A Thorny Problem

Written by Jim Fletcher Monday, 08 March 2010 21:47

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Americans are trusting people. We trust that our traditional institutions have our best interests at heart. That’s the American way.

The problem is, those heading the traditional institutions often don’t have our best interests at heart. Network news anchors, museums, classrooms…all today are steeped in leftist ideology. Do you think Walter Cronkite was a dispassionate reporter? Think again. Uncle Walter dispensed his worldview every evening, as viewers watched and thought The Most Trusted Man in America was simply giving the news.

Not even close.

I recently came into contact with another of those institutions, The National Geographic magazine. In an article entitled, “Bethlehem 2007 A.D.” the author, Michael Finkel, practiced what is known as advocacy journalism by sliding the Palestinian Victim propaganda past readers. The opening paragraphs were particularly odious.

Finkel took the usual path in describing the prison-like conditions (my description) that the Israelis allegedly have the Palestinians in; this largely hinges on the presence of Israel’s security fence, which has drastically cut down on the number of homicide bombers entering the country.

Finkel describes it thus:

“This is not how Mary and Joseph came into Bethlehem, but this is how you enter now. You wait at the wall. It’s a daunting concrete barricade, three stories high, thorned with razor wire.” (italics added)

Get it? Do you understand? Thorned. A word with piercing meaning.

For quite some time now, both Palestinian Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land have hijacked the Passion story to present a poignant story of their plight to the world. The story of Jesus and His brutal treatment at the hands of the Romans is used to overlay the current Palestinian situation.

By using the story of Jesus — complete with crown of thorns — Palestinians elicit the sympathy of a billion Christians around the world. It is a clever — and completely disingenuous — piece of propaganda ordered up by the serial killer Yasser Arafat. The killer PLO dwarf was a master of propaganda, and knew who his useful idiots were in the West: naïve leftists.

Further in the Geographic article, Finkel uses another bit of imagery that pulsates with meaning. In describing a steel door that allows some Palestinians to enter Israel, through the security fence:

“If you’re cleared to enter, a sliding steel door, like that on a boxcar, grinds open.”

Boxcar. Hmmm. Boxcar. Let’s see…

…oh yes, Jews were rounded up and sent in train boxcars to the death camps by the Nazis. One can see actual boxcars at Holocaust museums.

We see that the Arabs are even appropriating the Jews’ ghastly Holocaust experience, taking the imagery as their own. The reader will recognize, of course, that there is no comparison between Arab workers waiting at checkpoints, and Jewish children being wrenched from their mothers’ arms as they are all marched to the gas chambers.

None of us — none of us — will ever remotely experience what the Jews experienced in the satanic attempt to exterminate them from 1933-45. Let’s be clear about that.

The use of such imagery, through words, is grotesque, whether it’s used by talented writers, or PLO hacks.

This is another example of the extreme bias against Israel. It is growing and will only get worse.

We know that this kind of bias is going to be a given in, say, the United Nations. But people are generally not as likely to see it in National Geographic, or some other seemingly benign source. Rest assured, though, the bias is pervasive.

You as a supporter of Israel can use your education, learning facts about the Arab-Israeli conflict, to write letters to editors, organize discussions at church, etc. Get involved!

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Originally published in Rapture Ready, Israel Watch. March 8, 2010