Wow, brutal repression by Israelis gives rise to an opposing organization that is also brutal. Who knew? Brutality breeds further brutality. What an insight, Mr. Stephens! I'm sure that no one would ever have predicted this, even if they were older than me.
Yes, it is disappointing that Palestinians throw rocks and sometimes mortar rounds or poorly-aimed rockets in response to the bullets and jets and killer drones used by Israelis. And the quiet violence of being walled in, walled off, stopped at a checkpoint on your way to work and back again, treated as second-class, denied educational opportunity, and living your life as a refugee. I truly wish there were an attitude of non-violence in Palestinians, but I don't see much of it. I don't think Gandhi would have much impact here, either. There is too much resentment on both sides, and neither side has a culture of forgiveness.
That said, it hardly excuses the oppressive policies of Israel over the past 60 years & more. I've seen them all my life. And, under these conditions, faulting Palestinians for their less-than-perfect form of government is, to say the least, disingenuous.
It is a truism by now to report that the regime that takes power after a violent revolt is itself ugly. You can see it everywhere that anti-colonial revolts have prevailed. The revolution eats its own and mistreats the rest. Violence begets violence, and a violent organization doesn't know how to form a peaceful government.
But what, now?
78
The sad truth is that taking an anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian political image makes economic sense because it reduces insurance and security costs from NOT being a default target of terrorism or violence or harassment.
In a liberal community, being a victim of a fashionable outsider's acting out in hypnotized rage gets you only medical bills - accolades are much too disturbing to activists, so they sometimes tend to ghost you. And Jews probably noticed similar behavior before, not least in the case of the violence meta-narrative before the wall went up - as when some of the PLO's original funding came from the Airlines after a few very expensive jet airliners were hijacked and blown up.
So this verbal behavior becomes an Evolution-based strategy for personal and economic self-interest calculation in the face of obvious risk factors.
Another sad truth is that *IF* - after Robert Kennedy was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist, the PLO had adopted the principles of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandi instead of Jihad they would have a state ALREADY.
16
Bret: Wonderful piece of honest journalism. Mazel Tov
44
The era of Arab imperialism and conquest in this corner of the Levant ended centuries ago, and it’s not coming back...despite 70+ years of war and terrorism perpetrated against Israel to advance that agenda.
It’s time that Israel’s Arab neighbors and their so-called ‘progressive’ cheerleaders come to terms with that fact. Until then, Israelis will do whatever is in Israel’s best interest to do to defend against those factions sworn to Israel’s destruction. Because the era of Jews marching passively to their deaths is over, and it’s not coming back.
49
I started to read this article, but almost immediately discarded it because of an un truth.
Like it or not, Hamas was empowered by an internationally legitimatised election, not a "dirty civil war". It is true that there has not been a recent election, but it is the Fatah faction, led by 'Uncle Tom' Abbas, which has no credibility.
7
You forgot to mention Hugo Chavez along with Maduro. Truly startling how much this sounds like Venezuela.
10
Why end with Hamas? How about Hezbollah, Assad’s Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, Libya, Sudan, etc. each of these governments kill more of their own people in one year that Israel ever killed in 70 years of its existence responding to provocations and attacks.
Arabs in Israel have more rights than in any Arab country.
It’s beyond double standard. It’s anti-semitism.
74
Mr. Stephens writes about the Palistenians as: fanatical, thuggish, militaristic, hypocritical and corrupt.
This exactly describes Israel and the Likud government.
40
Honestly, I don't know how to respond to this, except it is sickening. ALL lives matter, REGARDLESS of the color of your skin or your ethnicity or the language you speak.
17
Hamas treats its own badly so therefore Israel is cleared of and and all injustice. Pretty dumb logic to me. Actually it's another reason the Palestinians could use help from Israel instead of a bullet to the head.
31
‘Irish Republican Army to the Viet Cong to Zimbabwe’s ZANU-PF, tend to behave in strikingly similar ways: fanatical, thuggish, militaristic, hypocritical and corrupt.’
Because the ruling powers including Israel have proven fanatical, thuggish, militaristic, hypocritical and corrupt.
22
This is one of numerous examples. The New Zealand slaughter has received massive attention, as it should, although most of it is misleading. But when Muslims slaughter Muslims and Christians in similar or greater numbers in Afghanistan or Africa, you'd be hard pressed to find a mention of it in any newspaper.
23
More than 70 Palestinian journalists have been targeted by Hamas during the recent protests against economic hardship in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said on Thursday.
23
And now Trump dispatches Pompeo to bless the annexation of the Golan Heights and give Bibi a big boost just before the election. This despite Netanyahu's new alliance with the Israeli equivalent of the Taliban. Sheldon Adelson, get out your checkbook.
15
I am writing to complain about this offensive, racist and highly triggering title: "Palestinian Lives Don't Matter*". It is frankly appalling that the Times sees it fit to publish such a title given the current global political climate. Whether this is intended by Mr Stephens or not, the title is open to many interpretations, some of which are genocidal. The idea that (no offense to Mr Stephens) a white man is writing a piece titled "Palestinian Lives Don't Matter*", a week after the massacre of Muslim worshipers at Christchurch in New Zealand, shows a deep lack of empathy, lack of understanding of people of color's traumas, and frankly in very poor taste.
Furthermore, as a Palestinian architect, editor and writer, who has been and remains critical of the various Palestinian administrations, I am frankly at awe at how a seasoned journalist such as Mr Stephens was unable to find Palestinian critiques of our own governments' appalling treatment of its own citizens. This is a topic that is spoken and written about all the time, in Arabic and in English. I welcome Mr Stephens to reach out to me if he does not know where to look and I will gladly point him in the right direction.
Finally, I demand that the New York Times, and Mr. Stephens apologize for this insensitive title and piece. Palestinians are human beings, Palestinians lives matter, and to suggest otherwise, even in a gimmicky poorly written title, is dehumanizing and racist.
31
I am a Muslim and you are right about this "Palestinian Lives Don’t Matter* *Unless Israel is to blame."
Arab world should be screaming at what China is doing to Muslims there and it is thousands times worse than what Israel does to them. It is all the Arab countries that use Palestinians for political purposes.
Also Arab world would be screaming and starting a war with Israel if they were doing the same thing China is doing to Muslims.
I am Turkish so our president Erdogan insults Israel everyday but says nothing about how China is treating the Muslims there.
58
This column is interesting. In fact, Palestinians can be given refuge all over the world including the Arab world. The facts are there is no outside Arab group which uniformly has treated Palestinians well. They suffer not just at the hands of the Israelis but nobody would take them in. This is reminiscent of the treatment of the Jews during the holocaust where even the U.S. turned away boats of refugee Jews. That being said probably a fair comparison of treatment of the Palestinians by Israel is the Jim Crow Era treatment of blacks. No longer slaves the get treated vilely with random executions by Israelis the equivalent of the American lynch mob.
6
The western media, along with their progressive cheerleaders, have cast the Arabs as children incapable of being both responsible for their actions and the consequences of their actions.
The Left has made a fetish out of their support for the so-called ‘victims’ who’ve been perpetrating a century of terror wars in their efforts to ‘drive the Jews into the sea’....while denying Jews their rightful claim to even a sliver of their indigenous ground.
This conflict has nothing to do with ‘Palestinian statehood’ and everything to do with reasserting Islamic supremacy ‘from the river to the sea’...in a land their forbears conquered (stole) centuries ago...and lost.
25
Palestinian lives do matter*
*Go tell that to the Israelis the next time they bulldoze a Palestinian house, or, an entire village.
21
Bravo Brett
14
Unfortunately, the ignorance in the comments is outstanding for so called “intelligent “ people. Apartheid in Israel?
Clearly you have no idea what the word means. I am Jewish with a Muslim doctor and Muslim bank manager.
We all live together, go to each other’s weddings, study in university together with the same democratic rights and wonderful universal health care for all.
As to my dear friend who lives in Palestinian controlled areas he disappeared six months ago and I found no way to find him until last week. He had been threatened by Hamas and had to set up a new name to contact me again.
Talk to him about the corruption and his (and others) longing to live in Israel.
See the reality, talk to the people, know the truth..... before writing your ignorant beliefs which are all based on false media.
49
Interesting to see this in the New York Times, but of course as an opinion column. I have been seeing this reported all over social media, but it has not been reported in the New York Times as News. I did a NYT search for articles with the word “palestinian” to make sure. I found one article with a similar theme from October 23, 2018 “Palestinian Leaders Are Accused of Using Torture and Arbitrary Arrests to Crush Dissent”. The lack of reporting on the ongoing Hamas oppression and violence against the Palestinian people and Palestinian journalists is why the New York Times is considered to have a left-center bias by mediafactcheck.org. Please see my other comment (posted as a reply) related to media bias. While international reporters in the region have a comfortable life living in Israel, I don’t get the feeling that they have enough of a variety of sources in Gaza, other than those allowed by Hamas, to give an accurate picture of what is going on, especially the fact that the people in charge are not getting their citizens (most notably children and youth) ready in any way to be able to live in peace at any future time. This reality is not acknowledged by anyone, and some actual reporting on this would be enlightening.
17
Not a word about Israel's blockade of Gaza, which is the real reason for economic deprivation in that miserable part of the world. Not a word about the invasive security checkpoints in the West Bank; not a word about Israeli extralegal land seizures; not a word about extremist settlers who routinely harass Palestinians; and not a word that Israel has a powerful, modern army and almost complete control of both occupied territories. People like Stephens cry about a biased media, but expect us to overlook their own blindness about the issues.
22
I'm surprise the Israelis haven't thrown all the "Palestinians (Jordanians) out of the occupied territories , built their giant wall and let the Arab figure out what they want to do. For 70 years the Israelis have had to deal with every neighbor screaming "Death to the Jews". Every peace initiative was scuttled by either the PLO, Hezbollah or Hamas. The Israelis should get credit for not having finished the problem once and for all with their military, by taking back the West Bank and closing the border. The Palestinians are Jordanians, so let Jordan and the rest of the world have them. Their leadership has brought this nightmare upon their own heads.
18
H. Res. 183—“all lives matter”—seemed to discomfit people on both sides.
2
This is an age-old argument in one of its various current guises. Another guise is, just for example, that the high rate of black-on-black violence and homicide means that white police killings of unarmed black Americans are way overblown, and probably being used by evil black gang leaders to perpetuate their control. Wrong.
That Hamas is hideous and Bashar el-Assad is worse is irrelevant; the US opposes Hamas and bombs Assad. By contrast, we lavish care and riches on Israel. To say nothing of the actions of some of our more fortunate fellow citizens, such as Sheldon Adelson, who has given hundreds of millions of dollars to support Israel “unequivocally always without question and irreversibly.” Which means right or wrong, by any means convenient. No one, least of all me, would suggest supporting our country (and Adelson's, as well) in so blind, even idolatrous away, and a very good thing it is, too.
Israel is therefore held to a much higher standard, & with all this Israelophilia flying around using our tax dollars, we naturally get a bit upset when some trigger-happy IDF goons, heavily-armed with US weaponry, put bullets through, for example, medical aid workers and kids, killing or maiming them, under circumstances that make it more likely than not (though still uncertain) it was deliberate.
The IDF used to be one of the best, most virtuous military organizations on the planet (which, given the military generally, doesn't say that much, but still). What a shame.
4
What has been true for a very long time is that Muslims kill more Muslims than anybody else does. But there is a type of free pass granted when that happens, and not by journalists, as much as Muslims themselves. I think it has been said that Allah will sort it all out. Maybe. But it is a weird calculus when some dead Muslims are more meaningful than other dead Muslims. Oppression, cruelty, and murder are wrong no matter who is doing them.
6
The Palestinians of Judea and Samaria live in peace and security under Israeli “oppression.” The Palestinians of Gaza live in poverty and terror under Hamas “liberation.” Which would you choose?
13
Nobody who has any knowledge of the West Bank would argue that Hamas government is good government. But I cannot recall another column in which Mr. Stephens expresses sympathy for (rather than fear of) Palestinians. And in this column the Palestinians are being used as a tool to once again justify Israel as the only light in a sea of darkness. But to say Israel kills fewer Palestinians than other governments do is like saying airplane crashes kill fewer Americans than hand guns do. That does not make airplane crashes good. And Stephens, in his justified critique of Hamas, leaves out some facts that have long been in the public domain: the West Bank is being economically strangled by Israeli security measures. (See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5304328.stm) That is not as dramatic as a gunshot, but it leads the sort of misery and desperation that got Hamas elected in the first place. Hamas is bad. But Israel had a hand in putting (and keeping) Hamas in power. And Hamas’ presence allows the hard right in Israel to lock Palestinians in a box with Hamas in the name of security—and it allows Stephens to write columns like this one.
8
Bret Stephens' article makes some good points, in that there is probably not enough reporting, in the mainstream, non-specialist media, on the corruption and misrule of Palestinian authorities in Gaza and the West Bank. But his article is actually part of the problem - since though it poses as a kind of balanced corrective - it isn't actually balanced. Yes, he's partly right - there should be more focus on Palestinian failings alongside Israeli - but he implies a false equivalency - there are domestic Palestinian protests against Hamas right now, and there has been an over violent response - with Amnesty saying protestors had been subject to arbitrary arrest and torture - which is serious and disturbing. Bbut the recent protests against Israel in Gaza led to 200 persons killed and more than 6,300 injured - OF COURSE the media reported on that more - they would be entirely irresponsible if they hadn't. The I-P conflict is a "both-and" conflict - there are rights and wrongs on both side. Stephens' article poses as a "both and" article but it isn't - since it implies that false equivalence between the two sets of protests, and states as a fact - that Hamas started the last three conflicts - that is highly disputed with many saying there were major provocations from Israel. He should have mentioned this contention. For balance ALSO read this by B'TSelem, Israeli human rights org. https://www.btselem.org/press_release/20190318_gaza_demonstrations_investigations_charade
5
Spot on OpEd, but many comments are scary. Why does pointing out that Hamas is crooked, violent and undemocratic automatically prompt so many readers to assume he’s saying Israel is blameless and only Palestinians are at fault for the situation in Gaza?
The article merely points out the extreme difficulties Gazans face is not solely the fault of Israel. Is that so hard to stomach?
18
Now that our president has tweeted that Israel owns the Golan Heights, we'll be seeing a lot more bullets and missiles fired at Israel's iron dome by Arab countries in the Middle East. Our president doesn't think; he rules by tweet. American foreign policy is determined by social media these days.
1
Like other posters, I do not often agree with Stephens, but I do agree with his take on the Palestinian tragedy. The Palestinians are being doubly victimized. Israel is not blameless, but it is not the monster that many BDS supporters claim. There are no similar movements targetting Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, or Jordan for the day to day control and past atrocities perpetrated by their governments. The Palestinians are following posturing blowhards who when they had the chance to make peace and a two-state solution, declined, always hoping to get a better deal.
The reason is that Israel is Jewish. and treated as a pariah in. world affairs.
13
Okay. Let’s say Palestinian lives simply don’t matter to the westerners. India is largest democracy in the world. Do Indian lives matter to the western world ? As far as I know, it simply doesn’t matter.
1
They are one in the same, in fact they are all fighting over a piece of land that they all believe was ordained as theirs by some god, that no one can see, smell, touch, or taste, yet all are ready to kill in the name of or die for that same reason. Dead is dead, whether you’re martyred by your death or not. But more than that, what is the US real interests in that county, what threat to the US national security is that region. Those people have been fighting amongst themselves for 2,000 plus years, why should we care about Israel or who’s killing who for what reason.
1
YAY! Finally something in The NY Times that tells a more nuanced side of the story. Over and over again, the same POV in mainstream media. Israel bad, Palestinians good. Right wing violence shocking, left wing violence misunderstood oppression.
There have been numerous opportunities for Palestinian leadership to compromise but all they do is dig tunnels and fire rockets. Thank you!
15
One has to wonder if the Palestinians turning to nonviolent resistance would be covered by the news media. I suspect not.
6
Meanwhile, for the Purim celebration, Israel issued a 4 day closure of the West Bank and Gaza. Imagine if all of your plans were put on hold for 4 days. In Hebron, settlers started their Purim parade at Elor Azaria junction (an Israeli medic and soldier who killed a wounded Palestinian on the ground and served only 9 months in jail) while Palestinians were not allowed anywhere near. This is collective punishment.
5
Stephens point is simple, elegant and irrefutable. You cannot pretend to be pro-Palestinian, let alone interested in justice, if you are only moved to action when Jews can be blamed. All else is commentary.
15
Victimizers come in all shapes and sizes. They all share one thing in common, a population they are able to victimize. The victimized can become the victimizers as the long threads that connect them tangle and untangle through time. Many Palestinians have had more than their fair share of being victimized by parties on all sides on the peninsula and oceans away. Who should they trust? Where are their powerful friends?
1
I'm not sure what this has to do with Israel's repeated provocations against a people, unlike Israeli's, not being provided billions in U.S. taxpayer funds to fight back.
9
Many Native Americans suffer from problems of obesity, alcoholism, unemployment, purposelessness, poverty. Does that justify what was done to them? How they were massacred, herded onto the road, kicked off their lands, robbed blind?
6
I will take commentary like this seriously when Palestinian lands and homes are returned to their rightful owners.
9
One example of current news bias against Israel: The news coverage of today's tweet by Trump about the Golan Heights didn't mention that Israel's enemies fired rockets from the Golan Heights into Israel. The reporting made it sound like Israel wanted the Heights for the great skiing and picnicking there.
4
Just because Hamas is terrible doesn’t mean Israel is innocent.
5
It’s too bad that a people that probably share much of the same DNA, both sides are saying that land is theirs since time in memorial. But a lot has changed in 2,000 years (or more) it’s not just a couple of tribes that want to throw up a couple mud huts in the land of milk and honey. Until both sides, set down this carved in stone, I’m entitled to this land and you’re not, mentality. They will be forever killing each other over a parched sun baked hunk of dusty desert, that no one other than themselves really care about.
Maybe the US would be doing them a service by forcing both sides to set down their arms, and come to a mutual agreement where the people can finally be prosperous, and live in peace, instead of being a pawn. If Israel were to cease to exist tomorrow, would it really have a catastrophic effect on the US, I guess if your Jewish, or Christian, I guess it could be catastrophic from a religious stand point. But on a larger scale, I doubt that the US would suffer economically or otherwise.
1
A wonderfully cogent column. The next step is for the NY Times investigative journalists to follow up on the points that Brett Stephens makes here.
11
The trouble is that Netanyahu wants it both ways. First, he says that Israel is the best country in the world, the best educated, a country where they can solve any problem. However, he also says that he is fully happy with the status quo (because Israel has all of the power and the Palestinians have none). He has security cooperation from the PA and the Gaza embargo. The Palestinians aren't happy with the arrangement, but have no power to change things. What Netanyahu doesn't realize is that Israel's preeminent position won't last forever, and it's better to work towards peace now, than postpone it indefinitely.
Second, Israel has had good PMs and good govts in the past who have worked hard for peace. Netanyahu doesn't make any attempt to appear to be interested in a peace agreement with the Palestinians and neighbouring countries. So there is a big contrast.
