To The Editor:
After many years surveying the "liberal" media it is virtually
impossible to avoid concluding that it applies double-
standards to Israel. I think I can summarize the assumptions
underlying their position as follows:
(i) Since the Palestinians do not have an army, all
Palestinians are civilians. (ii) Since all Israelis, both men
and women, are conscripted they are all legitimate military
targets (children may be an exception but since they will
eventually be conscripted they cannot be completely ruled
out). (iii) Israelis are "heavily armed settlers on illegally
occupied Arab land" (according to the Palestinian Arab-
language media this applies equally to Tel Aviv as Hebron
where, incidentally there was a Jewish community for centuries
until it was driven out in the massacre of 1929). (iv) The
Palestinians were driven out of their homes by the "racist
Zionists" (it is never mentioned that Jews were also expelled
from their homes in areas of Palestine occupied in 1948 by
Jordan and Egypt and barred even from visiting their holy
places let alone living there, not even the anti-Zionist
community which had lived in Jerusalem for hundreds of years).
(v) Palestinians live in abject poverty in refugee camps
because of this "ethnic cleansing" (no one ever explains why
the oil-rich Arab states do not help them rebuild their lives
in dignity as Israel has done for the over half a million
Jewish refugees from Arab countries displaced at the same
time). (vi) Israel has no right to interfere with the
legitimate right of the Palestinian people to resist the
occupation of their land. (This presumably includes sniping at
civilian cars on the highway, detonating car bombs in
residential and commercial areas and blowing up teenagers
queuing up to enter a discotheque.) (vii) Jewish
fundamentalists are the greatest danger to the region (Moslem
fundamentalists are apparently to be excused because of their
frustration at living under Israeli occupation).
Perhaps it is instructive in this context to consider the
statement from her hospital bed made by 8-year-old Hayah
Schijveschurder who was seriously injured, and whose parents
and three siblings were killed, in the recent pizza bar
bombing in Jerusalem:
"Everything that happens comes from G-d. G-d knows what He's
doing. He wants to tell us to behave better." (Associated
Press, 15 Aug.)
She and her family were what the liberal press likes to call
"fundamentalist ultra-Orthodox settlers"; how different a
reaction from the routine calls for revenge one hears at the
funerals of Palestinians, even if they die as a result of a
"work accident" while preparing a bomb to kill Jews.
In order to maintain an even-handed approach, the "liberal"
media always seem to call for restraint from both sides in a
way which is analogous to apportioning blame for a murder
equally to the murderer and the victim. Is this not truly a
case of double standards?
Yours faithfully,
Martin D. Stern
