How the Boston Globe Used a PLO-Written Op-Ed to Build Support for Israel

How the Boston Globe Used a PLO-Written Op-Ed to Build Support for Israel

by John Spritzler [http://spritzlerj.blogspot.com/]

The Director General of the PLO's Negotiations Affairs Department, Maen Areikat, had an op-ed in the August 2 Boston Globe, titled, "Forced peace vs. just peace" (the Globe does not make it available on-line and I don't have permission to post it here, but I will send you a copy if you ask for one.)

Areikat used the phrase "root causes" three times, yet never once mentioned the root cause of the Palestine/Israel conflict: the ethnic cleansing that Israel carries out against Palestinians in the name of "the Jews," ethnic cleansing that goes back to 1948 when Jewish military forces drove out 80% of the non-Jews from what is now Israel, ethnic cleansing which continues to this day with Israel's refusal to let Palestinian refugees return to their country (whether it is called Israel or not) purely because they are not Jewish, and ethnic cleansing which is the root of a Jewish state which insists that 78% of Palestine be ruled by a fundamentally anti-democratic government--anti-democratic because it officially recognizes as the sovereign authority not the people which it rules, but rather only "the Jews."

The Boston Globe will not print articles or opinion pieces that inform the American public what the root cause of the conflict is. If that is the reason why Areikat did not mention the actual root cause, and if that is the reason why he referred to "Israel's 39 year old occupation" (i.e. 1967) instead of its 58 year old occupation (i.e. 1948), then it would have been better for Areikat not to have written anything at all.

The Globe does all it can to persuade its readers to support Israel. One way it does this is to let its readers read an op-ed by a supposed representative of the Palestinian people who agrees to keep Israel's crime of ethnic cleansing a secret from the American public. This way, Globe readers will never understand the real reason why so many Arabs hate Israel. As a result (and this is the key point!) readers will accept the "conventional wisdom" that the hatred is due to ugly anti-Semitism, and that Israel must therefore do whatever is necessary, no matter how unpleasant, to "defend itself." Furthermore, readers will not even realize that they have been duped by propaganda; they will believe they have heard "both sides of the story" since even a PLO representative had an op-ed in their newspaper.

The most important thing people in North America (and elsewhere) can do to bring a JUST peace to Palestine/Israel is to inform the public about the ethnic cleansing that Israel is based upon. The public simply does not know about it, because the mass media have a solid blackout on the subject. When people who are pro-Israel learn about the truth of ethnic cleansing, then their views completely change. I have seen this happen as I talk to people in Somerville, Massachustts collecting signatures for ballot questions.

Those who avoid talking about Israel's defining crime of ethnic cleansing, and who merely oppose its 1967 occupation or Israel's "excessive" violence in its "self-defense" help nobody except the ethnic cleansers. At best, they are what is called "useful idiots"--useful to the very people they purport to be opposing.