Third, the main purpose of the ongoing embargo of the Gaza Strip seems to be to provoke a reaction. What other city/region of 1.7 million people has been under an embargo for 11 years and counting. Israel has not given any conditions for removing the embargo.
5
I hope Omar reads this.
12
I am pretty she did, but I don't think she agreed with the argument that it is OK for Israel to oppress Palestinians because others do that too.
8
Let `s all join the neoconservatives - they tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Thank you Mr. Stephens.
3
Good for Bret and kudos to the Times for publishing this column. I honestly do not recall the last time an OpEd in the NYT didn’t lambast Israel for all the ills of the Middle East. It’s time for the MSM to take an honest and critical look at that part of the world and speak truth to real evil. Israel isnt perfect, but it’s still a million times better than those 13th Century dictatorships.
13
THIS. Every story has two sides. A fact we seem to have forgotten in America.
5
Too much whataboutism. The Vietcong successfully overthrew a colonialist regime and fought off a vastly superior United States military that had no business being there in the first place as 70 thousand came back in coffins and exponentially more came back wounded, whether in body, soul, or both.
I'm not a fan of communist Cuba or Venezuela, but last I checked Castro and Maduro were born in Cuba and Venezuela, respectively. Those countries are both sited in the Western Hemisphere. If Bret Stephens wants to label them 3rd world he should do so, but they're definitely "Western."
That said, the Palestinians are victims of their own ideology and decisions, and they transmit those faulty and unsuccessful stratagems to each new generation. It's time the UN and the world focused on much more deserving groups rightfully claiming victimhood. Start with China and the Uighurs and Tibetans. Don't even get me started on the various folks in Africa enduring true genocide and ethnic cleansing. Or the Middle East with minority religious groups of every persuasion persecuted by the dominant Islamic sect.
6
& what if the Palestinians were non-combative? Would the have a place to live or would settlements have been built over all their lands?
I think this is a case where neither side can claim innocence & good behavior
2
What an amazing article, I am continually amazed by Bret's ability to take all the nuance and complexity of an issue and come to the worst possible take. The conditions within Gaza have been a humanitarian crisis for decades now, and the primary culprit is Israel. Israel has de facto control over everything that enters or exits the Gaza strip. They have routinely blocked humanitarian aid, sometimes with military force. If Gaza were recognized as a country, this would be an embargo and thus an act of war - but since it isn't we can all just pretend that Israel's aggressive and racist policies.
Israel admitted, secretly to the United States (in a document later leaked), that it aimed to keep Gaza's economy "functioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis." When we remove the diplomatic doublespeak (and look to the real and ongoing humanitarian crisis), we can see that Israel intentionally oppresses Gaza to maintain bargaining power.
The pleas to look to violence committed by Hamas is merely a distraction. Its the same as saying 'but what about black-on-black crime?' in response to police shootings.
In case this sounds anti-Zionist to anyone, nothing I have said here is all that different from the conclusion of 6 former heads of the Shin Bet (see The Gatekeepers).
Yes, Gaza is a violent place, and much violence is perpetrated by Palestinians. But you can't deny people the exigencies of life and expect them to behave perfectly.
7
Stephens speaks the truth. This does not diminish the poor treatment by Israel’s right wing government but it points out that if we truly care about the plight of the Palestinian people we would not turn a blind eye to their poor treatment by their own leaders and fellow Arabs. It also explains why more of them would now choose to be full-fledged citizens of Israel than of a Palestinian state with its corrupt and undemocratic leadership.
8
We don't but should we turn the blind eye on oppression Palestinians by Israel? That is the question.
1
Hamas does not oppress its people because of Israel. Their religion is used to oppress people all over the Middle East (and in Egypt). Iran, for example, is not “oppressed” by a foreign nation. The Grand Ayatollah uses Islam as a justification to oppress his citizens. You’re going to need another excuse for Hamas’s dictatorship.
9
Your opinion is structured in manner that suggests the only problem with Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is news coverage. Perhaps if the Israel/Palestinian history were different, Hamas would not have be able to seize control in 2007.
3
How and why is Israel seen as a bad guy in the neighborhood? Some of it is a basic lack of historic knowledge about the region and about the peace processes throughout the years. However, I fear that for some people, there is a presumption underlying so much of this anti-Israel rhetoric, that Israel, or should I say a state filled with Jews, shouldn't exist in that area or exist at all. Others see Israel as too Western or it has too many European Jews who flooded the area and undercut he local culture. Never mind that many Jews came from Arab countries that expelled their Jewish residents, some of whose families had lived in the Arab country since the destruction of the second Jewish Temple. Or, that Jews have a historic attachment to the land that constitutes Israel. Or, that most of what had been the Ottoman empire was carved up and made into Arab or Muslim states. Or, the lack of interest in peace from the countries around Israel and, after the 1967 war, those individuals who had quietly lived under Jordan and Egypt control until then. It is so much easier to understand a story that involves one bad guy, big and powerful, and weaker people struggling against the big evil. Thus, the mighty Israel destroying the poor, Palestinian people. Unfortunately, as Bret Stephens points out very well in his op ed piece, the real facts about who is harming Palestinians don't seem to make the news very often and when they do, they aren't believed.
12
Imaging the occupation by Nazis, and there is resistance. The trouble is resistance is Communists. So, who is creating the problem Nazis or Communists? If both of them, shouldn't we condemn both? Should we say that occupation is no problem?
1
No lives matter. Really we're just pawns in a vast and uncaring universe.
2
There is something of faulty premise at work here, i.e., the idea that the Palestinian people living in Gaza oppose Hamas and are being oppressed by their own government. Scattered protests aren't enough to show that and I suspect that, if in the unlikely event it held a fair election, Hamas would probably win. This situation will only change when the Palestinians choose to love their children more than they hate Israel. I don't see it changing. Hate has become habitual to the point of being the defining characteristic of the Palestinian people.
5
Who claimed (falsely) to have withdrawn from Gaza in 2005 and has maintained a stranglehold on movement into and out of the territory ever since? To say "Palestinian lives matter only when they're targeted by Israelis" is as disingenuous as to counter the slogan "Black Lives Matter" with "All Lives Matter" and pretend it means something. In America, where whites maintain control over political and economic power, white lives aren't generally treated as though they don't matter, so it's redundant to simply reinforce the status quo. In a region dominated by Israeli military might, context needs to be considered.
5
Again with Castro and Maduro. While both jailed opponents neither was a mass murderer. It is absurd to lump them in with Mao or Pol Pot. Stephens doesn't include a single rightwing regime on his list- not the Indonesian regime that killed a million communists and others, and not the genocidal military governments of El Salvador and Guatemala.
5
Stephens blows a crucial point by ignoring the elephant in the room: that the distinguishing value of the ‘Western World” is trans-cultural integrity. That means that the ‘West’ is supposed to support ethical standards that transcend tribe, religion or nation. The double standard Stephens identifies is not an unfairness to Israel, but rather a double standard that Israel should (and tries to) embrace by virtue of being a western-enabled state. The allegation that Israel has failed to satisfy this higher standard, more than anti-Semitism, is the cause for most millennial/progressive outrage about Israel’s behavior. We don’t wince when Hamas commits atrocities because it is expected- but we do wince when people who we (the West) empowered turn around and behave like thugs. By ignoring this, Stephens compromises the integrity of his own piece. He also mis-characterizes a lot of history in his broad and improper classifications (i.e. IRA being similar to the Viet Cong, or Castro being similar to Pol Pot) that sound more like the musings of an idiot in a cable-news stupor than of the historian we know Stephens aspires to be. But I think it is enough to point out that his article totally misses the legitimate concern people have with Israel, a concern that is not motivated by antisemitism, but rather by western idealism.
6
Mr Stephens brings a valid & poignant point. Otherwise, I don't how else pundits will be convinced that Hamas's essence of & the reason for existence is their utter haterade of Jews in general & Israelis (whom they dub "Zionists") in particular. They hate them as a matter of religious edict.
"occupation", "lost land" are mere excuses to justify that virulent hate to which they feed their innocent young on a daily basis.
Any form of peace with Israel will bring an end to Hamas's reasons to exist - at least at its present form where they live off handouts from other countries.
3
Imagine how different things would be if the US had given the Palestinians $1 aid for every dollar aid we gave Israel. We might have 2 good allies in that region.
If you want to know what’s going on in that part of the world real Al Jazeera daily.
5
I’m always mystified by all the comments blaming Israel for turning Garza into an open air prison. Hamas has in its charter the annihilation of Israel. What country in the world would allow an open border with a neighbor like that. What would America do if Canada was dedicated to our destruction? Seriously.
13
I think Hamas can certainly be held accountable for their theft and corruption and indiscriminate killing of their own people. That fact that many progressives would prefer not to hear about it is telling.
13
The media seems unconcerned regarding the lack of a free one in Palestinian ruled territories. Election pundits are unconcerned about the absence of them free or otherwise in those same areas. Media claims to know what Palestinian people want or feel are claims of ESP which are false.
The subjugation of people by a colonial power will always get more press than the unruly treatment of the same people by its own.
Wouldn't an armed burglary of a household get more press than does the mistreatment of its residents by a sometimes unruly household member?
I see this article simply as an attempt to shift the focus from the inhumane treatment of Palestinians by Israel to the sometimes harsh treatment of the same by Hamas.
Try again Mr. Stephens.
8
What is really needed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a truly impartial and bilaterally acceptable mediator. Unfortunately, the U.S. under the current administration has completely and unabashedly abdicated its moral responsibility and is no longer seen as a nonpartisan actor. Trump's decision to drastically cut humanitarian aid to Gaza with the intention of forcing an already impoverished and destitute people to accept permanent domination at the hands of Israel or face possible extinction can do nothing but fail to result in a lasting peace. The only possible moral authority in this case would have to be the U.N. with the backing of the major backing of the major regional powers including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and sincere and honest input from the U.S. and the Western allies.
3
I agree we need an impartial authority to resolve the conflict. But the UN as an impartial facilitator.? Are you serious?
The same UN that passed more human rights resolutions against Israeli than all the other countries in the world combined. That includes North Korea, Syria,Egypt, Iran and Venezuela
3
@Amy M
If not the U.N. then who?
What exactly is the point of this article?
Championing the cause of a group illegally oppressed by another does not require that the oppressed be without fault.
Working towards ending an oppressive state of any group by an outside agent, is completely different and separate from a discussion of internal disputes which could very well be a direct result of or aided by the external injustice.
Whatever this article was meant to be, it is simply another of the endless attempts to block criticism of a real and unjustifiable situation. Another very poor attempt to disrupt any chance to reach a situation where there is a future for people to have a peaceful coexistence.
Thank You and Best Regards.
11
I don’t think anyone “shrugs” over Hamas’s treatment of its own people. I’m not sure what in this article is new, well, other than the US is doing nothing about it.
And it’s ironic that this article is published the same day Trump confirmed Israel’s declared sovereignty over the Golan Heights. It’s never been disputed that this territory belongs to the Palestinians (or Syria, from where it was taken).
And the article buries (again) the bigger point that the US continues to support the biggest bully in this region, Netanyahu. Trump and Netanyahu. A marriage made in hell.
11
This is the Middle Eastern version of "What about black-on-black crime?!"
Whataboutism remains a fallacy, even when you get to write columns for the New York Times.
13
@Ale
This comment says a lot more about you than about Bret. You automatically look at this through a prism of race.
4
@Ale
No. This is about the media’s mendacious pro-Arab bias against Israel.
6
Who at the NY Times speaks for the Palestinians?
15
Absurd, uninformed and misses the point: "it's the occupation stupid". An easy fact check on the historical evolution of this conflict is really needed in order to stimulate coherent public policy that is in the best interest of all Israelis and all Palestinians. Let us begin with the Balfour Declaration as a reasonable starting point of verifiable documented fact. However, it's clear that historical fact-filled discussion is not what is really desired; instead, we are inundated with incomplete, selective, agenda-based rhetoric. So, shortsighted.
10
@A. Smth
Actually, despite the occupation, Palestinians are not an outlier in terms of socioeconomic or education in the Arab world (if anything, they are better educated and more literate).
The same cultural foundations that divide the Palestinians among themselves are those who hinder the odds of a lasting peace with Israel.
2
The fact that Hamas is treating their own people in a horrible and undemocratic way does not in any way legitimize Israeli terror of the Gaza population. Criticizing "progressives" in the west as Mr Stephens is undertaking to do in this piece, will not help solve the ME crisis. Only a serious engagement in the peace process and a committment to the peacefull resolution, now unfortunately nonexistent, will. Mr Stephens IMV should encourage a realistic approach rather than a distration.
5
Except Hamas does not want peace, they want all of Israel “from river to sea”. It’s written in their Charter. They would rather subjugate their people than settle this endless struggle. Hamas has taken a functional farming economy in a fertile part of the world and destroyed it. They are not a partner for coexistence, only self destruction. The Israelis would make peace tomorrow but it takes two.
6
This should've been a much bigger story. I am not a BDS person, but what Hamas did is outrageous, illeagal, and if the Palestinians are to be part of the peace process, they must not be brutalized by their leaders. I support thiose protesting in Gaza, and if they could topple Hamas, all the better.
9
Why? Do you think that will free them?
2
Thousands of Palestinians have been killed by Israel, Stephens justifies those actions and does not condemn the killing. Hamas uses violence and all of a sudden Stephens thinks there is a double standard and that the left doesn’t care about Palestinian lives? Where is his concern for Palestinian lives?
11
One of the factors in the lack of coverage of Hamas, and other repressive governments, is western reporters often lack access to these areas. On the other hand, Israel has a much more open policy towards journalists. You can't report what you don't see or know about.
7
Believe it or not, I actually regard Bret Stephens's article as a legitimate complaint. In the time since they one their one single election, Hamas has demonstrated itself to be a terrible goverment.
Unfortunately, Israel has done its damnedest to prevent anyone from bring able to do anything better. Any alternative to Hamas would have to arise from highly educated, well-funded Palestinians living both inside and outside of Israel's control, probably armed and trained to oppose Hamas's attempts to annex their operations.
Where are these highly educated Palestinians? In large part they do not exist, because Israel equates education with bombmaking and blocks Palestinians from leaving the Territories to get that education, while preventing the influx of materials that could build such centers of education within the Territories.
Likewise, the only governmental organization that Israel ever tolerates with weaponry is the PNA, which is run by and for Fatah, a deeply corrupt organization.
That leaves Hamas, the terrorist organization, to fill the vacuum.
1
Untrue. Palestinians are a highly educated population
1
This has been in the news, I heard about the recent efforts by Hamas to stifle dissent on NPR. However, since one of the reasons Hamas is able to operate and control is because of the vaccine created by Israel’s refusal to meet and address problems until there are no problems from any Palestinian as well as things like Bibis recent comments and the continued building of settlements. The average Palestinian May feel somewhat like an Italian American in certain cities 100 years ago- they didn’t like or want to deal with the mafia.....but the police were as corrupt and with less fellow feeling, so they dealt with what they had to. One can condemn Hamas and still demand Israel stop illegal settlements and try to come to the table with radical courage.
3
Believe it or not, Palestinian lives are not pawns in your or anyone else's pro-Israel or anti-Israel rhetoric. Palestinian lives are as complex, nuanced, individualistic, and as rife with contradictions as any other--if not more so, given the near-constant precarity they have faced. So please, envision for a moment how a Palestinian person might feel reading your very, very clever headline or your very, very simplified article.
For they do exist, and they do read the NYT. Trust me; I am one.
10
They are at war. Your point is well taken, but moot, and obvious. Most of our global unrest is birthed from this very area--this very land, peoples and their conflicting faiths. Articles about who gets the better press? Articles about who's at fault more than the other? Seems a bit passé at this point, Mr. Stephens.
1
This is spot on target. I've been trying to explain this to pro-Palestinian people who don't seem to know anything about the history of the region.
It's ridiculous to think that Israel should neither guard its borders nor retaliate for violent intrusions, such as flaming kites and knifings. The USA wouldn't tolerate this, but many Americans expect Israelis to tolerate it.
Every single war in this region since 1948 was started by Arabs who wanted to "drive Jews into the sea," still the stated aim of Hamas. There can be no peace here until Arabs are willing to be peaceful.
17
Arabs? Why could you not say Palestinians? Maybe you know a bit of the history - so say it - Egypt and company wanted Palestine for themselves. But it belonged to the Palestinians.
I’d like to see from both Israel and Palestine some idea of what negotiation in good faith would consist of. From the rhetoric we hear, Israel would accept only complete surrender of all Palestinian objectives, and Palestine would accept only the dissolution of the Israeli state. This is not a good way to begin.
1
Israel’s shooting of more 6000 unarmed protesters and killing of more than 200 has been wildly underreported. Gaznd are shot almost daily by Israel and the Israeli army enters Gazan territory on s regular basis but none of this is ever reported. Only on the rare occasions that Hamas shoots a rocket in retaliation for these acts of war does it get much media attention in the US.
7
The colonized are always doomed to copy their colonizers, a major tenet of de-colonial literature, (I.e./see Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth). So mentioning the VietnCong or ZANUPF is a testament to exploitation here.
1
I don't "shrug at Hamas's abuse of its own people." It's concerning.
The difference is, we (US taxpayers) don't support Hamas with $3.8 billion a year of our tax money. Also, as a Jew who wants Israel to exist in peace and security, I am much more invested in Israel's behavior than I am in that of Hamas.
6
My problem with Mr. Stephens' piece isn't about Israel or Hamas, but rather his either faulty or selective use of history of what he calls "non-Westerner" liberation leaders/ movements that fit into some "progressive fiction." Very easy to point out Pol Pot and Idi Amin, but what about Gandhi, Nehru, Minh, Mandela, Tutu and Machel to name a few? Give us all a break. The Palestinians have suffered from poor leadership. So, at times, have the Israelis. Shame for the people of both countries who each deserve better.
1
Mr. Stephens should join R. Kelly's defense team. He can justify Kelly's actions by just pointing out that Bill Cosby was also really bad, and shouldn't we talk about that instead?
8
What does this have to do with the oppression of one group of people by another?
The oppressed does not have to be blameless to have their cause championed. They just need to be oppressed.
This seems to me to be just another attempt to block discussion of the issue that will not go away until a justifiable solution is found.
7
No news here. Neither side willing to compromise, although I give Israel the edge for working harder at it in the past. In the present, we're in a stalemate with no chance of peace without US assistance (which will not be forthcoming under Trump).
@BaadDonkey Israel will accept peace and has offered it. The Palestinians have rejected it every time. The ball is in their court, not Israel's.
9
@Rescue2 When you're the occupying force, the ball is always in your court. I haven't heard Bibi offering much during his tenure, certainly nothing realistic.
1
Not true. When the Palestinians offered peace the Israelis quickly called Arafat back from Tripoli. They needed someone curruptable. Peace would have prevented them from colonizing the West Bank. Land buys votes. You think Israelis can't do deals? That's like saying Bibi would not associate with a fascist.
1
I am sure that Mr. Stephens has only scratched the surface of the daily happenings in Israel, Gaza and Palestine. Accurate information is difficult to come by, particularly in a war zone.
