Ethan Bronner of The New York Times feels “exasperated” (according to Gary Rosenblatt’s April 4 article, “Seeking The Middle In The Middle East”) that he has been accused of anti-Israel bias. He then proceeds to mouth precisely the kind of biased statements that have elicited such criticism.
According to Bronner, a major cause of the ongoing conflict is that “the only Israelis that Palestinians see are soldiers,” and “Israelis are cut off from seeing what life is like in Gaza.” Both assertions are baseless. Many thousands of Palestinians are employed in Jewish communities in Judea-Samaria (the West Bank territories), where they see Israelis up close and personal every day, and many thousands of others enter Israel proper for work each day. And Israelis have laptops and TVs, and the many foreign and local cameramen in Gaza afford the whole world a good look at what Gaza is like. In fact, it may just be that seeing how Gaza has turned into a heavily armed terrorist theocracy under Palestinian self-rule is precisely what has made so many Israelis uneasy about giving them an independent state in Judea-Samaria, too.
How can it be that after all his years in Israel, and after all his training as a professional journalist, Ethan Bronner still doesn’t understand that it is the Palestinians’ intransigent hatred of Jews and Israel that is the real cause of the conflict?
Moshe Phillips, President
Benyamin Korn, Chairman
Religious Zionists of America — Philadelphia Chapter
The New York Jewish Week brings you the stories behind the headlines, keeping you connected to Jewish life in New York. Help sustain the reporting you trust by donating today.
