Another college newspaper article blaming Israel for all evil

The author of this article, for the Daily Campus of the University of Connecticut, takes pains to appear objective in his brief history of the Arab/Israeli conflict - but he really tries to demonize Israel as much as possible.

Here was my reply:

It is literally impossible to describe the conflict in such a small space, but that doesn't mean that George Maynard has the right to be extraordinarily selective in some facts and wrong in others.

This history completely ignores Arab attacks against Jews in Palestine that started as early as the 1880s and continued through pogroms in 1921, 1929, and 1936-39. This context is critical in understanding why Palestinian Jews even armed themselves to begin with.

In 1967, Israel had very few arms from the US - they was mostly from France - and Maynard again chooses to ignore the extreme rhetoric and daily threats to destroy Israel by Egypt's Nasser and other Arab leaders. He also ignores Nasser expelling the UN troops from Sinai and closing the Straits of Tiran from Israeli ships, an act of war. It is also disingenuous to refer to the West Bank in 1967 as "Palestinian territories" as Jordan had annexed them, with Palestinian Arab approval, around 1950. And his characterization of Israel somehow "causing" Jordan to join the war is laughably biased - Israel warned Jordan repeatedly not to attack and Nasser lied to King Hussein that he was winning the war to bring him in.

UN Resolution 242 does not call for Israel to withdraw from all the territories.

It is fascinating that Egypt and Syria's sneak attack on Yom Kippur, 1973 doesn't rate a mention in this history. Neither does Israel's peace treaty with Egypt, giving up the Sinai, with its oil fields and air fields and dismantling settlements, all for peace. Perhaps these events don't put Israel into a bad enough light for Mr. Maynard?

This "history" goes on and on - ignoring the constant Palestinian Arab terror attacks against Israel as well as the West in the 1970s, the Palestinian attacks from Lebanon that sparked the first Lebanon war, mischaracterizing Camp David and the beginnings of the intifada, and generally whitewashing Palestinian Arab crimes while twisting history for his own purposes.

It would be far more accurate to say that for nearly a century, Jews have attempted to live in peace with their Arab neighbors and the Arabs have been a bit less amenable.

For a series I am working on about the history of Palestinian Arabs, see my blog entry here: http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2007/05/psychological-history-of-palestinian.html

If you can find any errors of fact in there, I would be most happy to correct it.

It takes time to correct articles like this, and the number of people who read it is probably tiny, but it is far worse to leave them unanswered.