What I can say is that Mr. Stephen is one-sided and incomplete. The conflict has been dragging on for so many decades that most opinion pieces merely extoll one sides’ propaganda over the other’s. This piece, while probably containing elements of truth, is just part of that propaganda.
Gaza and the Palestinian territories are hardly a viable economic and political unit as constructed by the Israelis. Nothing happens within those areas outside of Israel’s military blockade. Those people might as be locked up in a prison.
What you see in the occupied areas is desperation. If you treat people like animals, they behave like animals. No surprises here. I see nothing in place that moves either party toward permanent peace.
This much is true: Israel and Palestine have a three-thousand year history of occupation and oppression. Whether is was the Egyptians, Babylonians, Israelis, Romans, Ottomans or British, the tale remains the same: instability and war. Does anyone have any plans to change this cycle? Nothing that Mr. Stephens has written suggests a different path.
12
I think Israel deserves to be held to a higher standard as a liberal democracy and one whom we are allies with than a terrorist group like Hamas who everyone knows is terrible. I have no objection to additional coverage of their terrible acts, but I don't know if it would help anymore than the coverage of Assad's crimes did. As Stephen's points out, Hamas is unaccountable to any form of democratic pressure, and I doubt more articles in Western publications would do much to change their behavior.
4
I wish Mr Stephens, or anyone else who agrees with him, would give us an example of what is fair and unbiased criticism of Israel in its treatment of the Palestinian people. What fault does Israel share in its occupation of Palestinian lands, the destruction of Palestinian homes and livelihoods, the state’s tight grip on Gaza and the treatment of its Palestinian minority? Or is it agreed that Israel is completely blameless, a victim in fact, and that anything short of enthusiastic support and exoneration is unfair and biased by definition?
11
I think it is rich that you try to wash the West’s hands of this conflict when its origins are traced back to the British Empire. Because they promised the territory to the Jewish, the Palestinians, and themselves an overwhelmingly unstable situation was created in that area. A situation which, as we all now, is still a very real problem.
I can recognize that this is not relevant today in terms of the resolving the conflict, but please stop turning everything into a pro-colonialist platform. I agree that media coverage can be anti-Israel, but make that your point. It doesn’t do you any good to name drop a few dictators and act like they sprung up from nowhere. Through colonialism, the West destined many nations to fail when the clock ran out. Pol Pot or Ho Chi Minh would not have rose in a non-colonial Southeast Asia in the same way they did in our timeline.
Just stop acting like the West has nothing to do with problems that fall outside of their borders.
6
Does anyone actually believe that without Hamas’s corruption Palestine would be a thriving economy filled with opportunity? The blockades against Palestine have a far larger impact, and makes the point of the artice disingenuous.
8
This opinion would be much easier to read as an observer sincerely interested in Bret's opinion if it wasn't delivered in such an affected way. Bret's an intelligent sophisticated person unless it's a discussion concerning the Palestinian conflict, where he can't help indulging himself with clickbait titles, intentionally offensive rhetoric, and at least a couple logical fallacies. Antagonism makes common ground harder to find, and there is plenty of common ground among people of good conscience.
Tone aside, it hurts to see people harmed. This is true if the harm is coming from anyone, but perhaps it feels more egregious when it's harm happening in systematic ways that effect more people in worse ways, and when your country is involved (the wealthiest most poweful country in history) and profits from this violence, or supports those who do. There's a perception that each of us has some amount of leverage or say in it all (we're democracy right?), then it makes sense to weigh in and make your case for changing our society's behavior.
Bottom line is violence leads to more violence. Always. So when Bret refuses to acknowledge differences in power and effects of systematic harm (both immediate and lasting), or tries to argue that Palestinians massacred at the border fence had it coming, or that it's okay for Israel to level a village because they have to defend themselves, it makes it difficult to see him as someone who is approaching a discussion in good faith.
18
@Tiger, reading the posts one could conclude that Israeli violence is good and Palestinian violence is bad.
Israelis have a right of self-defense and Palestinians don't.
Although I deplore Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, I agree with Stephens about the abuses and atrocities perpetrated by Hamas against its own people. But I am not surprised: ever since the 1947 partition of Palestine and the creation of the State of Israel a year later, the adjacent governments of the mostly Arab-populated areas (Jordan, Lebanon, Syria) refused to grant aid to their citizens uprooted from their homes and lands. And after the Six-Day War in 1967, Egypt also sat back and failed to assist Gazans and (till 1973) the Sinai peninsula. None of these governments have offered any land to help create a Palestinian state that would be large, arable, and otherwise easily-inhabitable enough for a population displaced by the partition of Palestine (and creation of israel) to re-establish their homes, careers, industries and agriculture--a state far larger than that proposed during two-state solution peace negotiations.
Until those countries' gov'ts join Hamas in meaningfully weighing in and negotiating in good faith, I don't see a satisfactory state of Palestine being created. Only the people themselves are blameless.
6
Jordan is Palestine...
4
@Dave G. Geographically, it’s East Palestine based on the borders of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine of 1922. It became Transjordan and then Jordan.
As the Bard once asked rhetorically, what’s in a name? The answer in the Middle East is obfuscation.
1
I was glad to discover new facts about the reality on the ground in this piece, but I'm not so sure Mr. Stephens cares more about Palestinian lives than he does Israel's public image. It's frustrating when American pundits invoke the plight of anonymous Palestinians primarily in the defense of the Israeli military. It certainly doesn't serve the propagation of their viewpoints or the value of those viewpoints very well.
11
this is just about the most egregious "what-aboutism" I have ever read. its premise is that we shouldn't decry Israel's genocidal actions, because "Arab on Arab violence." shame on you.
20
@Judy Hill a genocide is the systematic murder of an entire people. This is a gross and alarmist mischaracterization and misuse of language. There is no genocide being perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinians.
10
I personally would be totally content if there were as many articles accusing Palestinian leadership of abusing the rights of their own people as there are articles accusing Israel of the same. So many commentators here remain silent of the fact that the Arabs have vowed for over 70 years to never accept the presence of ANY Jewish state in the region. That is not a difficult statement to comprehend but too many don’t even bother to question it. Arabs have started wars to eradicate the state of Israel and failed miserably. They have rejected every offer of peace including an offer that gave them 97% of their demands. That’s a pretty fair offer to those whose only goal has been the destruction of Israel. If you have a problem with ‘whataboutism’, then you really do not care about the plight of Palestinians, where thousands have been slaughtered in Syria, where millions in Arab countries are still being held in refugee camps and where Palestinian leadership is uninterested in improving the welfare of their own people...seems like you only have interest in the Palestinians when you can point a finger at Israel...
6
Two right wing extremists, Bibi and Trump. Both corrupt. Both manipulative. Both uncompromising. Both seeking comfort and support from the radical fringe. Both exploiting fear. Both engaging in self-fulling prophecy throwing us headlong into their end times fantasy. These two are a far bigger problem for peace and civility in the world than Hamas. I don't fault the Israeli people anymore than I blame Americans but don't view the 2016 election and the one Bibi is willing to do anything to win in Israel as anything but a race to the base, the lowest common denominator of humanity.
5
That people are oppressed does not make them nice, or moral, or democratic. They are just oppressed. They may indeed be "fanatical, thuggish, militaristic, hypocritical and corrupt," expressing deep-seated flaws in the human condition that oppression, far from mitigating, may well make worse.
This does not give their oppressors a free pass. That Hamas mistreatment of Palestinians deserves condemnation, and fair reporting, does not do a single thing to justify oppressive Israeli policies toward Palestinians in Gaza.
It is doubtful that the Israeli government or its supports there or here would treat Palestinians one whit differently if it could be demonstrated that every Palestinian were the second coming of Mr. Rogers.
16
Nice list, but you left out the millions killed by the US in the Vietnam war.
1
Full disclosure, I'm Jewish. As in my maternal and paternal lineage built the pyramids.
Israel has treated, talked about, and legislated in a manner which would never be allowed in this country - racism to the nth degree. They treat the Palestinians as South Africa treated blacks until our government was brave enough to boycott. Israel has political parties and PMs who treat Palestinian humans as 9th class citizens.
The PM and government of Israel sees no issue in having snipers shoot innocent people. We have seen the video of the soldier casually walking up to a prone/handcuffed man and executing him. The soldier was prosecuted but, he executed the man with many witnesses. Clearly, his act was acceptable and thus openly done. The video which surfaced was his downfall. We have no ally who treats humans this way. As a Jew I am saddened. One day our people will have to explain why we collectively acted so horribly or did not spend our last breath stopping our people from such horrors.
When evaluating the racist, violent, deadly and inhuman treatment which befalls the Palestinians, at the hands of the Israelis, I don't care how Hamas treats Palestinians. Jews have no license to act in such a manner. Even if Hamas, al-Hassad, etc. are horrible. Most of the civilized world have come down on the right side of this argument. America and Israel are the holdouts.
293
@AlexanderVos The soldier was prosecuted; clearly his act was not acceptable. He may have thought it was acceptable or at least that he could get away with it - or he may not have thought at all - but that is a different matter. There is _no evidence_ to support the idea that deliberate killing of civilians who pose no threat is condoned.
48
@AlexanderVos
Thank you for saying so eloquently what I and other Jews who ache at what Israel does and has done to the Palestinians feel; Jews like me who lived through what we believed were the moral and ethical 6-Day and Yom Kippur wars only to see Israel become just another "me above all else" nation.
The only solace for me has been the realization that all human beings have the potential in them to be both good and bad, no matter what their race or creed, and no matter what their history.
26
@AlexanderVos
I am also Jewish and I am actively involved in J Street, pushing for a two-state solution.
The issue is far more complex than you admit. On the one hand, Israel as the occupying force in the West Bank does bear direct responsibility for the treatment of Palestinians under its control. While their lives are certainly constrained in ways that I consider morally unacceptable, there has been relatively little violence in either direction because of agreements and cooperation that date back to the Oslo accords.
Gaza, on the other hand, is another story. Israel unilaterally withdrew from its settlements in Gaza and makes no sovereignty claims to that territory. The blockade, while onerous on the citizens of Gaza, is jointly enforced by Israel and Egypt. Hamas is as much of a terrorist regime-- inwardly and outwardly--as the Syrian government or ISIS.
Bret Stephens is quite right that Palestinians have been treated as badly as or worse than Israel by Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and even (historically) Jordan.
The double standard that he points to also applies to the killing of Muslims by other Muslims or Hindus in MANY other countries. Jews in or out of Israel are held to a higher standard than people of any other religion.
63
As i am beginner, so i learned little about Israel and palastiene.
Sadly, Mr Stephens doesn't say that Palestinian lives matter to him. Only on how they're suffering is reflected on Israel. I think the second paragraph illustrates his bias best when he claims soldiers who aim into a crowd, at individuals, or merely fire blindly kill people by accident. As to the concept of caring: I am reminded of the crowds of Israelis sitting in lawn chairs on a hillside above Gaza, Bar-b-ques glowing with picnics, drinks in hand, cheering lustily as bombs fell on Gaza City and human lives were obliterated. 527 of which were children in 2014.
I have no love for Hamas. They are everything Mr. Stephens describes them as and more. I have no illusions of what would happen in the west bank should Israel withdraw tomorrow. I am a supporter of Israel and believe in a Jewish homeland. What bothers me is the constant apples and oranges style of argument from the Israeli side. It's simple stalling. You cannot claim moral superiority if you don't act morally. Therefore it is never what others do in comparison to your own actions. It's what you do. Especially when you are not forced to do it.
Also, by claiming that Syria is killing more Palestinians than Israel he's giving them legit refugee status which is unusual for an
7
Fine, I believe that everyone deserves a homeland, but why is it the US doing the choosing. Why not let those people figure it out, without US interference, or money. By the way, isn’t the leader of Israel, up on corruption charges......
1
Another ridiculous article by WaPo that ignores the obvious. Hello? The Arab countries you mention are run by dictators. Israel is a representative democracy. We support democracies and expect a lot more from them. Israel is our number one recipient of foreign aid.
What do we get for that aid? Regional instability and the ongoing problem of Israel occupying territory outside of itself. That's a great return on our foreign aid.
10
@Sal Foreign Aid makes up 1/3 of the GDP of the Palestinian territories, most of it coming from Europe.
2
WaPo, you’re reading the wrong paper, my friend.
1
If the Netanyahu government has to outrank only Hamas in meritorious conduct, they have plenty of room to sink much deeper.
5
@JS Netanyahu is terrible, but he is greatly limited by Israel's institutions. The crimes he got indicted for are child's play compared to the graft that Palestinian leaders engage in.
1
Thank you Mr. Stephens.
10
Because of a one time presents of a Jewish nation in Palestine many thousands of years ago ,the Zionists felt they had a right to this land today. So they took it back and in doing so they threw out the indigenous Arabs. This is the heart of today’s conflict. Hamas or the PLO may have many faults but they would not exist if it were not for the creation of Israel as a nation that would not include the indigenous Arabs.From the beginning,the Zionists wanted a Jewish only country that would not accept the participation of the Islamic majority. The Palestinians have never agreed to this outcome.
7
@Vincent
Uh....Arabs are ‘indigenous’ to the Arabian Peninsula, not the Levant. Hence the name ‘Arabs’.
Jews, on the other hand, are indigenous to the Levant. Which is why they refer to the region as their ancestral homeland.
5
Its not an either or. Of course Hamas both corrupt and despotic, but that has nothing to do with Israel's responsibility to human rights and plight of Palestinians. Today US announced the annexation of Golan Hights breaking international norms. The ones with power and guns bare the responsibility.
10
As an Israeli living in Israel, I have to say that putting the responsibility for human rights soley to us is ridiculous. Just last week several rockets came out of Gaza directed towards Tel Aviv and surrounding regions and yet Hamas claims they never gave the order to fire those rockets. Who fired them? Hamas has plenty of guns, believe me they simply have no restrain, accountability, or even a reliable chain of command. They operate more like a prison gang than a government, how can we make peace with that?
225
@### - You don't want to make peace, if peace means giving up land you have stolen. You don't want peace if peace means one man one vote in one state or if it means two states where both have the same autonomy. You resort to sub humanizing labels ie "prison gangs." If you've investigated a prison what you find is that the gangs are actually maintaining order that would not exist otherwise, while the "guards" run a brutal mafia misusing their power as they like restrained only by lawsuits. The analogy to prisoners & guards is apt.
4
@###: I condemn the government of Israel when, during a Palestinian demonstration on their side of the border Israel military sharpshooters murdered Palestinians several hundreds of yards inside Palestine. I condemn the government of Israel who, in retaliation to hamas rockets killing 2 and wounding less that a dozed Isresis, killed over 2000 non-combatants and destroy much of Gaza. I condemn the Government of Israel for supporting the illegal Israeli settlements inside Palestine. Ever single action is a gross violation of international law. If it were any country other than Israel, the International community would have take serious steps to stop those actions.
3
Purposely or not, this is a muddled article that rises to the level of being dishonest. Hamas has always been known to be a terrorist organization that exploits the plight of the Palestinians. But Mr. Stephens presents it here as if it were news. He also suggests that Western media ignores these stories so as not to complicate the anti-Israel narrative. Well, he just wrote that complicating article and it seems to accomplish only one thing: let Israel off the hook for a new kind of apartheid against the Palestinians. All the truth about Hamas does not eliminate the simple truth that Israel has made a sharp right turn towards a one-state solution protected and sustained by its superior technological capabilities and a world-wide complacency and contempt for the oppressed. The United Nations is hardly a potent vanguard. As for the narrative Mr. Stephens is so concerned about. In reality, no narrative exists anymore. Just the silence of a waterfall of opinion pieces that drowns out the real anguish being felt every day by people treated like barnyard animals. Can Mr. Stephens write a series of articles about that, pure and simple?
5
It might be known to you that Hamas is a terrorist organization that exploits the plight of the Palestinians but if that is the case, the media has for years neglected to report that. When they report on Gaza wars, it is never about Hamas’ treatment of their own people, it is always and only about Israel, disproportionate responses, shooting civilians and children and blaming only them for the plight of Palestinians. Hamas uses these civilians as human shields, they encourage them to try and break thru the border lines and violently confront Israeli soldiers trying to defend these same lines. In the UN, Hamas is never blamed for anything, only Israel is. If the media had been totally fair and unbiased all these years, there’d be little reason for an article like this.
9
As long as Palestinian quislings supported by both the Israeli and American governments act to repress their own people so the IDF doesn't have to they're ok with folks like Mr. Stephens. As long as local clan leaders in the West Bank were effective in doing so they were ok, but then came Land Day in 1976, and ordinary Palestinians rose up against them and the Israeli army. Then came the First Intifada, and so came Oslo and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, lead by Fatah, to police the occupied territories so the IDF could be withdrawn from the West Bank; then Israel withdrew its settlers from Gaza so the IDF could be withdrawn and Fatah could take over policing there as well. When the PA engaged in corruption and repression and revealed its inability to end the occupation and Sharon violated the Al-Aqsa precinct the Second Intifada began and the West Bank was ruthlessly bombed by the Israeli air force. When the PA's own corruption and repression lead to Hamas' election to lead the organization in 2006 both Israel and the US colluded with Fatah to crush Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza. That failed. For Stephens, et. al, the problem with Hamas is not that it exercises repression against Gazans to keep itself in power but that its repression doesn't extend to preventing Gazans from resisting the occupation as a social safety valve. But even that can be useful to Israel to justify its genocide against Gaza. Israel/Hamas is a symbiotic relationship.
4
@john riehle. So Hamas are now Palestinian quislings supported by Israel and the US? Who knew that quisling now means the opposite of its dictionary definition?
Since the Israel-Jordan peace treaty gave the Temple Mount to Israel on condition that Jordan retain a special status requiring Israel to take its views into consideration but not be bound by them, there I should no al-Aqua precinct for Israel to violate.
It’s also well known that the Waqf had agreed to Sharon's visit. It was no surprise. In fact, that advance notice was what allowed Arafat time to organize the “spontaneous” riots.
3
You can't have good government when you aren't allowed to control what comes in and out of your own borders.
How can a Palestinian start a company or do international business? They don't even control their own natural resources (such as natural gas reserves off the coast of Gaza).
You're denigrating a group for poor-governance, when they don't even have sovereignty over themselves.
Consider the British perspective when they were the colonial overlords of the region. Couldn't you just see similar articles being published by the Bret Stephens' of yore about how groups like Irgun proved that the Jewish people of the region could not be self-governing or peaceful?
10
This is a massive straw man. Nobody is lauding Hamas except Hamas. But the U.S. isn't massively supporting Hamas to the chagrin of our other allies and to the violation of its neighbors' sovereignty. Western criticism of Israel is as strident as it is because our support of Israel, however politically controversial, continues utterly unquestioned in policy.
Also, this is an absolute lie: "
In fact, far worse were the crimes of non-Westerners — Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, Idi Amin, Nicolás Maduro — perpetrated against their own people."
We may find the accounts of these dictators' crimes to be more scalding, but the death toll of American interventionism is still far higher, estimated at over 20 million.
6
You must not be taking Maos famine into account. The Coummunists of the 20th century are responsible for about 50,000,000 deaths in total.
