Shavit, explains of the massacre,
We believe with absolute certitude that right now, with the White House in
our hands, the Senate in our hands and The New York Times in our hands, the
lives of others do not count the same way as our own.
Israelis today, explains the anti-Zionist Jew Israel Shahak,
are not basing their religion on the ethics of justice. They do not accept
the Old Testament as it is written. Rather, religious Jews turn to the
Talmud. For them, the Talmudic Jewish laws become the Bible. And the
Talmud teaches that a Jew can kill a non-Jew with impunity.
In the teachings of Christ, there was a break from such Talmudic
teachings. He sought to heal the wounded, to comfort the downtrodden.
The danger, of course, for U.S. Christians is that having made an icon
of Israel, we fall into a trap of condoning whatever Israel does even
wanton murderas orchestrated by God.
Yet, I am not alone in suggesting that the churches in the United States
represent the last major organized support for Palestinian rights. This
imperative is due in part to our historic links to the Land of Christ and
in part to the moral issues involved with having our tax dollars fund
Israeli-government-approved violations of human rights.
While Israel and its dedicated U.S. Jewish supporters know they have the
president and most of Congress in their hands, they worry about grassroots
America the well-meaning Christians who care for justice. Thus far, most
Christians were unaware of what it was they didnt know about Israel. They
were indoctrinated by U.S. supporters of Israel in their own country and
when they traveled to the Land of Christ most all did so under Israeli
sponsorship. That being the case, it was unlikely a Christian ever met a
Palestinian or learned what caused the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
This is gradually changing, however. And this change disturbs the
Israelis. As an example, delegates attending a Christian Sabeel conference
in Bethlehem earlier this year said they were harassed by Israeli security
at the Tel Aviv airport.
They asked us, said one delegate, Why did you use a Palestinian
travel agency? Why didnt you use an Israeli agency?
The interrogation was so extensive and hostile that Sabeel leaders
called a special session to brief the delegates on how to handle the
harassment. Obviously, said one delegate,
The Israelis have a policy to discourage us from visiting the Holy Land
except under their sponsorship. They dont want Christians to start
learning all they have never known about Israel.
source:
http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/israel/dontknow.htm
===
-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Ajaklah teman dan saudara anda bergabung ke milis Media Dakwah.
Kirim email ke: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
SPONSORED LINKS
| Rek | Beyond belief | Islam online |
| Nation of islam | Media |
YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS
- Visit your group "media-dakwah" on the web.
- To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
- Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.
