arab propaganda swallowed whole
Fri, Jun 21, 2002 at 10:51:38 am PDT
British politician Lynne Jones recently published on her web site an ugly bit of Arab propaganda alleging torture, rape, and indiscriminate murder by the IDF in Bethlehem. When she was criticized for giving credence to this obvious lie (does she really think IDF soldiers could rape “more than 86” women in Bethlehem and keep it secret, in a country where almost everyone, Israeli and Palestinian alike, has cell phones? where the international press is drooling in eagerness to catch the IDF doing something/anything wrong?), she defended publishing it, essentially saying it was up to her critics to prove the Israelis’ innocence:
As you are aware, I have written to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to ask them to investigate the report and I have been explicit that the report has not been authenticated and I consider this an acceptable way to raise my concern about this information.
If you have evidence to show that this report is ‘propaganda’ I should be grateful if you could send this to me.
Because I’ve been trudging through the swill known as Arab media for a while now, this “letter from a Palestinian” isn’t new to me. Not at all. The Arabs have been trying to peddle it to gullible Westerners ever since Operation Defensive Shield began. Its first appearance, to my knowledge, was in the always-despicable ArabNews. And the version published by Jones differs in several significant details from the original, which was credited by ArabNews to “a reader.”
I wonder if Lynne Jones would consider this to be evidence of propaganda.
(By the way, even though I did remember seeing it before, I should point out that it took me all of 3 minutes to find the ArabNews article on the web. What does it say about Jones that she can’t even be bothered to Google this story before assuming it was accurate?)