2
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/03/21/the-supreme-court-and-dual-citizenship/
It's just not balanced just like you op-ed Mr. Stephens
1
When neoconservatives start shedding crocodile tears for the people of the Middle East it only means one thing; it’s feeding time again.
8
We''ll see if you allow this comment.
I am old enough to remember in the 1970s when Palestinians were hijacking airplanes. It was when I first learned the word" terrorism". I think about that now and that it has become real.
Plane travel was not routine at that time except among business people. The first time I got on a plane was to go to college in 1974.
I am a life long athlete and religiously watch Olympic sports. I remember the Munich Olympics in 1972 when Palestinians raided and occupied the Israeli dorm and killed athletes.
Now, even though they have never followed the path of peaceful resistance and progress, they have the sympathy of many in America. Nelson Mandela represents the path of resistance.
Although I do not approve of the current Israeli government, the settlements, the excessive responses to the Palestinians - my opinion matters little. Israel is a democracy and the only way to change outcomes is to change votes.
This article only reinforced my life long impression that Palestinians have resorted to violence before peaceful protest. Israel isn't the big bad Goliath and the Palestinians aren't just the innocent victims.
15
You’re conveniently ignoring violence against Palestinians or that they were displaced by Allied powers after WWII. Also do you blame all American white men for mass shootings? I imagine you do not. Do you think all Muslims are terrorists? All 1 billion of them? I don’t know, but it’s telling that you think all Palestinians are violent and responsible for the crimes of a few. Israel’s has perpetrated a lot of violence. They are not the victims you make them out to be. They are a wealthy militarized state created by the US, Russia, and the UK. I have great sympathy and empathy for the suffering and murder of Jewish people. But I also have it for Palestinians who are not violent extremists and simply want to live peacefully and freely.
4
"...the larger progressive fiction that the great crimes of the post-World War II world are the ones the West perpetrated on the rest of the world. In fact, far worse were the crimes of non-Westerners — Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, Idi Amin, Nicolás Maduro — perpetrated against their own people."
Nonsense. There is no such "progressive fiction" that downplays the crimes of Mao, Pol Pot, et al. in comparison with America's misdeeds.
2
Contrary to Stephens' assertion that the protests in Gaza against Hamas were not well covered in major Western media outlets, there were full-length stories about it in the NY Times, Washington Post, CNN, on NPR and Reuters, not to mention Al Jazeera.
5
This whole seemingly carefully crafted conspiracy theory is simply not true. I can list at least the following outlets which I have personally seen printed a piece about protest in Gaza against Hamas:
-BBC
-Gaurdian
-UK Telegraph
-New Yorker
-Aljazeera
-CBC
-France24
This not a exhaustive list. Only the ones I checked personally. Non of these outlets will qualify as "right wing" or "pro Israel" I would say. They might even be close to the "progressive". The truth is just a Google search away!
7
You've helped coin a slogan for Netanyahu's government:
"Not quite as bad as Hamas."
6
Usually I find a lot to disagree with in Bret Stephens' columns about Israel and the Palestinians. I don't really disagree with anything in this one. And yet, Stephens here still sounds like an apologist for Israel. It's a shame. On most other topics I find him to be nuanced and compelling. Unfortunately his credibility on this topic feels a lot shakier to me.
2
Congratulations, Israel. Apartheid thrives in the Levant through you.
9
The Jews have treated Palestinians like animals for 60 years. Who are you trying to kid?
10
They have also initiated several wars to destroy the state of Israel. They have vowed to never make peace or accept any Jewish presence in the region. How convenient for you to make believe that none of this ever happened.
6
@Bob Baskerville
The Arabs have been perpetrating war and terrorism against Israel for over 70 years...and counting. Who are you trying to kid?
5
I don't often agree with Mr. Stephens, but this is an important column. I wish some of my fellow progressives who speak out against the government of Israel would also see the other side of this issue - Palestinians victimizing their own people.
963
@Michael Cohen
I was about to write almost the exact same words, Michael--you beat me to it.
Just because the Israelis have the ability to be the most powerful oppressors in the region doesn't mean they are the only ones.
21
@Michael Cohen
The funny thing is that people like Ilhan Omar and others don’t even criticize the government of Israel all that much; they talk about how you cannot talk about Israel.
In fact, I’ve seen more criticism of the Israeli government from Bari Weiss and some other Israel supporters on Twitter than I’ve seen from those who call themselves anti-Israel. Not sure what to make of it.
8
@Michael Cohen They've been victimizing them since 1947.
3
Mr. Stephens makes good points about the need for more coverage of insults to human rights, no matter who the perpetrators are. But he's off base when he claims that the lack of coverage is due to the media's alleged unwillingness to "complicate a convenient narrative" that "feeds into the larger progressive fiction." I submit that it is Mr. Stephens who's taking a valid observation about lack of coverage, and then rather than digging deeper to discover its cause is conveniently using it to promote his own conservative fiction that progressives, through their nearsightedness, are the unwitting enemies of democracy and enlightenment.
If you want others to give up their illusions, it's helpful if you're willing to give up your own. Speaking of which, by what logic are Fidel Castro and Nicolas Maduro "non-Westerners." Are Cuba and Venezuela too backward in Stephen's mind to be considered part of the West, despite their geographical locations? Is the West more a state of mind than a place?
3
I was with Stephens right up until that sentence. It makes me wonder, can this man or any republican write an opinion without it being attributed to progressives, as in this case. Because I don’t know one progressive that doesn’t agree with the facts that Stephens points out. The paragraph about the leaders preaching martyrdom, while living lavishly, sounds like most if not all religions, especially the evangelicals that live in multimillion dollar houses, wear diamond rings, and $2,000 dollar suits.
3
Nice to read about the flip side of the coin which so often, and conveniently, get's forgotten about.
But the could have also been mentioned that not too long ago the PLO and Israel actually were on the road to peace together.
3
Thank you Mr. Stephens for shedding some light on the complexity that is the Israeli-Palestinian morass. There are no easy answers and many complex questions surrounding the Palestinian-Israeli conundrum: but one this is clear for decades the Palestinians have been abused by their leaders who have effectively re-directed blame and focus onto Israel. This is not to say that Israel has acted perfectly, but it is to say that within the complexity of this dynamic one side does not, nor should, bare all the blame. Americans need to become more informed and aware of the complexity of this problem. Again, thank. you,
12
@Jack Robinson
Your reply seems to apportion blame is without balance or, from my guess, experience in the region. I've spent years working in the Middle East, in West Bank, Gaza until 2006, Israel, Egypt, Jordan among others. Gaza is an open prison but it evolved into that as a result, not by design. The citizens of Gaza are the pawns in a struggle between four parties, Israel, Egypt, Fatah and Hamas. It's important to note that Hamas answers to Iran and one cannot put context to the actions of this group until that is acknowledged.
Israeli citizens live in fear of being wiped out, it's a constant thought of it's citizens and that has grown over the last decade. Egypt is also in fear of Hamas because they're in fear of the religious fanaticism spreading into Egypt again as it did under Morsi. Remember, Hamas is controlled by Iran who is intent on spreading their Shia ideology and Egypt is Sunni. This is why they maintain the blockade of Gaza.
continued...
11
I resent the blaming of "progressives" and the assumption that we who hold progressive views are automatically pro-Palestinian or blame the US for its transgressions more than the murderous regimes mentioned. It's a new red party trope that current day leftists are the equivalent of the Bader-Meinhoff group. Here's where this progressive stands. The Palestinians should be treated more fairly by Israel. The Palestinians have been led in both Gaza and the West Bank by corrupt and terrorist groups. And they have never missed and opportunity to miss an opportunity for statehood and peace.
8
Yes Mao and Pol Pot were horrible, but let's not ignore western depredations of their societies that contributed to the rise of their regimes. And Saddam got plenty of support from thee Reagan administration.
3
I think what I heard you say is that, the Hamas leadership treats Palestinians no better than the Israeli government does. I have often stated - given Israel’s terrorist beginnings (please read Israeli foundation history before railing on me) - that the only thing that separates Hamas from the Israeli government is the quality of their weapons and respective body count. These respective governments are cut from the same cloth.
5
When I was a student we fought apartheid. The favourite argument of apologists for the racist regime was that African dictatorships were just as bad, if not worse.
When Mr Stevens points out the crimes of the Hamas regime, what exactly is he demanding. Gaza is already subject to the most vicious sanctions in history. It is recognised by no one. So when he self-righteously exclaims his concern for it victims, what exactly does he want to happen that isn’t already happening?
On the other hand the Occupation Regime, which in terms of absolute numbers has killed and interred more people than that of apartheid South Africa, is not only completely free to trade and by the weapons with which it carries out its crimes, it even receives the most generous aid budget of any nation from the American taxpayer.
That’s why the focus is on Israel not Hamas. Because one set of criminals is already being punished, the other is being given a pay check.
13
While Fatah lost support in the elections in 2006 to Hamas, the party represents a diverse group of factions and as a result, must act according to the wishes of extreme groups to maintain the power that they do have. Hamas was in the position of the official opposition in 2006 but took power in Gaza via a coup and have maintained a dictatorship since, moving further and further into extremist ideology. It is mainly because of Hamas' extremist Islamic ideology, carried out as Iran's attempts at combating the non-Shia, that they have the desire to make Israeli territory Islamic.
Israeli politics have moved decidedly right as a result of the number of extremist religious parties in it's own government. These parties wield much more power than their supporters should due to Likud's need to form coalitions because of the numerous parties resulting from their Proportional Representation system.
Continues from above...
Your comment shows your lack of understanding, or perhaps your desire to lay blame where blame ought not to be laid and shows a distinct bias. Gazans are the pawns in this battle and the world, in particular, the UN, has either failed to understand or has deliberately obfuscated the causes while turning a blind eye to the suffering of the population there. Religious extremism is the driving force behind this conflict; this cannot be denied and must be understood to view the situation as it is in order to move forward.
3
You’re right about the situation Among the Muslim communities. In Israel the Netanyahu regime has made the conflict even worse. Many individuals in Israel would like the two state goal to be settled.
1
How do we know Qatar didn't give Hamas the money with the understanding it would be used to wage war on Israel?
I find it hard to believe any of the Arab countries care the tiniest bit for ordinary Palestinians. They're objective is to get rid of Israel, and baring that, keep up a constant state of war at the expense of the Palestinians and Israelis alike.
Blaming Israel alone for the plight of the Palestinians is not taking in the whole picture.
10
Israel is the culprit no matter what it does.
When it distinguishes itself by affirming gay and lesbian rights and opened its military to gays and lesbians long ago, it is criticized as "pink washing", whatever that means.
When it spends its own monies to fund the largest peace corps outside of the US, to help poor neighbors to learn agriculture, education, start up their own micro economies, it is again portrayed as the villain.
It really doesn't matter to us.
Jews have always been a marginalized and persecuted group.
They love us when we are dead.
When we are alive and building our own nation on our ancestral lands from which we were exiled by the Romans in 70 AD, they hate us.
Have a great Purim!
14
That’s odd, sounds like the argument the Palestinians are using, it been ours since before the Romans, so get out.
1
I appreciate your pointing out the difference between "occupied" and "controlled". Controlled, by the Israelis, has included the provision when feasible of medical care, clean water, a working sewer system, and electricity; but even the most patiently liberal Israelis also require "control" to include Israeli security boots on the ground. Hamas and the PA have an interest in making life miserable for their population and then whipping up world hatred of Israel plus demanding Western money to fix the dire situation. An example: Gaza is about to run out of clean water next year, according to the UN, which has been appealing for funds to finish the sewer system without much success. Anyone who really cares about the fate of the overcrowded Gaza Strip should recognize that Israeli control is their only hope; Hamas would much prefer an epidemic, something which they have already called "their new secret weapon."
3
Two wrongs don't make a right.
6
Right on, Bret Stephens!
5
America is a wonderful country filled with many wonderful people but like so many countries it will be destroyed by the lies of a privileged elite who use lies and misinformation of a judiciary that is as corrupt as the politicians who allow sophists and accomplished liars to reach the summit of the legal profession.
I am not an American but when Reagan appointed Antonin Scalia to serve on the Supreme court America was doomed. I can't describe my reaction on seeing Mike Pompeo attempt to overtly influence the Israeli election and the chaos that roils the USA because Russia covertly influenced the USA and Britain in your 2016 Presidential election and Britain's Brexit referendum.
As a Jewish Canadian with more than a century of Labour Zionist roots I can't help but feel shame that Netanyahu's Israel is not my Israel. The Prime Minister from Bain Capital is the antithesis of the Israel my grandfather tried to establish when he sent my brothers and sisters around the world to establish a safe refuge somewhere in the world before the holocaust. Netanyahu's Israel is the what he hoped to escape and the fears of the Palestinian and other minorities in Israel are the fears we engendered before the Final Solution.
History informs me of the validity of those fears and the need to assuage those fears. The American solution of might makes right does nothing to assuage those fears in a world that can only be saved by peace, love and understanding.
5
@Montreal Moe
What can I say other than I saw this in Haaretz after I wrote this comment.
https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/.premium-the-secret-palestinian-doomsday-weapon-1.7025949
Mr. Stephen’s columns are quickly becoming the best opinion pieces in this newspaper.
The lack of coverage on the suffering in Gaza by the hands of Hamas is appalling. As much one can dislike Netanyahu (and I do), any Palestinian in Gaza and West Bank would gladly live as an Israeli Arab citizen rather than a subject of Hamas or the corrupt PA.
8
Keep calm, Bret. You seem missing the point. You're talking about the issue in NYT, which counts. Don't scream the "Fair and Balanced" catchphrase. Israel government has been a bully, so is Hamas. If you ask me, numerous domestic homicides and government-sanctioned violences in other countries, humanitarian or military. Israeli Jews and Palestinians have an established record of the mighty Israeli forces systematically crushing civilian Palestinians for a few Hamas militants' crimes. So, the saliency factor might be a reason if you don't see this incident covered as a big problem and/or "foul play" by Muslims against Muslims. Of course, in this country, Black against Black crimes is more unlikely covered in the media as seriously and widely as Black/other minority v. White (or White v. Black/other minority). And you yourself being an American Jew, apparently, seem to care more about and sensitive to Israeli issues, if not more sympathetic to pro-Jewish positions. Are Israeli newspapers seemingly underreporting or not reporting and misreporting the Hamas violence against Palestinian civilians? That, I'd be more concerned about. To me, Israel doesn't seem as democratic and free as you would like me to believe.
3
I don’t really want to have an opinion about Israel.
It’s a tiny country, halfway around the world, with fewer people than Honduras, South Sudan, or Chad.
It has little inherent importance except that importance that the American press attributes to it, and that’s a lot. I read a constant parade of stories in the Times about Israel, covering it in detail that China, India, Mexico, Queens, or New Jersey never receive.
According to the American press, Israel is our closest ally, though I don’t recall them standing shoulder to shoulder with our soldiers... anywhere. We do give them loads of money- why?
But asking questions about our alliance is not allowed. Suggest that the Israel lobby uses money to influence Congress and you are an anti-semite. Considering a boycott of Israel? Nope. See S.1, the first introduced bill in the Senate this year, which makes it illegal to boycott Israel. Want to work for a state government? Fine... first sign a contract promising to never criticize israel. That’s nuts.
The problem for supporters of Israel is that even the positive coverage of Israel (and Bret, that’s pretty much all you get in the US) does not portray Israel in a good light. And how could it? Ethno/theocracies with apartheid tendencies are not an easy sell outside Riyadh and Tehran.
Stop covering Israel so much and maybe we will care less.
But as it seems that won’t happen, get used to criticism.
Or Israel can behave better. Also unlikely.
12
@Objectively Subjective
Wish I could click Recommend multiple times.
4
The Rohingya, Uyghurs, and Kurds wish they could get half as much attention as the Palestinians.
15
Netanyahu's facing a new election & hasbara commenters/columnists are energized. With Trump and Putin's assistance, I have no doubt that Netanyahu will crush the Palestinians, annex the Golan Heights and make it clear to the world that might make right.
3
I sure hope so!
3
As other comments have suggested, Bret is pointing to Hamas' and the PLO's abuses to deflect criticism from Israel's policies. (Something that reminds me of when the apartheid-era South African government argued that Idi Amin or Mobotu were as bad or worse). But I'd like to make two points. The first (which i tried to make in a prior comment to Bari Weiss's piece yesterday) is that the NYT does its readers a disservice by not also having Palestinian oowardr Palestinian-American or Arab American writers to balance out the Bret Stephens, Bari Weiss's, and even the more moderate but still pro-Israeli Thomas Friedman and Roger Cohen.
The second is that I would like Bret to explain his apparent blind spot toward Palestinian suffering at the hands of the Israelis. Is Bret simply a racist or Islamaphobe who (like some right wing Israeli politicians) thinks Jews and Israelis are entitled to more rights than Palestinians? Are group loyalties or ingrained beliefs involved? Or is his bias a result of personal experience with anti-semitism in the U.S. (and possibly projection). I think that these are fair questions to ask.
4
Imagine a NYTimes opinion writer in 1943, expounding on a valid whistleblower concerning corruption, authoritarianism or even worse in the Judenrat within the Warsaw ghetto.
Totally valid concerning the facts but patheticaly and totally missing the larger and more urgent issue - the existence of the Ghetto in the first place.
4
As it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes." (Romans 3:10-18)
I certainly don’t fear something that hasn’t been tangibly proven......
There was little said when missiles were fired from Gaza at Tel Aviv, including Israels restraint in response. It should be past time that AIPAC and the like starts telling off the Israeli government for terrible policies and Palestinian apologists lets the Palestinian leadership have it.
To your point, this is the only story from the region on BBCNews.com today. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-47645673
1
In your first sentence, you have three groups. You name "the people of Gaza" and don't name the identity of soldiers or "civilians are being victimized again." The second two are Israeli, right? In the USA we describe "the black people of Ferguson" but say "Ohio supporters of Trump" and we know when race is omitted, it's white people. (If there are black supporters of Trump, you can be sure their race will be mentioned--but that's also because there are few. That's another story.)
1
Bret Stephens does not list the Western media outlets that deliberately ignore Palestinian and Arab fascism, but his employer is at or near the top of the list. Perhaps only The Guardian is worse.
6
Brett, You are absolutely right. No one cares about the Palestinians. That’s why they are the most exalted victims in the world today. Yes, the Palestinians who we cry for and march for and hate Israelis for. They are the world’s true victims. Not the Syrians being barrel bombed, not the Arabs living under dictatorships and despots, not the Muslims of western China or Myanmar, or in Somalia (Rep Ohmar’s motheland), or across Africa....the Palestinians are our tragic heroes, for without them, we have would have to be so much more intellectually creative in our Israeli and Jew hatred. That would be a hatred that requires energy, thinking, contortions and admission about our true selves. Praise the exalted victims, Palestinians, whose lives really don’t matter.
7
The 1.5 billion Muslims and 22 Arab countries could have solved this problem years ago. They purposely let it fester.
9
Another day, another slew of opinion pieces in the NYT about Israel, a country with 9 million inhabitants. This kind of overexposure is not the case in the European media I read.
What is the agenda of the editorial board?
