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Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Ma'an calls Jews in Jaffa "settlers"

Ma'an published an article by Jonathan Cook about the yeshiva that was built in Jaffa, referring to Jews who live well within the Green Line as "settlers" because Jews have the audacity to legally buy and build in a mixed Jewish-Arab city.

Jonathan Cook is an extremist writer who has praised Hamas and has a history of writing lies and fantasies (the latter his prediction in 2007 that Israeli teams will start killing Iranian Jews to get them to leave Iran.)

In this article, originally published in The National (UAE,) Cook is trying to make the yeshiva look as extremist as possible. Apparently, people wearing kippot on their heads are automatically considered "settlers" to bigots like Cook, and he tries mightily to make it look like the yeshiva is causing severe problems in Jaffa. The head of the yeshiva disagrees, but of course Cook isn't interested in writing about both sides of the story.

While Cook talks about the Jaffa Arabs who left in 1948, it is interesting to note that in August, 1947, some 18 Jewish families were forced out of Jaffa by Arab violence - arguably the first refugees of the war. (My original posting lost the newspaper images, sorry.) Muslims went on a killing spree, both against the Jews of Jaffa as well as shooting at Tel Aviv. Later in the year some 5000 more Jews, mostly Yemenites, were forced out of Jaffa as well.

But lying journalists like Jonathan Cook can never be expected to mention such facts in his biased articles that are meant more to incite than inform.