Time Magazine's Israel Article Knocking Only Democratic State in Middle East
Nadene Goldfoot
The January 18th article "Israel's Rightward Lurch Scares Some Conservatives," has bias, distortions and shows a complete lack of understanding both Israel and the Middle East.
It made ridiculous accustions and neglected to include very important facts which I will repeat.
1. Oaths of allegiance are expected in most democratic countries. Immigrants have had to give them upon wanting citizenship in the United States. That means 3 of my 4 grandparents had to swear this oath.
2. Citizenship can be taken away for various reasons like undermining "national interests. The democratic countries of Italy, Germany, France and Great Britain do this.
3. In the United States a bill was proposed last year to add that if you join a foreign terrorist organization or engage in or support hostilities against the USA or its allies you would lose your American nationality.
4. America has a Foreign Agent Registration Act called FARA which requires that any organisation that lobbies in the US that receives money from foreign individuals, or foreign governments must register as a foreign agent with the Department of Justice and permit the Attorney General to inspect all of its activities.
5. Democratic countries do not accept foreign government intervention in its domestic affairs by funding domestic groups engaged in criticism of a particular policy or be allowwed to attack the very foundations of the state. They would probably say to mind your own business or to butt off.
6. Debate goes on in Israel's government including the Likud party over the best way to deal with the problem of foreign government funding of local NGO's which are non governmental organizations that have social aims with political aspects. Russia has 40,000 of them while India has 3.3 million. What if the French goverment was funding a British NGO that was designed to eliminate the monarchy? What if Iran was funding American NGO's that were to force the withdrawal of US forces from the Middle East? Can't the countries make decisions for themselves without this meddling from another country? What rights do they have to control a country's decisions?
Israel is made up of people who feel they hold a valid opinion and their opinions are heard in this country. David Ben Gurion used to tell the joke where he's talking to President Truman who tells him that he's president of 300 million people. David Ben Gurion answers that this is nice, but he is Prime Minister of 3 million presidents. Besides such outstanding people as Moses and Einstein, we also have people that are imperfect who do not have the highest values or don't wear halos. Therefore, Netanyahu announced at the opening of a Bible Quiz show that he condemned people with racist feelings against Arabs who did not want to rent apartments to Arabs, which happened in Safed, I believe. America had this same problem of racial inequality with Blacks. He contrasted this with the fact that in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria-area controlled by the Palestinian Authority) they have a law that if a person sells land to Jews they are condemned to death. In the Middle East Christians are persecuted by Muslims, and under their law gays are hanged in a public square and women are stoned for adultery.
In Israel women, gays and minorities' rights are protected. Even the 20% Arab population in Israel enjoy freedom of speech and religion and protection in courts and the rule of law.
Israel has been under a microscope by the foreign press ready to pounce on every decision made in this tiny country who only hope to say something detrimental as that is what sells their articles. If they bothered to look they would see that Israel upholds its democdratic values while it is threatened more than any country on earth today. It has to defend itself against a war of agression for Muslim neighbors, terror campaigns and to hear heads of state promising to annihilate it. It isn't Israel banning minarets and headscarves like the Swiss and French.
In Israel the reporters are able to write their terrible accusatory coverage about Israel without fear of being killed for it. It's not like the Palestinian Authority "Abbas" threatening an Italian TV station (RAI) because they broadcast the film of a Palestinian mob lynching 2 Israeli soldiers causing the Italian station to apologize for showing it. Shame on the Italian station! Apologizing for showing the truth, yet. In America, CNN did something like that in 2003. They didn't show their coverage about Sadaam's regime because that would mean that their people couldn't work safely in Baghdad. Makes you wonder about what we see on television and how it's controlled, doesn't it? And now I see that even Time Magazine isn't giving us a fair or honest story, either. They have gone over to the other side, writing a biased and unbalanced article about Israel.
I watched an American History TV program about a secret government society who meet in a grove. The narrator commented that if we walked in on them, we wouldn't understand what we were seeing and would take it as something else again. They have a giant 40 foot owl on their dias and quite a ceremony. Are the reporters like that in Israel not understanding many things they might see without asking about them first? Or do they only ask the Palestinian Authority, I wonder?
Letter by Ron Dermer, Senior Advisor to the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Time magazine's managing director, Mr. Stengel. 1/18/2011
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