7
A stellar journalist corrupted by an ideological blinkering for Israel. Unfortunately, balanced thoughtful reporting on Israel is not possible by Brett. Disappointing in the extreme.
5
As I always say about Mr. Stephens, you can take the man of out Murdoch but you cannot take Murdoch out of the man.
While it’s great that Stephens is highlighting his issues, the liberal bashing is better suited to the Murdoch papers.
4
Unsurprisingly, this piece fails on many levels. Israel, of course, benefits tremendously from pro-Israel bias in the US. Israel has been in violation of numerous UNSC resolutions for decades bc of illegal settlements that are dteadilynseallowing the West Bank, regularly commits war crimes and crimes against humanity, and yet somehow still receives $4 billion a year in aid from the US, the most of any country in the world. And Israel is a rich country. So which way does the bias go exactly?
8
Mr.Stepehens,
You have no right to occupy your neighbors home because the parents next door are unable to make their kids live in "luxury".
What you are suggesting is that you will go and control what and who comes in what goes out of your neighbors home, and finally blame them for the result in such an environment.
Writing this article in a country and newspaper which 100% will support Israel, does not change the fact that Israel is the occupier continuously building settlements in spite of UN rules/chatter opposing that.
This writer always blames Palestinians for all their plights while supporting the dismantling of Nation-States like Iraq and trying the same against Iran now.
The truth is that, during every Republican Administration, US Middle East Policy is written in Tel Aviv. 'dont think this is going to change in the next 50 years as long as US controls the world economically.
Until then US Media and journalists like Mr.Stephens can brag and pretend themselves as the "righteous" folks supporting all the "Righteous" actions of Israel "...for the right to defend itself", while depriving Palestine of the same.
8
@Sam Swaminathan - The UN has become a bad anti-Israei joke perpetuated by a multitude of Arab countries, and Israel doesn't occupy anything as the West bank is not a country but an area divided in Areas A, B and C. Look it up for further information
5
The PLO, PA, Hamas et al excel at three things only: klepto-dictatorship, propaganda, and terrorism. They’ve been running their mendacious ‘refugee racket’ (with the blessings of the Arab world) for over 70 years, and it has made the leadership of these factions very, very wealthy. Egyptian-born Yasser Arafat became a $billionaire. Hamas leaders, Khaled Mashal and Ismail Haniyeh (among others) have also amassed $billions, while Abbas’ net worth is over $100 million.
There’s only one possible explanation for the media’s alliance with these sinister factions. It ain’t rocket science.
8
It's time to maintain a balanced view of things and hold everyone to equal standards. Thus, we should:
1) immediately cease all US military funding and aid for both Hamas and Israel.
2) designate both Hamas and Israel as terrorist groups until they disarm and accept a solution that involves jews and Palestinians living with equal rights in every respect
8
You're still operating with the Fox News "fair and balanced" mindset. An attack on Palestinians is inevitably going to mean more to us (i.e. be more "newsworthy") if it's from one of our allies than from one of our opponents.
2
American lives don't matter
*unless Muslims are to blame
Tens of thousands of gun deaths every year but we are unwilling to do anything to prevent, or even reduce that problem.
Americans are overdosing, committing suicide, murdering each other, spreading preventable diseases but all we do is talk about it.
Yet we are 18 years into two wars and focusing too much of our political energy on associating Muslims with terrorists
3
The issue here, as terrifying as it is, is in the Jihadi Arab charter and what they teach their children- they don't want "some of the land" for peace- they want all of it. And they will never accept Israel as a sovereign state. EVER. Do you want to go in there and negotiate with them? Sure, there are Arabs who would like to go on with their lives, live in a house and raise their families, put away some money for college, etc. The Jewish people, and the Israeli Government, would like for them to do that, too. As Golda Meir said many years ago- "when the Arabs learn to love their children more than they hate us, we will finally have peace". That was a whole lot of wars and bloody conflicts ago. Israel is not perfect, or "chosen", or anything else, except Jews have always lived there, and artifacts dating 1000 years before Jesus's birth confirming their civilization prove and ancient thriving nation populated by a lot of Jewish people. Arab families also have certain claims and rights as well, but not for the elimination of
Israel altogether. So land for peace has been offered again and again, and shots have been fired again and again. I hate it, but I will never give up supporting a REAL country, a real attempt at democracy, even to the extent that opponents of their own prime minister may get to indict him on criminal charges. He will have to step down if he loses the election and/or has to face jail or fines.
And here where Trump acts like a one-man government?? Hello!!
2
When the author mentions that the cost of building one tunnel is “enough to build 86 homes, seven mosques, six schools or 19 medical clinics" I wonder if he intentionally left out or simply did not know that Gaza is under an embargo that severely restricts Palestinians from importing those materials that would allow them to rebuild. Those materials that do make it in (along with food, medicine, household appliances, you name it) come through the tunnels. It might also be helpful to contemplate why there is such a dire need to "rebuild" in the first place. What happened to those schools and mosques and medical clinics that were standing before?
There is not more denunciation of Hamas in the media, Mr. Stephens, because some in the media understand the concept of hypocrisy better than others.
4
@Nadine
Because when they do get those supplies they use them to build tunnels, not houses or schools or mosques. And they use schools and hospitals to launch bombs into Israel.
1
This crackdown was hardly ignored by Western media--a quick search turns up dozens or reports by traditional media outlets, even from Al Jazeera. And it's not surprising that Stephens can't cite an example of the "progressive fiction" that Western "crimes" are greater than those perpetrated by non-Westerners against their own people, because that fiction is one of his own imagination. Nor does he cite a single proponent for the view that Hamas is a champion of human rights--we all see Hamas for it is, and the many failures of Palestinian self-government have been extensively chronicled in Western media. This piece is another example of the reflexive self-pity that too often characterizes defenders of Israeli and U.S. policy in the Mideast.
3
@Matt Johnson, I will give you that example. In the last several days, a white person slaughtering Muslims in New Zealand captivated the world, while Muslims slaughtering even a greater number Christians in Nigeria (look it up) has been overlooked by the American mainstream media. It doesn't fit the narrative? Ignore it.
4
the United States also spends a great deal on military that could instead be spent on humanitarian needs
6
@zach bender
Giving Israel weapons has saved millions of Israeli lives. Saving lives is humanitarian.
3
Wait, you just said, giving Israel weapons has saved lives, really, ask those that have been killed by those weapons that supposedly saved lives. Who’s life is saved, certainly not those at the receiving end of those life saving weapons you speak of. Violence begets more violence, and eventually the reason for that violence gets lost in the fog of war, and the passage of time, in this case 2,000 or more years. I’ve often wondered of those innocents caught in the crossfire, think, is this patch of dust really worth becoming a martyr over.
2
Iran and ISIS and other terrorist groups have changed the equation regarding the Palestinians.
Sunni Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States are afraid of a Shia Iran's nuclear weapons and have aligned themselves with Israel.
Israeli drones and other technologies have assisted Egyptian police and military to help save many hundreds of their lives and those of civilians.
The Palestinians elected in 2006 Hamas, a terrorist organization according to the EU, US, and Israel and as noted by Stephens a civil war with Fatah with many deaths resulted. Elections were supposed to have occurred in 2010 but have not happened.
The BDS boycott Israel wants to remove a security barrier that has saved many lives. There were numerous suicide attacks in Israel until that barrier went up.
It makes absolutely no sense to remove a barrier that saves lives from terrorist and it is shameful in a country that had 9/11 that anyone would want a single person killed by a terrorist. Yet, the BDS people want many to be killed by terrorists. Yet some of our Democratic politicians support BDS.
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Arab Israelis need to work closely with Palestinians to ensure new elections with the hope that this time, the Palestinians will elect new leadership willing to sign a peace deal with Israel.
New Palestinian elections to give a leader a mandate to govern and negotiate peace are first step to move the peace process forward.
3
Hamas is awful. They often do awful, even evil, things. It's completely valid to talk about the things they do.
(End of paragraph. New paragraph:)
But that does nothing to address the awful, sometimes evil, things done by other countries-- including Israel, the US, and other Western nations. Discussing those things is also valid.
5
The Palestinians certainly benefit from the bigotry of low expectations. Palestinian state TV shows people celebrating when a Palestinian kills an Israeli by handing out sweets in the street. No one reports on this. What would happen if Israeli Jews did this every time a Palestinian were killed? It would be front page headlines.
While I strongly oppose the current Israeli government and the treatment of Arabs as second class citizens, Israel is nevertheless a successful democracy where gay people can live openly, people can protest the government, etc. In contrast, what freedoms do Palestinians enjoy in their own self-governed territories?
And have you seen the virulently anti-Semitic cartoons published by the Palestinian state? Why is no one calling upon the Palestinian state to hate the government, not the Jewish people of Israel? Again, the bigotry of low expectations is at work.
12
There is no AIPAC or fundamentalist christian movement or major political party constantly and powerfully advocating for Palestinians in this country. News media cover the side that makes the most noise. Physician, heal thyself. (Thanks, Bret for pointing this out.)
2
@Old Farmer, every corner store or souk in Kuwait UAE and others has a can on the counter that cole ya money for the Palestinian cause. Wonder if they are still doing it who is collecting and where are the funds going!
1
Your posts have always been to the point and unafraid of telling the whole truth. This kind of activity goes way back to Arafat stealing millions of dollars for his own use (not going to go through the entire list but it is easily available for anyone who cares). Arafat didn't sign off on the peace accords discussed with the Carter administration because he knew the thugs he represented back in the homeland would assassinate him if he did. Peace there means accountability for the use of extramural funds sent to them. There has never been a peace dividend because when people threaten you with bus bombs, missiles and the like, those affected (on both sides) Harden their positions. That is where we are today. A few members of the "progressive" wing of the Democrat party should read this and thin - something they have little patience for. The current administration has shown their total ignorance of the situation sending an errand boy to represent the US proposals for peace. Netanyahu needs to lose the election and go to jail. There is so much corruption on both sides, it is hard to imagine how this ends.
1
Yes, a good column by Brett Stephens. Too bad he placed the Viet Cong in the same camp as his list of brutes, thugs and fascists. I'm not an expert regarding the Viet Cong, but I do know something about the history and culture that they sprang from.
David Lindsay Jr. is the author of “The Tay Son Rebellion, historical fiction of eighteenth century Vietnam” and blogs at TheTaySonRebellion.com and InconvenientNews.wordpress.com. He performs folk music and stories about Climate Change and the Sixth Extinction.
I’ll waste no bits on defending the Irish Republican Army, the Viet Cong, or Hamas. These organizations are murderous and thuggish. They do have one thing in common though; they owe their existence to acts of imperialism on the part of various European powers. They would not have existed otherwise. Generally the English, the French and the Israelis were clueless about this; how could such nice people as us have generated such a monstrous opposition? Why can’t these people lay down their arms, negotiate with us, and realize that complete surrender is their best course of action? Pretending innocence always infuriates the opposition further when grievances are so basic: taking our land, depriving us of political action and freedom, and imposing on us an alien government and religion. For those of us outside the circle of victims and victimizer, the pretense of innocence is at best an insult to our intelligence.
5
@JMcF
Racist Palestinians were oppressing Jews before the Zionists arrived.
The Jews “walked with a shuffling, cringing step that told of blows received and blows expected. No one could mistake the difference between oppressor and oppressed—“between those poor creatures and the Arabs who jostled them in these crowded alleys, …. The Arabs stride along with a spring in every step.”
There were rules: Jews had to pass Muslims on their left side, because that was the side of Satan. They had to yield the right of way, step off the pavement to let the Arab go by, above all make sure not to touch him in passing, because this could provoke a violent response. In the same way, anything that reminded the Muslim of the presence of alternative religions, any demonstration of alternative forms of worship, had to be avoided so synagogues were placed in humble, hidden places, and the sounds of Jewish prayer carefully muted.
2
So the IRA and the Viet Cong were nothing but thugs? Was not Menace Begin also part of an insurgent group in Palestine fighting against the British occupation. Was he also a thug?
3
This column is the equivalent of asking “what about black on black crime?” after a police officer riddles a black teenager with bullets.
I also find it crazy that the author points out that Humas mismanages humanitarian aid provided by Israel and others, but glosses over the fact that the aid is only necessary because Israel will not allow these areas autonomy.
4
Good for Bret Stephens for cutting through the zeal of finding fault with Israel to shine a bright light on the plight of the Palestinians as a result of bad leadership in both Gaza and the West Bank
252
@Eleanor Siegel Here is a thought experiment you might want to consider. Which of the colonial Bantustans created and maintained by the British Empire and Apartheid South Africa had a good government? Which ones were NOT plagued by terrorist insurgencies that victimized their own populations in the name of fighting those governments?
And how many times did the British and South African governments use the existence of those insurgencies to justify the relentless denial of peoples' rights within those Bantustans?
3
@Eleanor Siegel
"...cutting through the zeal of finding fault with Israel..." is all Bret Stephens knows how to do. I'm not purposefully going to slight you by paraphrasing a revealing common phrase like, 'some of my best friends are Jewish" but they are and I have the utmost respect for the state of Israel. But please, please look at the history of Israel's leaders and their continued disrespect regarding the Palestinians and the appropriation of their land based on an anachronistic religious pretext.
The Balfour Declaration, the British 'white paper', if you will, for the creation of the State of Israel guaranteed no adverse consequences to those displaced by the creation of Israel. Well, that has not happened and I believe Netanyahu and his ilk (and Bret Stephens by extension) have no intention of seeing that happen.
"And Palestinians continue to be the victims of leaders who see no reason to subject themselves to regular elections, or financial audits, or criminal investigations, or any other mechanism of political or moral accountability."
Can't wait to hear your thoughts on Trump, a man who said on the record said he liked the idea of being President for life, refuses to release his tax returns, calls the Mueller investigation a "witch hunt" and refuses other forms of accountability. There might be some parallels there.
1
Strange--I don't remember anyone on the left defending Assad or calling Hamas an exemplar of good government.
Effectively, all that Hamas has accomplished is cementing right-wing government in Israel and given Israel an excuse to occupy more territory. Occupied peoples sometimes do desperate and counterproductive things (and are sometimes manipulated by outside forces to do those things).
Just as the prison-industrial complex relies on crime, Likud relies on Hamas.
BTW--we may have had disagreements with the Viet Cong, but I don't recall them being particularly corrupt.
4
Hamas rule in Gaza is a lot like what "statehood" would look like in the West Bank. It is no surprise that a vast majority of Palestinians do not really want a "state" of their own. Israeli army checkpoints are a nuisance, but Palestinian civilians are not being murdered en masse by so-called "rejectionists" like Hamas.
5
@Frank J Haydn
Checkpoints are a nuisance? Palestinians are not able to get to jobs, to medical care or to visit relatives in a timely manner if at all within the West Bank.
Mr. Stephens has done a fine job summarizing Hamas's abuse of the Palestinians under its control and focusing attention on the limited American news coverage of that abuse. That said, however, if all his piece accomplishes is to provide uncritical supporters of Israeli policy excuses and cover for Israel's own persecution of Palestinians how will that help the Palestinians for whom he expresses empathy? See most of the myopic comments his piece has generated.
3
I admit to holding the Israeli government to a higher standard than I do Hamas, or at to having higher expectations of the one than the other. I do this, among other reasons, because of United States military aid to Israel. The Israeli bullet that will strike an innocent Palestinian may have been bought with my tax dollars. Hamas, by contrast, is already labeled a terrorist organization by my government. No worries about my tax dollars buying its weapons.
2
@Gregory
The rest of the world, which gives Israel ZERO, also holds Israel to a higher standard.
4
Which is it, Mr. Stephens, do we stand for western democratic values and hold ourselves to that standard or do we evaluate our policies in relation to those whose methods we deplore?
Personally, I would prefer to assess our policies (and Israel's) on the basis of our values, not the inherently problematic governance of Hamas. Of course Hamas is corrupt. Now what? Do we just throw up our hands and and yelp, "it's their fault?". That does not make Israel more secure. Petulantly accusing this amorphous "we" of not caring about Palestinians dying unless killed by Israelis does not make Israel more secure.The Israeli/Palestinian conflict won't be solved by ranting at straw dogs.
Hamas is not a responsible actor, I agree. But, difficult as it may be, Israel (and all of the west) must hold to and act on the principles to which we aspire. Otherwise, there will be no real future for either Israel or Palestinians.
Lastly, your comparisons to the IRA and Viet Cong are not only ill considered, they undermine your theory a bit (as they both achieved their goals). The occupiers against which they fought committed horrible atrocities and they responded as those without military power always do; using asymmetrical warfare tactics. The same tactics used by the Irgun in the attacks against British installations in occupied Palestine after WWII.
8
@Christopher
Israel, unlike other occupiers (China, Russia, Morocco, Turkey) offered to end the occupation in return for a peace treaty so attacking Israel just prolongs the occupation.
3
@m1945
I agree.
2
Until the Palestinian Authority and Hamas reach an agreement where Hamas turns in its weapons and submits to PA control of Gaza,or until Hamas disarms voluntarily, Egypt and Israel will continue to maintain harsh control of Gaza. By the way, Egypt's quarantine of its former territory is even more harsh than that of the Israelis. There are no demonstrations at the Egyptian wall on the west end of Gaza because Gazans know that the Egyptian military will shoot to kill, and have no qualms afterward.
9
Seems the only solution is a one state solution.
The Republic of Israel-Palestine or Israelestine.
Otherwise in the new world of nuclear weapons and germ warfare, something very bad my happen.
Maybe there will be a severe drought in the Middle East such that the Israelis and Palestinians are forced to collaborate for their mutual survival.
I’m glad my father got us out of the Middle East 60 years ago.
Although I sometimes wish we had gone to Oslo rather than
New York.
@New World
One state would soon become majority-Arab. Majority-Arab means the end of democracy.
Israel was ranked 30 out of 167 on The Economist's Democracy Index.
That's better than Belgium, Greece, Cyprus & at least a dozen other European countries.
The highest Arab state is Tunisia which is ranked 69. Palestine is 109, Libya 154, Sudan 155, Yemen 158, Saudi Arabia 159, Algeria 126, Egypt 127, Qatar 133, Oman 140, United Arab Emirates 147, Bahrain 148, Morocco 100, Lebanon 106, Iraq 114, Jordan 115, Kuwait 116, Comoros 121, Mauritania 119, Djibouti 146, Syria 166. Iran 150.
4
Too many powerful people are blinded by their hate to see what the destruction they have wrought around them, or how comparatively little it would take to make things better.
We need to move kindness and acceptance off the back burner in our policy and our politics and make it a main dish. Some countries can do this.
I very much want Israel to be one of them. I know it's hard when beset by countries that actually want to kill you, though. Life is messy.
Good piece.
So long as the Palestinian continue to play the victim card, they will continue to welcome being victimized by any one.
Hamas makes budget by begging to people for donations, be it Liberals in the USA, or mid east governments, who might be giving the money hoping it is used to attack Israel. They would not get the money if they proved to be an effective government of a flourishing country; the people would not get billions for free if they showed industry and a stable nation.
So Hamas and the Palestinians will continue to welcome being victimized by anyone as long as they are paid to have a failure of a country.
And now they have a die hard supporter in the US Congress, Ilhan Omar (D) IL
Do not expect this to change until the money flow stops.
