Jonathan Mark continues to be our conscience and soul with his “Most Under-reported Stories of 2012” (Dec. 28), whose dire consequences we ignore at our peril.
For example, the underreporting of the Palestinian rockets permitted the media to equate Hamas with Israel when the Israel Defense Forces finally acted, elevating the terrorists and blaming the victims for defending themselves, the type of unethical media double standard commonly used against the Jewish state.
The fashionable, mindless demonization of “settlements as the obstacle to peace” is reminiscent of age-old charges against Jews. Never mind the realties — that everyone knows major settlements will be exchanged for land over the Green Line in a peace deal and that even Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had no problem with such an exchange in his 2008 negotiations with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (as revealed by Al Jazeera in January 2010). “Settlements” (read “Jews”) have become so demonized that rational attempts to explain them and make Israel’s case, such as the Levy Report, are suppressed even in the Jewish world. The result is to secure the Palestinian Arabs’ trump card of “occupation” in the crucial PR war and deprive our youth of important arguments they need to defend Israel and restore their Jewish pride.
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