Posted on 09/10/2010 7:02:46 PM PDT by Iam1ru1-2
If you’re a reader of a certain age, you might understand the headline.
In May 1977, when Menachem Begin was elected Israel’s prime minister, Time magazine set out to describe the man, beginning with the correct pronunciation of his last name: “Rhymes with Fagin,” the editors explained, invoking the character from Oliver Twist. Modern Israeli leader; archetypal Jewish lowlife: Get it?
The magazine’s other characterization of Begin was that he was “dangerous.” A year later, he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Egypt’s Anwar Sadat.
Maybe there’s something in the magazine’s DNA. This week, readers were treated to a cover story by Karl Vick titled, suggestively, “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace.” That’s one way for Time to address the current state of negotiations between the Jewish state and its neighbors, which otherwise barely rate a mention in the article.
Mr. Vick’s essay draws on the testimony of a pair of real estate agents, a columnist for a left-leaning newspaper, and a few others to explain that Israelis are too blissed-out by the fruits of their economic prosperity to pay much attention to the subject of peace, much less whatever sad things may transpire among their neighbors in Ramallah and Gaza. “We’re not really that into the peace process,” says Gadi Baltiansky, a peace activist quoted in the story. “We are really, really into the water sports.”
It’s hard to say what to make of this, since the article concludes by contradicting its central thesis: “For all the surf breaks, the palms and the coffee, the conflict is never truly done, never far away,” Mr. Vick writes.
Indeed it isn’t: Nearly every Israeli has a child, sibling, boyfriend or parent in the army. Nearly every Israeli has been to the funeral of a fallen soldier, or a friend killed in a terrorist attack. Most Israeli homes and businesses come equipped with safe rooms or bomb shelters; every Israeli owns a gas mask. The whole country exists under the encroaching shadows of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and the prospect of a nuclear Iran. How many Americans, to say nothing of Europeans, can say the same about their own lives?
Yet when it comes to scoring cheap shots against the Jewish state, Time is not the sort of magazine to allow the obvious to disturb a prejudiced hypothesis. Can the magazine point to equally pointed cover stories about internal Palestinian affairs and what, perchance, they mean for the peace process? I checked: It last did so in April 2002 with a largely sympathetic portrait of Yasser Arafat “All Boxed In” by an invading Israeli army.
That’s a pity, journalistically speaking, because the stew of Palestinian politics tells us something important about the wider drift of the Arab world, not least the ways in which Iran has seized the mantle of anti-Western radicalism to make ideological inroads among Sunnis. But raising that line of inquiry probably asks too much of a magazine whose circulation is in steep decline, and whose journalism is now the subject of parodies in The Onion. (Recent headline: “TIME Announces New Version of Magazine Aimed at Adults.”)
Journalism aside, there’s also a moral dimension here, especially for a magazine that recently devoted its cover to the question of whether Americans are “Islamophobic.” That dimension is known as the delegitimization of Israel—the idea that the country ought not to exist. Insisting that Israel be wiped off the map, as Iran’s leaders do with such numbing frequency, is one method of delegitimization. Suggesting that Israelis don’t care about peace—not all of them, of course; there’s always a remnant of politically anguished Israelis to be found, quoted and celebrated for the purposes of native standing and moral cover—is another.
Which of these methods does more lasting harm, the malignly blunt or the well-meaningly insidious? Probably the latter: It shapes a climate of supposedly respectable opinion that doesn’t hesitate to tar one nation the way it never would any other. Or did I somehow miss the Time covers devoted to why Russians don’t care about democracy, or Kenyans about corruption?
This has consequences.
Last week, a man named Karel de Gucht told a radio station in Belgium that the current round of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations were certain to founder upon the stubbornness of Jews. “There is indeed a belief—it’s difficult to describe it otherwise—among most Jews that they are right,” he explained. “So it’s not easy to have, even with moderate Jews, a rational discussion about what is happening in the Middle East.”
Mr. de Gucht sounds like a neo-Nazi; in fact, he is the trade commissioner of the European Union. How does a paladin like him come to say something like that? Because it’s really not that far from the sorts of things that already are being written; that are, as they say, “in the air.” Like the cover of a magazine that will someday cause a future editor of Time (assuming there is one) to hang her head in shame.
cause they know the scumbag satanic pedophile muslims are demonic hoards ?