3
What about the settlements? A question that few of Israel's apologists such as Mr. Stephens ever answer. While what he is saying in this column is mostly true, the real issue is not Gaza but the settlements on the West Bank. It is an illegal occupation - strike that - colonization of a territory that, according to international law, is not Israel's.
I would recommend the NYT video by Iris Zaki. Ms. Zaki, a Jew from Tel Aviv, went to West Bank settlements and simply talked to Israelis who grew up in the occupied territories. Many of the ones who were willing to talk to her were slightly uncomfortable with their circumstance. One even said she was a little bit "facist". (And please, those are HER words not mine.) But Israel's defenders, including the ones on this comments page, would rather talk about Gaza and the horrors of Hamas. than about the settlements.
Continuing to not address the settlements issue only makes the Abbas administration look more impotent in the eyes of the Palestinians. Is that what Israel wants? To make Palestinians turn to the alternative to the PLA? After all, there are no settlements in Gaza where Hamas is in control.
2
@Thucydides
There are no settlements in Gaza & yet Gazans keep firing unguided rockets & mortars at Israeli residential areas (a crime against humanity) & Gazans keep setting Israeli crops on fire (a war crime.)
2
Yes, Israel should be held to a higher standard. To make a domestic analogy, one cannot excuse police brutality in inner cities because street gangs are killing one another.
1
@Roger
Everyone should be held to the same standard. When people are not held to the same standard, that's called bigotry.
3
You are correct to point out the attacks by Hamas against Arab citizens of Gaza. The parallels of the ruthlessness of Hamas against the citizens of Palestine are often similar to those inflicted upon the citizens of Palestine living in the West Bank. Choose your oppressor- Hamas in one place or Israel and a corrupt PLO in the other. This creates the social and political paralysis that enables the Netanyahu to continue his undermining the Oslo Accords by expanding Israeli settlements to cut the West Bank in half. Trump is essentially encouraging this outcome. I see more violence ahead and no end to Israeli-created apartheid in Palestine. I speak as someone who has been to Israel and the West Bank.
@Richard
Self-defense is not oppression.
The Oslo Accords don't prohibit settlements.
If settlements become part of Palestine, they don't cut the West Bank in half. Because settlers are generally wealthier than Palestinians, allowing settlers to become Palestinian citizens would help the economy of a Palestinian state.
No occupier has ever treated the occupied the same way that it treats its own citizens, but no one has ever called that apartheid unless they're talking about Israel. Why?
2
Nice example of an extended "whatbout".
Israel is responsible for the actions of Israel. Hamas may be corrupt. Hamas may be violent within their own area. So what? How does any of that justify the actions of Israel?
1
This article is totally biased. One cannot continue to oppress people and hope they refrain from resistance or retaliation. How long can injustices be perpetrated ? No doubt Hamas is a militant violent group which I will never support nor will I ever support an entrenched militant attitude from a right wing Israeli leadership who justifies illegal settlements unwilling to compromise for the sake of peace to benefit both sides. One cannot claim to be a victims when one is a perpetrator.
175
@nf. Israel does not occupy Gaza. They removed all settlements there, and left. The militant terrorism of Hamas is abetting Netanyahu's attempts to hold on to the West Bank. Hamas feeds Israeli fears that leaving the West Bank will create a similar terrorist state on that border.
52
@nf Israel has offered the Palestinians their own state on several occasions, only to be turned down. Israel simply cannot withdraw from the West Bank until they can be sure that the Palestinians will not use it as a staging ground for rocket launches.
39
@nf
This article does not exonerate Israel from responsibility , only tries to add some balance and perspective to the causes of Palestinian suffering, and provides evidence for how much of it is caused by their own government. And he’s right I think that the media do show a double standard.
54
Every argument I have ever seen about Israel is a tu quoque argument. (sometimes called Whataboutism these days.) One person says P, the other says Q, and the argument never stops because both claims are true. To criticize an argument logically, you have to claim either that at least one of the premises is false or that the logical form of the argument is invalid. The tu quoque argument does neither of these.
4
When people are fighting, the right thing to do is to pull them apart. Walls between ethnic groups should be seen as a temporary solution, but one that will have to do for the time being. Hopefully, one day things will calm down and the walls will become irrelevant, like the medieval walls that used to circle European cities.
Great, long overdue column. For too long, the leaders of Palestine have carefully crafted and exploited a narrative of victimhood. Unfortunately, too many journalists take this narrative at face value. Yes, Israel has made some terrible mistakes, most notably the West Bank settlements. But it is dizzyingly simplistic to suggest that Israel is the villain of the story.
11
Well done, Mr. Stephens. It's about time.
12
For some Palestinian as well as Israeli leaders, peace is not useful. By constantly having the "other" to distract from other problems and their inadequacy to address them (including corruption), they can better avoid criticism. Once peace occurs, of course, blaming the other no longer works. Xenophobia is a tool that has been used forever. It is a major reason why Arafat and company eventually tore up the peace settlement.
And yes, the imbalance in reporting is perpetuated by most media outlets. Sometimes under the guise of "higher expectations" from the Israelis. Many times for other reasons.
2
This is basically a "two wrongs make a right" argument. The immorality and dictatorship of Hamas does not abrogate Israel from its humanitarian responsibility.
True there is not much coverage of the brutality of the Hamas government, but nor is there a lot of coverage of the brutality in Chad or Tajikistan. Most informed people know that it is not a democracy.
On the other hand Israel claims to be a democracy and it generally is for its Jewish residents, so we need to hold it to a higher standard, especially being its greatest donor.
Both Israel and Hamas make life unbearable for the Gazans.
7
@Jack Wolf
If we're going to hold Israel to a higher standard, then shouldn't we hold the USA to a higher standard, too?
Otherwise, the Israelis can rightly accuse us of hypocrisy. If we want Israel to treat all its citizens equally, then shouldn't we abolish Affirmative Action which discriminates by race, ethnicity & gender?
2
Mr. Stephens ignores one phenomenon which follows all the wars in Near / Middle East with and without participation of West or East: leave them out. Don't talk to them about serious matters, don't discuss with them - they will only use it to interfer in your internal matters.
So what shall journalists report about if also they are left out?
While I agree with Mr. Stephens that press coverage is often inconsistent and biased towards a given narrative, the counter narrative he provides is no better. Mr. Stephens provides four examples of liberation groups gone awry: Hamas, Irish Republican Army, Viet Cong, and Zimbabwe’s ZANU-PF. He fails to mention why they formed, the key to understanding how they ended up as they are.
All four are or were fighting colonial powers for control of their own national destinies. The colonial powers fiercely and violently resist/resisted the colonized’s rather reasonable challenge to colonial rule. There was generally a history of repression and sometimes ethnic cleansing. The fierce struggles have unfortunately shaped the groups that emerge to lead the fight against colonialism into warped mirrors of the colonizers. They have unfortunately followed Robespierre more closely than George Washington.
In the case of Israel, there is a complicating factor—the colonists actually can’t just leave as could the British, French and Americans in the other three conflicts. Israel’s Jewish citizens not only colonized Palestine, they emigrated to it. Israel has become the home that history tells us has not existed anywhere for Jews for nearly two millennia. And they rightly defend it fiercely. Unfortunately their defense against the fierce and fanatical for they helped shape is shaping them in return.
The simplistic picture Mr. Stephens’ paints does not help move us towards a solution.
9
Is there any chance that the media could quit saying that Gaza is free? Gaza is the world’s largest prison. The residents of Gaza can’t leave the prison, can’t fish in the Med., have no harbor to import or export and are ruled by a typical prison gang (Hamas). Israel controls their fuel and water supplies and uses them as a weapon. Israel keeps claiming that they ‘left’ Gaza and the Palestinians became enemies. What a surprise. If you couldn’t get your children medical care, send them to University or were terrified of Israeli jets killing them I doubt if you would view your neighbors as anything but enemies. This is a terrible and sad situation that is completely controlled by Israel. Please let common sense and human rights once again exist in the Israeli government.
8
@Larry Farwell
Whatever Gaza is (a terrorist base camp) the Arab residents have made it so. Israel’s restraint is remarkable. After more than 20,000 (2014 data) Hamas rockets launched into Israel and decades of terrorism, any other country would have leveled the place years ago.
6
@Larry Farwell, Egypt's quarantine against Gaza is even more strict. No one likes to remember that, though, because it screws up the narrative.
2
@Larry Farwell
In 1929, Gaza was not a prison. The residents of Gaza could leave. The residents of Gaza could fish in the Med. The residents of Gaza had a harbor to import or export and were not ruled by a typical prison gang (Hamas). Israel didn't control their fuel and water supplies.
In 1929, Palestinians ethnically cleansed Gaza of its Jews. Jews had lived in Gaza for centuries.
2
About time. Sadly, Palestinians are ruled by one of most brutal, corrupt regimes in the world. And rarely a word from Western liberals regarding their oppression of women and gays, their public executions, their endless crackdowns on dissent of any sort. Time to shine a light on this-- and end the hypocrisy.
23
@DMO
Yes, they are ruled by one of the most brutal and corrupt regimes in the world. It's called the Israel of Benjamin Netanyahu.
Dear Brett, I read the entire column trying to figure out exactly who and what you are decrying. I get it that you feel that the news media focus on what Israel does lacks context and does not focus enough on Hamas and its conduct. So Brett, use your words and don’t assume I will know who, what, where, why, and when—I don’t buy packaged cereal any more so I didn’t get the latest decoder ring. Also, what is with the swipe at “progressives (TM)”? Is that the same as “socialists ( TM),” and are both the same as the news media, mainstream or otherwise?
5
@Fred Frahm
The article is really very simple. He’s saying that unless it is clear that Israel is the aggressor against the Palestinians, the media, nor anyone else is terribly interested. So the thuggish, awful behaviour of Hamas towards its own people goes unreported.
5
Yawn. No one is falling for this biased report. Israel causes all of the Palestinian despair. If it were not form the hawks in Israel, we would not be here. Millions of PEOPLE would not live in an open air prision, trapped by Israel on one side and Egypt on the other. Of course people are unhappy.
No one is falling for this silly attempt to make you feel better by claiming that someone is worse.
14
@Mr. International
Egypt is also trapping Gaza so how could Israel be causing all the Palestinian despair? Isn't Egypt cause some, too?
Gazans were coming into Israel & murdering innocent Israelis. That's why Israel built the fence so really it's the Gazans who are causing their own despair by attacking Israel thereby forcing Israel to build the fence & the fence is causing Palestinian despair.
2
Thank you Bret Stephens. Before 1948 when the UN granted the Jews a safe haven after the Holocaust, there were both Jews and Arabs occupying the land controlled by the British. It did not belong exclusively to the Arabs. The Jews welcomed their Arab brethren to continue to live together in peace but they refused. Nor were they welcomed by their neighboring Arab countrymen who refused to take them in. The rest is history. The Jews made the desert flower and turned a nation of victims into one of the most technologically advanced nations in the world. The Palestinians eventually were given Gaza and turned it into a wasteland and bastion of terrorism.
12
So ... bullets now "accidentally" kill?
Amnesty International cited? Here's what they say about Palestinian right of return: https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/128000/mde150132001en.pdf
Two wrongs don't make a right. Or a moral, enduring state. But first you need to admit (and change) wrongs. Plenty of blame here; too many blinders on.
5
Errrrr......right.
And why does Hamas exist in the first place? Because Israel has been illegally occupying Palestinian land since 1967, despite countless UN resolutions.
6
@Nils Wetterlind
Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza more than 10 years ago, leaving much sophisticated infrastructure in place, demanding nothing. The Palestinians there, their leaders actually, destroyed the infrastructure and turned Gaza into a base from which to attack Israel.
5
@Nils Wetterlind
The occupation is legal because Israel was attacked just as our occupation of Japan was legal because we were attacked.
2
The first question a reader here should ask themselves is whether Bret Stephens actually cares about Palestinian lives. A review of his previous writings make it quite clear that he is in fact generally indifferent to their suffering. He only expresses concern here for the purpose of making what he seems to think are devastating observations about Hamas and about the Western media to which he seems to think he does not belong.
Gaza is an open air prison. Hamas is, in effect, the strongest prison gang in Gaza. Stephens account of how they came to that position omits many crucial details, not least of which was their inconvenient victory in the 2006 elections for the Palestinian Legislative Assembly and the US’s failed covert efforts, led by Elliot Abrams (now up to similar mischief in Venezuela), to overturn those results in Gaza by force of arms. These are detailed in David Rose’s reporting for Vanity Fair.
Stephens sees the deficiencies of Hamas as further evidence of the inherent venality of every major anti-colonial movement of the 20th century. But to speak of Hamas’s corruption, despotism or “economic mismanagement” as if they were the leaders of the government of a sovereign state is perverse. You can’t herd a million and a half people into a concentration camp, treat them like dogs for 70 years and then denounce the leaders that refuse your bribes and survive your assassination attempts of “thuggishness.” The stench of Brett’s hypocrisy can’t be hidden.
11
@Christopher
Racist Palestinians were oppressing Jews long before Israel built the fence & remember that Israel built the fence because racist Palestinians were coming into Israel & murdering innocent Israelis.
Before settlements, before the occupation, before Israel Palestinians were murdering innocent Jews.
On August 24, 1929, racist Arabs of Hebron attacked their Jewish neighbors. Violent mobs burst into Jewish homes and fell upon anyone they found inside. The commander of Britain’s police force in Hebron, Raymond Cafferata, later testified about what he saw when he entered a Jewish home in the midst of the massacre: “On hearing screams in a room I went up a sort of tunnel passage and saw an Arab in the act of cutting off a child’s head with a sword. He had already hit him and was having another cut. . . . Behind him was a Jewish woman smothered in blood with a man I recognized as [an Arab] police constable . . . standing over the woman with a dagger in his hand.”
…found a pile of bodies and a “sea of blood.” …of the dead and dying that “almost all had knife and hatchet wounds in their heads. . . . A few bodies had been slashed and their entrails had come out.”… two of Hebron’s senior rabbis had been castrated together with five of their students. By the time the Hebron massacre was over, sixty-seven Jews had been killed and dozens more wounded. Two days later, the surviving Jews of Hebron were evacuated. Hebron, the second holiest city in Judaism, was now Jew-free.
3
Let me know when we give Hamas $4 Billion of my hard-earned tax dollars in aid every year and I'll ask them to be held to the same level of accountability as Israel.
13
@Umar
The United States doesn’t give cash to Israel. We give them military equipment, manufacturered by American workers who earn wages. They provide us with technology, intelligence, and strategic alliance. Win-win.
5
@Umar
The rest of the world doesn't give any money to Israel, but they still hold Israel to a much higher standard.
What does Hamas want to do after it defeats Israel?
When the rocket attacks first began against Israel, a senior Hamas leader, Dr. Yunis Al-Astal, published an article in the Hamas journal, Al-Risala, where he compared Hamas’ al-Qassam rockets to the Manjaniq catapult which the Prophet Muhammad used against the Jews of Khaybar. The fall of Khaybar, he explained, opened the gates of the Byzantine Empire to Muslim conquest and was the first step towards the fall of Constantinople. Now, the fall of Israel, he said, would open the gates of Europe to Islam and lead to the fall of Rome.
Hamas MP and cleric Al-Astal proclaimed in 2008, “We will conquer Rome, and from there continue to conquer the two Americas and even Eastern Europe” (Al-Aqsa TV, April 11, 2008)
It’s in our interest to give Israel weapons so that Israeli soldiers will fight Hamas over there rather than needing to have American soldiers fight Hamas over here.
2
Brett, is nuance possible without being labeled anti-Israel or worse, anti-Semitic?
Can I be for the average Israeli citizen and his or her right to survival AND be for the average Palestinian and his or her right to survival?
Can I feel that Netanyahu is a terrible leader AND feel that Hamas is evil? That both are responsible for needless death and misery?
Can I feel that if you have chosen to lead a nation you OWN the responsibility for the misery and death your opinion and actions cause?
I am allowed to criticize my own government without being anti-American. I can say that Trump is a narcissist allowing himself to be used as a front man for fraudsters, corruption and Steven Bannon's international fascist movement. I can criticize Steve King for suggesting we ought to use our guns against each other and see if red or blue comes out on top. All of this, and I am still FOR American people, even the ones who incomprehensibly voted for Steve King.
Nuance Brett. I can hope for more for Israel and the Palestinians, and feel that both Hamas and Netanyahu are evil.
12
This is an important story, and I'm glad it's written. However, the charge against journalists is a little misleading. "If it bleeds it leads" refers to photos or video, not writing. Lack of access to Gaza is part of the reason there is little reporting.
I am not sure what this Bret Stephens is talking about. I heard multiple accounts of Hamas' attack on Palestinians on the American news this week, from various sources. When will the NYTimes stop giving Bret Stephens such a big voice in these issues? He is the one who is so clearly biased and trying his damnest to try to deceive us with his persuasive, but erroneous words. Those of us who actually read the facts aren't fooled by his attempt to suggest that the media is anti-Israel. Far from it.
9
In these instances, Bret, who is the occupying power? Israel or Hamas? Which is then by definition "newsworthy"? Not too hard to understand, right? When murders occur, ones done by an occupying power as such "extrajudicial killings," are these murders not by definition "newsworthy"? You're looking for an evil cabal distorting/burying the news where none exists. It's called basic journalism, Bret, not covert or overt anti-Semitism. See the difference?
4
This is by far the best piece I've read in recent years--at completely shifting Israel's blame for the suffering of the people of Gaza. Gazans, confined to a hellish, hopeless life completely controlled by Israel, have been making their despair known for decades. If not for complete and unquestioned US support, Israel would be an isolated, pariah, forced to change.
Mr. Stephens and diehard Israel apologists like him, care little about Palestinian suffering. What is more important is constructing a picture of Israel as a benevolent neighbor with little to do with the chaos in Gaza. That Mr. Stephens chooses to write about the harsh, ill-concieved policies of Hamas, while omitting any mention of the brutal treatment of the Palestinian people by Israel is a blatant case of journalistic malpractice.
5
Gaza shows you what happens when you give land to Palestinians; they use it for war and oppression. The Israelis noticed. This is why they can't evacuate the west bank. The real opponents to a two state solution are the Palestinians, because they would use sovereignty not to improve the lives of Palestinians, but to attack Israel. The Israelis look at Gaza and see what would happen if they turned over control of the west bank to the Palestinians. The Palestinian's enablers are the reflexively anti-Israel media, led by the NYTimes.
9
Stephens seems constantly perplexed as to why Israel, a first-world (supposedly) liberal democracy and the main US ally in the region receiving billions in aid, is not held to the same standards as Palestine and Hamas, a clearly undemocratic regime with a history of extremism and terrorism. Poor Stephens must be constantly perplexed why people criticize the US government when ISIS is executing people.
To Stephens, the "larger progressive fiction" asks us to do the impossible task of acknowledging that *gasp* events are actually more complicated than we previously thought. That the West may have committed some heinous and despicable acts, albeit on a smaller scale than notorious non-Western regimes. This sort of nuance or introspection is anathema to Stephens. It must be nice to live in a world where everything is black and white and there is no room for grey.
