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Thursday, February 05, 2009

The most inaccurate op-ed. EVER

We are used to seeing an insidious form of propaganda, where an op-ed piece sprinkles lies as facts to support the columnist's opinion. Since the rules for op-eds are looser than reporting, often the newspaper editors let these sorts of lies go through. (For a perfect example, see Khaled Meshal's op-ed in the Guardian last month.)

However, I have never seen an English-language op-ed that has as many lies as this one from Al-Arabiya, in English, by Dr. Salim Nazzal:
Many lessons can be concluded from the Gaza war. The first is the Palestinians’ great will to sacrifice to defend their home.
More like Hamas' great will to sacrifice Gazans.
...one cannot conceal the feeling of being proud of the Palestinian resistance.
As they stayed in tunnels underneath hospitals and shot rockets from mosques.

But the most insanely absurd part comes later:
According to the human rights specialist Lyna al Tabal, there is not a single item in the Geneva Convention Israel did not violate.
That's right - every single Geneva Convention! Israel must have done biological experiments against Gazans, shot at Hamas parachutists ejecting from damaged planes, and raped Gaza women, to name a few of the hundreds of Conventions.
This is a state that has more than 200 atomic weapons which means two atomic bombs for each Palestinian.
You mean there are only 100 Palestinian Arabs?
A state that has wires and check points (a check point means a slow death and daily humiliation for Palestinians) 20 times more than the Nazi check points during the Nazi occupation of Europe.
Um....yeah.
The number of Palestinians who have been imprisoned since 1967 is 30 times more than the Europeans who went to prison during the Nazi occupation of Europe.

There were hundreds of thousands of people in Nazi prisons, not counting death camps. Which means that Nazzal is claiming that far more Palestinian Arabs have been imprisoned than there are Palestinian Arabs.
The number of bombs Israel used against Palestinians is estimated to be 50 bombs or rockets to each Palestinian.
Assuming he means Palestinian Arabs in the boundaries of Mandate Palestine, that's 300 million bombs!
The number of displaced Palestinians from their ancestral home in more than 415 villages and cities, due to the European Zionist invasion of Palestine, is about 5 million Palestinians.
A neat trick, considering that there were less than a million total Palestinian Arabs in 1948.
Therefore the Palestinian resistance is a reaction to occupation. The occupation comes first; the resistance comes as a natural reaction.
See my last post about the Arab murders of Jews in 1914.
Palestinians have every right to resist the occupation following article 1 of the additional protocol of the Geneva conventions 1977 which states clearly that:
(Armed conflicts in which peoples are fighting against colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist regimes in the exercise of their right of self-determination).
Even if this applied, this means that they are covered by the Conventions, it doesn't mean that they can flout them.
Weakening the fist of Zionism is in the interest of all Europe, which the Israeli atomic bombs can reach it in few minutes.
Ah, yes, the Europeans are threatened by Israel far more than from Islamic terrorism.
Palestinians prefer to compete with the Jewish community in Palestine in football grounds and in musical halls and not in wars. This view is related to the Palestinian vision which views as Palestine more than a piece of land, but rather as a unique place where God is glorified through synagogues, churches and mosques.
A sentiment that I have not seen a single time - ever - mentioned in any Palestinian Arab media, from years of reading them. And keep in mind how many synagogues survived in the Old City of Jerusalem one month after Jordan ejected the Jews there - zero.

And this is only a sample of Nazzal's piece!