Yeah, a gene they share with their readership--antisemitism.
The left is very anti-semitic
The Left calls the Right bigots!
Heavenly Father, please have Mercy!
Drop the subscription litter cards in the mail blank for processing. Send a message.
Biblically speaking, to be Anti-semitic is to be anti God. Considering that the Jews are Gods chosen people, to hate them is to defy God’s love of the Jewish people and therefore God. IMHO
Time is an another insult to America.
Is this a x mosque publication?
Israel has done more for the mideast than all the muslims since the beginning of time. They have shown the neighbors how to live, brought them technology, treated them to advanced medical treatment, shown them that people can prosper there and live in peace if they so choose.
I agree.
I don't see a future editor, or a future at all for this comic book. The only place I see it anymore is at my dentist's office. But I'll read the Economist, since unlike Time, they at least assume that I know how to read. So I do not care what they put on their cover, and I don't know why anyone else should care either. But that's just me.
Time is mostly read by people with toothaces at the Dentist waiting rooms of America and Gay Socialists.
Now that you mention it....i tinks you’re right!!!!
I’d rather read their special edition: “Why Time Hates the Truth”
HOW DARE THEY! How dare time Magazine be that blatantly antisemitic. What would their next cover scream?
“Would a Post-Israel Middle East Be So Bad? Why Achmadinijad is Right”
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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One of my friends and neighbors attended the funeral last Sunday of the four Beit Chagai murder victims. On his way back while passing through Chalchul, Arabs on a nearby vacant hilltop threw a large rock on his van. It was totaled, but by some miracle, nobody was killed or injured, although the baby did get a shard of glass in her eye that they were able to safely extract in the emergency room. He held a kiddush at synagogue this Saturday in honor of their miraculous escape from death. But of course my mind was on water skiing, so I couldn’t quite work up sympathy for the poor oppressed Palis who threw the boulder at a passing van full of Jooo occupiers.
I think the left hates the existance of Israel because it’s a fulfillment of biblical prophecy.
There’s a very good reason why no Israeli or Palestinian cares about the piece process. It’s been done and redone and redone and redone, and in the end, Abbas will reject anything that does not constitute total surrender, and Bibi will not go up to what Ehud Barak offered in 2000, and what Olmert offered in 2007, because those offers were stupid and suicidal in the first place, and were rejected anyway. So the piece summit is really about making Obama look good and getting some photo ops to justify his premature prize to the press.
Here’s a real peace plan: Write a pamphlet in Arabic and have Bibi sign it, and distribute it throughout Judah and Shomron. It should say: “Dear cousins and fellow monotheists. We have just attended our very last peace summit with the leadership of Fatah, and do not hope to ever see a peace summit with the leadership of Hamas. There is no hope for peace with any of these entities. But we do truly want peace with you, our cousins and fellow monotheists. But what can we do, when the western powers appointed the first group as your leaders and spokesmen without even asking you, and the second group wants our total destruction. I, for one, am opposed to my total destruction, so that’s not on the table. This western-driven peace process has nothing whatever to do with real peace, except in Saudi Arabia so the Americans can get cheap oil. Fine for the house of Saud and fine for America. They deserve each other. But we, like it or not, are neighbors. Neither of us has anywhere else to go, really.
So here’s what I propose: We will annex the area beyond the “green line,” and give citizenship to all Arabs living there. You will be empowered to vote in national elections, and have autonomy over your local affairs, provided that everyone’s civil rights are respected (the army and police will be on hand to assure that they are). You will be allowed to live anywhere you want, travel without restrictions, and work anywhere you want in Israel.
We just want you to do one thing: kill them all, Fatah, Hamas, Hassan, Abbas. Lo ichpat. Just give us proof that every last senior leader in Hamas and Fatah from the Golan to Eilat is dead, and we will rush a bill through the Knesset before the western media even knows what’s happening. Here’s a list of their names. Do it up in a really colorful, gruesome and Arabian style. Let the sons and brothers of their victims do the deed and let them enjoy themselves. After it’s over, send us the bodies, and we’ll do what we can to get the Swiss to return the money they stole back to you for redistribution of the wealth.
Hoping the rains are kind to all our crops this year, I remain,
Truly yours,
Bibi
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