5
I am sure Brett Stephens does not
need me to defend him BUT he hardly
sees things in simplified “black & white”.
I give the NYTimes credit for choosing
a range of opinion writers for its articles.
The last time I checked Israel was
a Democracy. They may have a messy
system, some of us may not
support their leadership choices and
perhaps would cast our votes in favor
of those who do not win in their elections
were we Israeli citizens. “Supposedly”
is an incorrect choice of words as
Israel is the only Democracy in the
Middle East.
2
It’s fine to point out the internal problems of Palestine that are independent of Israel, but you are minimizing Israel’s crimes and denying the fact that structures are put in place to allow for oppression in Palestine by Palestinians. Just because there are things going on in Palestine that are separate from the Israel/Palestine conflict doesn’t make Israel’s crimes go away. Both scenarios can exist. Sarcastically saying “a single bullet that accidentally kills a Palestinian” isn’t helping you prove your point. It’s sounds childish and desperate.
5
@Tracy
Self-defense is not a crime.
Self-defense saves lives.
On Dec. 2, 1947, just days after the UN General Assembly passed a resolution to partition historic Palestine into Jewish and Arab-ruled sections, the Ulama or chief scholars of Sunni Islam of Al-Azhar University in Cairo– the leading university of the Arab World– issued a fatwa calling on the world’s Muslims to launch a Jihad to destroy the incipient Jewish state. It was reiterated by the Ulama, in April 1948, days before the Egyptian Army and three other Arab armies attacked Palestine, giving the campaign a “religious imprimatur.” The fatwa was reissued later that year.
“It was clear the Arabs had lost the war,” Morris said, but reissuing the Fatwa signaled it was meant “to stand for future years, for future generations, for whatever bout there will be against the Jews.”
As noted in his book and repeated at the conference, Matiel Mighannam, a Lebanese Christian woman who headed the Arab Women’s Organization in Palestine, affiliated with the Arab High Command, told an interviewer: “The UN decision has united all Arabs as they have never been united before, not even against the Crusaders.” She added that a Jewish state had no chance to survive and “All the Jews will eventually be massacred.”
2
The leaders of Gaza need to play the victim card to stay in power. When Israelis don't offer up enough violence to fire that flame, Hamas will do it for them.
Gaza could have been a Riviera. And the largest block of tourists would have been Israelis. Look what Hamas has done with that opportunity.
15
Hamas and the Israeli right-wing government; two sides of the same coin. They use each other in order to exist. The origins of Hamas will surprise you. Check your history.
7
Proof of media bias against Israel is demonstrated perfectly by the link Stephens provides as an exception - it is from 2000.
4
Surprising silence from Representative Rashida Tlaib and her supporters, and all the new wave of left leaning democrats.
Selectively Ignoring the truth, when it does not fit ones political bias, is equally and likely more damaging than not telling the truth in the first place.
This is a tactic used and perfected long ago by the likes of Stalin, Lenin, Castro, Chavez, Mugabe .....
Rather than condemning this insidious practice, the new left wing of the Democratic Party appears to be inspired by it....
6
Here's a radial thought. Use the burrowed tunnels to send negotiators to any politician/militiaman in Israel willing to work on a peace solution, and buy advertisement space in every regional press you can. Make your first offer of negotiation a willingness to publicly denounce your polticial charter that seeks the annihilation of Israel, a recognition that she also has the right to a peaceful existence, certainly as do you, and state your willingness to work, in good faith, toward a future of peace. Stop lobbing bombs and rocks across your fenced borders at soldiers and into nearby towns. Walk the talk. Spend your funds on healing yourself, by building schools that don't teach hate to your children, building your infrastructure, and making your own people more secure.
Then you can be David, and Israel can be Goliath, and the world will come to you. Netanyahu and other fanatics, hate-mongers, and opportunists will be cast aside. Israel will be forced to your table, by a new realism.
Hatred, war and internal coruuption have not exactly been so kind to anyone's cause here. How about some radical peace from the people most in need of healing and grace.
Other readers have commented incisively on the "what- aboutism" endemic in all reviews of Israeli-Palestinian relations, so there is no need to repeat the obvious here. Just as an example, to whom does this string of adjectives apply: "fanatical, thuggish, militaristic, hypocritical and corrupt," Israel or Hamas,? The conflict mirrors what last-century's Brazilian Bishop, Helder Camara called, "the spiral of violence." For more than a half-century [Jimmy Carter was the last positive note] no solution has been in sight, much less from the United States today and feckless posturing of Mr. Kushner. But why, I ask, does the otherwise thoughtful Mr. Stephens bother to repeat the pro-Israeli mantras that are so self-defeating? The idea that Hamas is "profiting" from delivering needed items to the beleaguered captives in Gaza should not be news. The Islamic brotherhoods have prospered for centuries by addressing both spiritual and material needs of their adepts. On that score, the continued exclusion of Palestinians from legitimate participation in Israeli society is the cause of the "problem" it supposedly resolves. Moreover, the recent statement by the PM to the effect that Israel is "only for the Jews" is symptomatic of the perverse mindset that frames tired memes such as those presented by Mr. Stephens. Those with the state power -- Israeli Jews -- must come to a reckoning of their responsibilities in equal measure to their privileges. Satis sapientibus.
5
@Professor A. M. Stevens-Arroyo
How is life for Israel’s Arab minority? Khaled Abu Toameh, the Arab journalist who reports for the Jerusalem Post, U.S. News & World Report and NBC News, talking about life for Arab Israelis: "Israel is a wonderful place to live ... a free and open country.”
Arab women in Israel live longer than Arab women in any Arab country.
Arab babies in Israel have lower infant mortality than Arab babies in any Arab country.
Hadassah University Medical Center in Israel established a registry for Arab donors of bone marrow and stem cells to facilitate life-saving transplants. The registry at Hadassah Hospital is the only one in the world for Arabs and will no doubt save the lives not only of Arab Israelis but also of some citizens of Arab countries, not a single one of which has a registry of its own.
2
Interesting , and the same can be said for police shootings of minorities in this country. Lets not make the focus absentee fathers, out of wedlock births , child abuse , neglect, role models who are often miscreants , lack of decent paying jobs but focus on the relatively small number of questionable or down right illegal killings by police.
1
You should realize that your argument can be perfectly reversed by the people you are implicitly criticizing; that is, don’t talk about police misconduct,change the subject to unwed childbirth,etc.
This piece does a lot to expose bias, likely some of it unconscious, in reporting about Israel. Even news reporters are drawn to deeply compelling, timeless cultural narratives, hence the "David & Goliath" sort of reporting that characterized early Israel and now that of the Palestinians who have replaced the Israelis in the "David" role, complete with stones hurled by youth. The other compelling cultural narrative is that of unjustified suffering, the Job story, in which Jews have played the central role over the centuries. As the late Israeli author Amos Oz pointed out, no one likes to hear about Jews unless they are suffering, and it's unbearable to imagine them in the role of defender or aggressor. That is why we rarely hear about or see photos circulating of Jewish Holocaust resistance fighters, though there were surprisingly many. Once the press picks up on the pathological behavior of Hamas et al, and the right-wing government of Israel is replaced with something more humanitarian, the tables will likely turn.
1
Simplicity is the mother of ignorance...
People love having an opinion much more than they like educating themselves in the complexities of the subject of their opinion. The vicious cycle of a free press under capitalistic strain, with a free people under bombardment of information is that ad-funded journalism does nothing but pander to its readers' existing malformed opinions.
There is some truth that coverage of and narrative on Israeli breaches of Palestinian human rights exhibit a unique shrillness that is missing when others do the same or worse in other or related contexts. But I am yet to be convinced that this is because of anti Semitism. It is far more likely that Israel is being held (rightly) to higher, western democratic standards of human righths.
So Mr Stephens: that the crimes of Non-Westerners were worse than those of a West that had just perpetrated the Holocaust is not terribly persuasive...after that reality altering atrocity that our "brethren" committed you would expect the West to uphold human rights always and everywhere as a prime value...That it still committed "less bad" crimes against human rights is not worse from the perspective victims comparatively speaking, but could be seen as worse from the perspective of the arc of history.
2
In many countries Communists were the main force in the fight against fascism. Should we consider fascism to be good because the communists were bad?
3
The author is not clear if both Hamas and the Israeli governments are to blame for mistreating the Palestinian people.
2
Long before walls was Arafat who took guerrilla warfare to the streets, endlessly terrorizing Israel.
And long before Arafat was the birth of Israel, immediately followed by Arab attacks.
And long before Israel’s birth was the British Mandate, and the British Empire acquiring and chopping up the region with no consideration of history and culture
And long before the British Mandate was the Balfour Declaration declaring a small piece of the former Ottoman Empire for a Jewish home
And long before the Balfour Declaration in the waning years of the diminished Ottoman Empire......
There is no doubt Hamas takes some of those billions to build a hospital or school here or there. But they are terrorists, raping the Palestinians and fueling their anger. And when the Palestinians dare speak up, they incarcerate or murder them.
There is no rule of law in this territory.
But Bret Stephens is right...the press slants their stories. Israel is not blameless, but there’s plenty of historical and present day blame to pass around.
8
The slant against Israel, even in this supposedly unbiased publication (or perhaps especially), has made it unbearable to follow and impossible to trust. The real insult and tragedy is that every day/month/year/decade that this incomplete coverage continues, the Palestinian people suffer and the Israelis lose the support and trust of their allies. Thus pushing both side to further extremes. How can Bibi and his corruption be held accountable when you’ve now isolated Israelis from their Jewish supporters abroad? The reaction has been, as it always is and must be in Israel, to bear down and defend at all costs. Can you really blame them? For a country that has one of the highest standards of living in the world and provides equal rights to its citizens to be vilified and pilloried to the benefit of a corrupt, misogynistic, homophobic, and repressive Palestinian leadership (whether Abbas or Hamas) is impossible for them to understand without rightfully feeling singled out. Add in the UN and it’s remarkable security counsel resolution record against Israel, more than 50% of human rights counsel votes are condemning Israel. Not Venezuela, Iran, or North Korea. Israel. More than 85% of the general assembly votes (between 2012-2015 for example) are against Israel. Not Syria, Russia, or China. For one country to be singled out in such a manner would constitute a credible case of harassment. It’s no wonder Israel sees itself on an island.
8
I think it's great that you are using Amnesty International research and crediting them in your article. Amnesty releases around twenty reports on human rights abuses around the world every week that are seldom reprinted or commented on in the media.
Your report on Hamas's abuses is right on the money. It should be reported and I applaud you for doing so.
Unfortunately, you and New York Times seldom, if ever, reprint or comment on Amnesty's almost weekly reports on Israel's human rights abuses against Palestinians with the result that americans simply are unaware of them.
Amnesty has been reporting for decades abuses rangeing from the bulldozing of thousands of Palestinian's homes with only thirty minutes warning to restricting access to water (but no restrictions to Israeli West Bank settlers) to imprisoning outspoken Palestinian leaders for months and years without charge or trial in 'administrative detention.' And this is just a partial list.
Again, thanks for this article about Hamas abuses, but americans also need to understand the reasons that some people, like me, are very critical of Israel's behavior toward the Palestinians. So please, occasionally, comment on an Amnesty report about Israel. The american public needs to hear.
6
@Paul Marsh
“Water shortages in the Palestinian Authority are the result of Palestinian policies that deliberately waste water and destroy the regional water ecology. The Palestinians refuse to develop their own significant underground water resources, build a seawater desalination plant, fix massive leakage from their municipal water pipes, build sewage treatment plants, irrigate land with treated sewage effluents or modern water-saving devices, or bill their own citizens for consumer water usage, leading to enormous waste. At the same time, they drill illegally into Israel’s water resources, and send their sewage flowing into the valleys and streams of central Israel. In short, the Palestinian Authority is using water as a weapon against the State of Israel. It is not interested in practical solutions to solve the Palestinian people’s water shortages, but rather perpetuation of the shortages and the besmirching of Israel.”
3
From a non expert in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this all appears to be true. I have a question for Mr. Stephen's: You often criticize critics of Israel for not focusing more on worse actors in the world. Why don't you do the same instead of returning to defend Israel so often?
Also, I'd like your take on what seems to be an undiscussed cause of antisemitism. When Jews refer to themselves as "the chosen people", what are non-Jews supposed to feel? People tend to resent others who think they are special.
As ask these questions as someone who believes Israel is trying to make the best of a difficult situation, but as is the case in every country, sometimes makes foolish decisions due to the complexities of internal politics. Thank you!
2
During my Mideast travels that embraced the very tarmac the very hour that Carter and Begin and Sadat began their Egypt tour I more often than not across two decades heard the remark that the Arab world had no more use for Palestinians than they did Israelis even as both served the same political ends with regard to Iran, the truer Arab enemy. So long as biblical claims to land shape Israel and Palestinians have nowhere to call home people will kill people in the name not only of identity but of survival. Israel’s recent decision to delete a fifth of its population as legitimate citizens can only make matters worse. The nation is fast arriving at racial or tribal or religious purity measures, and then Israel will have become the enemy Hamas and others have dreamt of for decades — insular and apart even from the five million Jews who live in the US. Then the Palestinians and Israelis may find equal footing, both isolated and despised by most of its neighbors.
4
@Naked In A Barrel
Israel did not decide to delete a fifth of its population as legitimate citizens.
2
Gaza is a constructed bantustan in a defeated ethnic group, like the originals of the model in S. Africa. The day when Gaza has a 'responsible' government is the day that Israel fears most.
The rise of Hamas was the result of Israeli military response to the first Intifada, which was almost uniformly a non-violent resistance movement, like BDS. The violent part was stone-throwing and hurling of molotovs against tanks. In the first 13 months of the First Intifada, 332 Palestinians were killed, versus 12 Israelis. In the next phase, Israel adopted a policy of 'might, power, and beatings,' namely "breaking Palestinians' bones". In the following 2 years, fully 7% of Palestinian children were either shot, beaten, or tear gassed.
3
@Carling
In 1948, instead of declaring independence, Palestinians asked for union with Jordan so that when Jordanians were attacking Israel, it was also Palestinians attacking Israel. We don't say that attackers are resisting.
2
What everyone on this comments list seems is when you lose a war bad things happen. Intro to the the real world 101 Vs. the delusions so many seem to have. When you lose a war the winner dictates terms not a pretty truth but the truth. The Palestinians instead of a compromise and a survivable peace seem to think they can dictate terms. The objective reality on the ground Not the Idealism of the UN or progressives is the Israelis control the ground, they control the weapons of war. And nothing and I mean NOTHING the rest of the world can do will change these facts. Unless of course you are willing to send in the troops and chance the (Very High) probability nukes would be used? I doubt it. Mao said power comes out of the barrel of a gun. He was right. For all the wishes the rest of the world may have the Israeli's have the final say on any Palestinian issues. That's the way is like or not. But instead of buckling down and working out a compromise that would allow for their survival? The Palestinians went with rockets, suicide bombings, hijacking and Terrorism. None of which will work. They just make the israeli's dig in harder. Why shouldn't they? Then they make demands they KNOW the Israelis won't accept. Return anybody? Not going to happen! Ever! And the Palestinians know it's a deal breaker but they make it anyway. Why? In the end for all the talk of "Human Rights" or UN proclamations. He who controls the ground and the weapons of war has the final say. That's how it is.
6
@Stephan
The Palestinians are not interested in having their own state. If they had wanted their own state, they could have declared independence in 1948. Instead, they asked for union with Jordan. What Palestinians care about is hurting the Jews. They attack Israel hoping that Israel will overreact or at least look like it's overreacting.
3
There are any number of examples of Arab-on-Arab evil to justify, at least at a surface level, the Trump-Bibi view on Israel. But that's not getting anyone anywhere. The Gaza Strip is already the Warsaw Ghetto, and it's just going to get worse.
The only hope is a one-state solution. Israel needs to recognize that it has created (no small thanks to American support) a thriving European country in the Middle East. Surely 99 percent of the Palestinians want what Israel has: A wealthy society with a vibrant capitalist system, great cultural amenities, a powerful military that allows generations to live essentially in peace and raise their kids to have better lives than they did.
If you went to the Palestinians and said: We can end this, but you have to agree to become Israelis, to drop pre-partition claims on family land, and abjure any sort of terrorism against a state that you will now be full members of. In return, you get an opportunity for the good life, not incidentally just having the power on 24/7 like a civilized country. I can't imagine most Palestinians wouldn't take that deal.
Would there be terrorist uprisings afterward? Sure, but they'd fade with time as Palestinians were absorbed into the everyday life of Israel in a way that the Gazans aren't. All these folks really want is a safe place to live, food on the table, electricity and sewer service, etc. Israel should let them have it.
1
@Rex
If Palestinians wanted electricity & sewer service, they would have build electric power plants & sewage treatment plants. Instead, they used the money for weapons & attack tunnels to murder innocent Israelis.
3
"That’s odd: Some media outlets are prepared to devote months of journalistic effort in order to trace the trajectory of a single bullet that accidentally kills a Palestinian — provided the bullet is Israeli."
This is an extremely dishonest statement. Bret Stephens makes it sound like all it is is one stray bullet that accidentally killed a Palestinian. Not many well placed bullets that killed many Palestinians. Something he has celebrated. Particularly when the targets have been children and other unarmed civilians.
"Palestinian lives and livelihoods should matter despite who harms them."
Bret is right. But these are just words to him.
5
@Robert Roth
Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British troops in Afghanistan, has repeatedly commented that, "during its operation in Gaza, the Israeli Defence Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare." Furthermore, he points out that the steps taken in that conflict by the Israeli Defence Forces to avoid civilian deaths are shown by a study published by the United Nations to have resulted in, by far, the lowest 18of civilian to combatant deaths in any asymmetric conflict in the history of warfare. Kemp explains that by UN estimates, the average ratio of civilian to combatant deaths in such conflicts worldwide is 3:1 -- three civilians for every combatant killed. That is the estimated ratio in Afghanistan. But in Iraq, and in Kosovo, it was worse: the ratio is believed to have been 4:1. Anecdotal evidence suggests the ratios were very much higher in Chechnya and Serbia. In Gaza, it was less than one-to-one.
2
Oppression by Hamas or wrongdoings by the Palestinian authorities surely cannot be an excuse for the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian lands and keeping millions of Palestinians oppressed. If Israel wants to be a member of the democratic world, they need to stop the occupation and humiliating the Palestinians.
3
@Eirini Oflioglu
The occupation is necessary to prevent racist Palestinians from murdering Jews. If Palestinians were willing to live in peace with Israelis, the occupation wouldn't be necessary.
If Israel were to end the occupation of the West Bank today, Palestinians would fire rockets & mortars from the West Bank just as Palestinians fired rockets & mortars from Gaza after Israel pulled out of Gaza.
1
Well said, Mr. Stephens. It’s about time someone within the NYTimes stood up and exposed the clear imbalance in coverage of the Palestinian-Israeli violence.
Addressing all the pro-Hamas reader responses, I implore you all to stop quoting statistics about injuries of violent protesters throwing fire-bomb kites and start asking how the Palestinian people can promote leadership committed to peaceful co-existence. Hiding the fact that Gazan leaders today, the worldwide recognized Hamas terrorist organization, thrive on violence and war does NOT help the subjects of your sympathy.
