harold.goldmeier@gmail.com
The writer is a former Research and Teaching Fellow at Harvard University where he received his doctorate. He served in the administrations of three U. S. Governors, is Managing Director of a business marketing and development company after selling his companies in America. He consults on business, education, and community development matters. His writings frequently appear on the blog Life in Israel, on other blogs, and publications.
I grew up with American television beginning in 1951, glued to children’s shows like Howdy Doody and Clarabelle the Clown. We got the news from Dave Garroway’s morning news and entertainment show.
I became a news hound, but now I see American news reports seldom offered the rest of the story.
In Israel, you get other perspectives watching Russian television news, the BBC, French, Arab, Chinese, and Israeli news shows (in English) supplemented today with the Internet - making sure to read Arutz Sheva, of course, to get the real story of what is happening in Israel.
The Daily Beast sports a Vox Box, a collection of themed packages from as many as nine authors. Only one, Open Zion/Zion Square, focuses on the government and actions of another country. The keeper of the Beast is Newsweek, read the world over. They assail Israel, and seldom enlighten their readers to the violent operations of the Palestinians, and their declarations to destroy the Jewish State. They characterize Israel as an occupier, neighborhood bully, and the cause of America’s security problems.
Their leading opinion maker, Andrew Sullivan, has a death wish for the little State. Utilizing the Internet as his primary medium, Sullivan sets the tone for the Churchill adage, "In the time that it takes a lie to get halfway around the world, the truth is still getting its pants on."
The Beast’s, Vox Box, ZionSquare, A New Conversation About Israel, Palestine, and the Jewish Future, acts if it is the repository of all intellectual capital for the Israeli-Palestinian denouement. ZionSquare, recently renamed OPEN ZION, is edited by Peter Beinart.
Lara Friedman, Director of Policy and Government Relations for Americans for Peace Now, Hussein Ibish, a Senior Fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine, and a blogger who moved to the States, so her boys will not serve in the IDF-and she’s not even Charedi, are regulars.
They strike out at the Israeli police, settlers, and IDF. Beinart’s own religion and intellectual status add gravitas to Israel haters with whom he has joined in a call to boycott Israeli goods. Other Jewish and Muslim contributors live in Israel also write with varying critical intensity, and despite their claims of love for the country, are guilty of collaborating with their editor’s duplicity.
The Daily Beast does not sponsor a forum on Islamist extremism, and its threat to world order. The Beast does not sponsor a blog on the Arab Spring and its iniquitous impact on life in Arab countries; the threat of the Muslim Brotherhood takeover to Arab women’s rights. The Beast offers no daily forum on Latin and South America, and the impact of drug cartels. Their tentacles reach into the boardrooms of the world’s largest banks and finance companies like HSBC, American Express, and others that launder the money.
“Why ZionSquare?” writes Beinart, “Because every day, official Jewish discourse about Israel grows more disconnected from reality, and that disconnect endangers Palestinian dignity, American security and the Jewish future.” Thanks Newsweek for your concern about the Jewish future and Palestinian dignity. Meantime, they ignore the abrogation of human rights to Palestinians living in Jordan, and their expulsions from other Arab states. Beinart, et al., rarely opine on the murders, judicial death sentences, and imprisonments of Palestinian journalists by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.
Jews disconnected from reality? Check out the 400 rockets and mortars fired into civilian Israel since January killing our children, and making them scurry into specially built bomb shelters with three minutes notice from screaming sirens. Only the nation of Israel needs an Iron Dome (God’s kippa) to protect our citizens. My wife and I must pick up our government issued gas masks this week, because Arab leaders have dropped chemical weapons on their own people.
Reality checks come courtesy Iran financing terror: “Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of Islamic nation’s fury.” Hamas leaders: “Our plan for this stage is to liberate any inch of Palestinian land, and to establish a state on it. Our ultimate plan is [to have] Palestine in its entirety. I say this loud and clear so that nobody will accuse me of employing political tactics. We will not recognize the Israeli enemy.”
Reality for Beinart is from behind a desk at City University of New York where he hasn’t seen a rocket’s red glare through the night in 200 years.
Beinart holds Jews and Israel are overly concerned with the survival of the Jewish people: “because the Jewish establishment still depicts Jews as victims, this celebration of power comes without the burden of responsibility.” Israel, a sovereign nation State cannot use its power to defend itself? What planet are these people living on? A woman on U. S. National Public Radio complained that Israeli soldiers do not rape Palestinian women—what occupying army doesn’t rape the women, she ranted? We are not pretty enough or human enough for them to rape?
The intent of Open Zion/ZionSquare is to elevate the discourse on peace between Israelis and Palestinians; to serve as Israel’s “moral compass.”
He can gift wrap that moral compass, and send it to leaders throughout the Arab world busily enslaving, murdering, and torturing their own people. The Israel daily newspaper Haaretz and many peace groups are bullheadedly in opposition to government policies. They want Israel to survive in this hostile neighborhood. Be aware, Newsweek, The Daily Beast, and Open Zion, heavily financed with corporate funds and (many anonymous) donations, are a monomaniac multi-media combine pounding away at Israel’s legitimacy, invigorating those who want Israel to disappear.
Rodney Dangerfield once quipped, “I told my psychiatrist everybody hates me. He said I was being ridiculous-everyone hasn’t met me yet,” or hasn't read about Israel through these portals. Don't.
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