6
“... fanatical, thuggish, militaristic, hypocritical and corrupt”.
Forgive me for thinking you were referring to the Trump administration.
So are those attributes not unique to resistance movements, or are we living under one too?
2
Kicking sand. Doesn’t change the reality of who the oppressed are in Gaza, and the responsible parties.
3
I heard you talk about the one who confessed liking your columns in the elevator. I think you are a treasure that keeps me subscribe to the Times.
Your idea’s not too complicated, and it doesn’t have to be, since it’s principled. That’s why it means so much. I remember you predicting what North Korea would end up doing, which is nothing, which is exactly what happened. Please keep the readers see the reality.
5
Many here miss Stephens’ point, which is not to deflect or distract attention from the conduct of the current Israeli leadership. He’s been writing about the failure o& 5he Netanyahu regime for years. Rather, and properly, he’s calling out the lack of attention give to the depravity of the thugs of Hamas, who not only subjugate their own people to a climate bereft of dissent or challenge, but in fact —and as a point of their policy—intentionally place their citizens in harm’s way by using them as human shields.
They are despicable, and the fact that they get called out next to never is a stain on the coverage from the region. And calling them out is not a zero-sum game on overall coverage: robust reporting on Israel’s conduct must not be a casualty for responsible journalism covering the Palestinian’s plight at the hands of their “leaders”.
5
Here is the difference.
The United States gives Israel 3.8 billion dollars a year in aid and military equipment.
Therefore, anything the state of Israel does is presumed to be done with approval from the United States.
American wouldn't be the target of terrorists if we didn't so fully back Israel
8
@Luciano
No other country gives aid to Israel & yet other countries are also the target of terrorism.
2
To link Fidel Castro to the despots you describe is grotesque. Members of his cabinet lived on wages similatto those of ordinary workers. For his impertinence in having Cuba control its own resources, for his indomitable courage and taking over the great US corporations that had bled the country dry, for feeding and educating his impoverished people, the CIA spent years trying to murder him, launched terroristic attacks against his people and his industries, and and helped create and sustain fascist dictatorships throughout Latin America in order to contain Castro’s revolutionary model of resistance. The CIA intercepted a vast shipment of ball bearings to the island, and substituted for them ball bearings which were not perfectly round. The purpose and effect was to bring the machinery of the island to a grinding halt. US launched biological warfare against Cuba, killing half a million Cuban pigs with an imported illness. CIA speedboats launched machine gun attacks on coastal villages. Today the US still enforces an economic embargo on the tiny island, still bent on proving that the Cuban model cannot succeed. The entire history only serves to prove how fearful the American establishment is of the soundness of its own institutions.
4
Wow, the article really rings true, especially over here. I am currently residing in Lebanon and Israel is considered the arch-enemy. A Lebanese person is even prohibited from speaking to an Israeli anywhere in the world, or befriend an Israeli on facebook: a imprisonable offense. And the only explanation, even by young open-minded Lebanese you get why Israel is so bad: because of their treatment of the Palestinians. Of course ignoring the fact that as Palestinian in Lebanon, you cannot get citizenship, you cannot own property, you cannot become a doctor, lawyer, etc -- while every Palestinian in mainland Israel is a full citizen with equal rights (at least on paper)... It's utterly sad and frustrating
9
Among those who hate oppression, there are many who love to oppress. The Palestinians are some of the worst-governed people in the world. Their leaders never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. They could have had their own homeland a long time ago if they demonstrated any interest in peaceful co-existence.
6
Perhaps it is worth noting one significant difference between the shots fired by Israel the last time the faced off against Palestinian civilians and the shots fired by Hamas in this current conflict:
The Israeli bullets killed people.
3
Great article. Mr. Stephens has exposed the limitless hypocrisy of Israel’s many detractors by shining a light on the true cause of Palestinian suffering. Their leadership.
The last thing Hamas wants is for Gazans to have clinics, homes and schools. Only a desperate and poorly educated constituency will allow themselves to be used as cannon fodder in perpetuity.
If they suddenly found themselves with a chance at a better future perhaps they might be less interested in fighting over the past. Then as tensions eased maybe there would be an opportunity for peace.
And then Hamas would be out of a job.
There have been a lot of prominent people throwing shade at Israel lately, whose time and efforts would frankly be far better spent helping Palestinians than hating Jews.
6
This entire piece is a masterclass in “what-aboutism.” I do not know a single supporter of Hamas, whereas every critic of Israeli policy that I know believes in the right of Israel to exist. That, however, is far different from condoning apartheid and violence from an American ally receiving billions of dollars over the decades to fuel its military. Many of us have been leveling these critiques for many decades toward US support (tacit or open) for regimes in Saudi Arabia, DRC, the Philippines, Chile, Iran (both the shah and the ayatollah - remember Iran-Contra?), Iraq, et al. Stop trying to obfuscate the problems at the heart of American foreign policy since World War II.
4
@Philippe Egalité
Apartheid in Israel???
Where are the separate bath rooms & water fountains?
Why are there Arabs in the Israeli Parliament & on the Israeli Supreme Court?
2
There can never be a 2 State Solution as long as Hamas rules Gaza.
Israel will not commit suicide.
Every checkpoint and blockade, which contribute to Palestinian suffering, is a direct result of Hamas violence against Israelis.
And while they perpetuate this violence, corrupt Hamas officials squander billions, meant for Palestinians, on self enrichment and terrorism. They have no incentive for peace.
And now that Gazans are expressing their outrage - Hamas’ violence turns inward - at the people.
Where is the outrage against Hamas, the worst abuser of Palestinian human rights?
Where are the voices of Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and various pundits on TV and in print?
Their silence is nothing less than a wink and a nod to Hamas.
8
At one level, this column is an example of blaming the victims. Intolerable conditions in Gaza have existed unaddressed regardless of media coverage.
It might also be analogous to the murder rate in Chicago.
Decades ago, Tom Wolfe wrote an Essay "O Rotten Gotham--Sliding Down into the Behavioral Sink."comparing urban violence to conditions in an overcrowded cage of laboratory rats. "In the [overcrowded] Sink,nest building, courting, sex behavior, reproduction, social organization, health--all of it went to pieces."
1
The real oppressors are the surrounding Arab nations which refused to admit and settle Arabs who left when Israel was created. More Jews were expelled from Arab lands than so-called Palestinians from Israel. This name didn't come into use for these Arabs until the 1960s. Before then it meant anyone, including Jews, born in the British Mandate of Palestine. The UN has an agency which pretends that these people and their descendants are refugees for more than 60 years. Congresswoman Rashida Harbi Tlaib is considered a refugee even though she is a US citizen.
The peaceful protests with their wirecutters, firebombs and incendiary devices sent on balloons, in hopes Israeli children will be killed are ignored by the media unless Israel defends itself and kills an Arab. Even though Gaza hasn't been occupied since 2007 the media frequently ignore that truth. Gaza has no working government but the media quotes the Gaza Health Ministry's death tolls as truth.
There is no country in the world that has not acquired land during a war and that includes the US. Yet, only Israel is criticized while others are ignored. West Sahara is occupied by Morocco, Crimea by Russia and Tibet by China yet there is no outrage. The only difference is that Israel is the only Jewish country in the world. This selective indignation is anti-semitism and to deny it is lying.
10
@S.L. bravo!!
2
No outrage about Crimea or Tibet? You must not be reading the papers.
I agree with everything Bret Stephens has written in his opinion piece. I note that the majority of the comments in one way or another bash Mr. Stevens and blame Israel for Hamas ruthlessly terrorizing their people. The Muslim Arabs of the Gaza trip and the West Bank have been brain washed that Israel is their enemy. Their real enemy as Mr. Stephens so eloquently describes is the leadership of the terror regimes of Hamas and the PLO and those in the Muslim world that support terror and are not interested in peaceful co-existence with Israel. Also aiding and abetting Hamas terror are those that submit hypocritical comments looking to blame Israel for Hamas terrorism and bashing Brett Stephens for reporting Hamas Human Rights abuses. I hope that TNYT gives Mr. Stephens further opportunities to counter reporting of lies and anti Israel propaganda so offer heard in the paper.
6
This reads a lot like right-wing commentaries arguing that we shouldn't worry about police shootings because black-on-black crime is worse.
3
As Americans, we don't fund Hamas, we fund Israel. It's easier to stop committing your own crimes than to police the crimes of others.
2
@Jamie
Until recently, we funded the Palestinian Authority even though the Palestinian Authority commits genocide. The Palestinian Authority pays people to kill Jews. The more Jews they kill, the more money they get. That's racism! That's genocide!
Terrorists who kill Jews get more money than doctors or judges.
2
It’s rather difficult to create a functional society when your only raison d’etre is to advance the destruction and conquest of your neighbor’s country...hence the Arab Palestinian failure to thrive (no matter how many $Billions and peace offering are thrown at them).
That the western media and so-called ‘progressives’ have aligned themselves with these sinister factions (the PA/PLO. Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, the entire Islamic world) in their campaign to delegitimize and destroy Israel is simply indicative of the persistence of Antisemitism. Accordingly, Jews are not entitled to their own history, nor self-determination and self-rule upon even a sliver of their own indigenous ground...nor are they entitled to act in defense of their citizenry and sovereignty from ongoing military and terror attacks.
There’s not a country on earth that would tolerate for even 1 year what Israel has had to deal with for over 70 years. But, Jews are so easy to scapegoat....so convenient. It has always been thus.
7
As long as Palestinians cling to Hamas and the legacy of Amin al-Husseini, they will be a doomed people.
5
Bret Stephens is anti-Muslim.
If not wanting to purchase products from Israel counts as antisemitism, this is anti-Muslim. Bret is a bigot.
3
So obvious that ultimate goal is to end the Jewish State.
Even The New York Times going back to 1948 editorialized opposition to a Jewish State in British Palestine.
6
I read your clear, descriptive defense of the country that I chose to live in, during the holiday of Purim, which traditionalizes celebrating saving the Israelites. In Persia. From antisemitic-base-HolocaustingTHEN, 5th century BC, and victoriously ALSO violating innocents. You not only "cherry-picked;" you "fruit-saladed!"
“That lack of accountability is chiefly a Palestinian failure.” There is enough personal unaccountability, of harmful, violating words and actions, by levels of policymakers, as well as ordinary folks, to share globally. Palestinians, a diverse group of people, in so many ways, while sharing in so many others, do not have a monopoly on this all-too-human behavior. Passed-Past. Present. And most likely many-morrows to BE. Which all of US enable, actively as well as passively. By complacency as well as by complicity. Each of US. And so many, many more! Daily! In so many words and ways.
The following descriptive words of selected “freedom fighters,”-“tend to behave in strikingly similar ways: fanatical, thuggish, militaristic, hypocritical and corrupt”- could ALSO easily describe a myriad of policymakers. Globally! Elected. Selected. Self-selected. Unregulated-all-too-often. At all levels. Hurting and harming. Health. Wellbeing. Bodies. Psyches. Spirits. Homes. Individuals with voided Identities. Shadow people, far from home. Unwanted where they come to. By words and done-deeds.Ummenschlichkeit transmuting by two letters, "um," a norm. Value. Ethic.
Can't help but see the parallel to the way our national news media covers police killings of African-American criminal suspects while pretty much ignoring the daily inner city murders in Chicago and elsewhere. Do those black lives matter?
6
The most important thing, vital I should say, that anybody interested in this conflict now worldwide is to learn Arabic or seek seriously the best translation of any material in that language.
If you wish to understand what this means, it is strongly suggested to visit:
https://israelunwired.com/the-shocking-truth-about-mosques-in-america/
1
You have a point. Hamas is probably corrupt and Palestinian lives do matter.
How about doing the first thing that also matters: liberating the Palestinians from the Israeli concentration camp known as Gaza, where everything (food, water, fishing, electricity, building materials, medicine, you name it) is controlled by Israel with the tacit support of some Arab countries.
Just a reminder about facts: Hamas was democratically elected in 2006. It did not usurp power as you claim. They achieved complete control after the dirty civil war started by El-Fatah (with the aid of ....).
2
@Alpha111
The reason that Israel built the fence is that Gazans were coming into Israel & murdering innocent Israelis. Liberating the Palestinians means more innocent Israelis will be killed or wounded.
3
Never is anyone's mind changed about Israel and the Palestinians via discourse or argument. Those who favor Israel read this column as a long-omitted truth about the bias of virtually all news reporting. Those who favor the Palestinians read it as so much blather, a distraction from what really matters. If Westerners are so entrenched in their positions, it makes me wonder how we can ever expect Israelis and Palestinians to move toward compromise.
167
@Stuart That simply is not true. Those who favor Palestinians see this as further evidence that Palestine needs America's help more than Israel does.
8
@Stuart The money flow might change things.
2
There’s a huge difference. I’m Jewish and pro-Israel. I think Palestinians should have a place they call of their own without engaging into wars with Israel.
However, what I hear from Palestinians is very different. They will only be satisfied when Israel is destroyed and and every Jew killed. There is no room for negotiating when your “counterpart” has so much hatred towards you.
14
I love this. "Don't worry about what Israel does because Hamas is bad." If that's the peer group you want Israel placed in I'd hardly call you "pro-Israel".
10
Some of the comments here are truly inaccurate and are part of the progressive, mainstream stream media narrative of Israeli wrongdoing,
There is no moral equivalent of Israel building illegal settlements and Hamas teaching their children to hate Israel, have in their charter that Israel has no right to exist and should be destroyed, to launch rocket attacks targeting innocent civilians. Read history my progressive friends. In all violent conflicts, the fog of war, there is going to be collateral unintended killings of innocents... on both sides.
8
Thank you for this. Why don't the Western media cover the crimes of Hamas? Because that's not the Story. The Story is 'the horrible brutal Israelis'.
For years, the Palestinian 'leadership' has been making $2.6B in international aid disappear every year into Swiss bank accounts and payments to terrorists, while terrorizing the people they claim to represent--with no infrastructure for a possible future Palestinian state to show for it. Peace is not in the leadership's' best interests, nor in the interests of the Arab states who use 'the Zionist entity' as an excuse to maintain hegemony in the region--nor in the interests of the West, who for all the hand-wringing, keep getting rich selling bullets.
11
The NYT, again, gives voice to a poor understanding of power dynamics between Israel and Palestinians, as if it were within the realm of Palestinian's ability to assimilate themselves into an unfriendly, orthodox religious nation state backed by the United States and the Saudis, one that actively starves them and deprives them of the basic right to self-determination, let alone negotiation.
4
@Eric
Obesity is a major problem in Gaza.
2
A valid, well argued conservative position. The tally of human rights violation of non-Western, left wing dictators seems a bit arbitrary. I don't think it's a sound historical practice to draw a line at the end of World War II marker and start the list there, since military overtakes, retaliatory regimes are connected by historical violence. Those named dictators stand for a terrible repression and a dreadful bodycount , still even in the post World War II era there's enough blame to go around.There are plenty 'discreet' and indirect massacres caused by Western powers.
3
It is sad that a people who have no nation are still divided into a civil war. If being such a horrible victim of Israel and Arab neighbors is real, why can't they even unite?
2
Bret, you are part of the problem, a bunch of what-aboutism to avoid the harsh discussion and reality. Hamas is a bad actor with an abhorrent ideology but the Gaza Strip chose them because they were seen as less corrupt and better organized than the PA. Effectively imprisoning the citizens of the Gaza Strip was Israel's response. Venally cutting off supplies, power and money as punishment has not made Hamas go away, it has provided an endless stream of new recruits for Hamas.
Yes anti-Semitism is a scourge that must be battled, anti-zionism is a sensitive debate, Israel is a established nation deserving of peace. Benjamin Netanyahu has traded short-term political expediency for the long term survival of his nation while degrading Israel's liberal democracy and its standing in the world. Under his watch the situation in the Occupied Territories has gotten worse, a two-state solution has been effectively taken off the table. Now he has aligned himself with the worst side of Zionism, the racist Judea and Samaria wing that would cleanse Arabs from their midst. Pointing a finger at Hamas is not going to solve that problem.
Yitzhak Rabin knew what the answer was and was shot for it. The best solution for Israel is to "declare victory and go home". Set a fair demarcation line, pull back the settlements and get out. Turn the nation building over to the UN and accept the hard reality that embittered feelings on both sides will take generations to cool.
7
@Chris
Before 1967, there was no occupation. There were no settlements. However, Palestinians were attacking Israelis. Fatah & The Palestine Liberation Organization were both founded before the occupation & before settlements.
2
Firstly, any ‘government’, after 12 years of incumbency, would have huge detractors. There is nothing new about that.
Secondly, how many Palestinians have died in Gaza uprising compared to their revolt against their Israeli wardens.
Thirdly, Young Palestinians in the West Bank seems to have found a way out. Dating and marrying Jewish girls/boys. It is just not when Lucy Met Tzachi but young Israelis are willing to marry Palestinians. Despite the work done by Lehava, Hemla and Habayit Hayehudi, the inter-racial marriages are on the rise. Stats are difficult to get but Haaretz reported in 2014 that it is about 10%.
Young Israelis and Young Palestinians working towards a Unified Tomorrow.
That ‘escape route’ is not available to those in Gaza.
2
@Deep Thought
It's not available in Gaza because racist Palestinians ethnically cleansed Gaza of every Jew in 1929.
1
“But Khamas!” ploy. It’s a maneuver the Israelis and their propagandists frequently use. They try to shut down any discussion of the actual plight of Gaza’s two million people and their own responsibility for causing it by invoking (and often, deliberately mispronouncing) Hamas’s name, betting that this all sounds very scary to people in the West."
"The original idea for the Great March of Return - GMR had come from 34-year-old Gaza poet Ahmed Abu Artema.
In early 2018, Abu Artema worked with colleagues to form a committee to plan and oversee the protests. Its members, as the UN report confirmed, “came from all sectors of Palestinian society, including civil society, cultural and social organizations, student unions, women’s groups, eminent persons and members of clans. Representatives of several political parties…were also members (the armed wings of these parties were not represented on the committee).”
Hamas and Fateh were two of the five participating political parties listed in the report. The report confirmed that all the movements represented on the organizing committee signed on to the principles that the march should be “fully peaceful from beginning to the end,” and that participants would be unarmed."
Helenna Cobban
https://mondoweiss.net/2019/03/beating-israels-khamas
1
@penney albany
It was far from peaceful.
2
Finally a column that brings some light on the dirty little secret that those of us who read more than the NY Times know. Hamas can kill or torture hundreds, spend billions on tunnels and nothing is said in western mainstream media.
Kudos Mr. Stephens for an excellent piece. Loved the second paragraph illustrating the utter hypocrisy by the Times. I guess that's supposed to be the Times version of "fair and balanced".
8
I have been reading ever here the comments on articles depicting the Arab/Israeli conflict.
Almost invariably those supporting Israel can be identified as Jewish, and those in favor of Palestinians are not. Of course this assertion is totally empirical and I apologize for its potential inaccuracy.
Having said that, I would like to invite the latter to comment on this article, PLEASE!
And if possible, make an effort to leave Israel and Jews of your words.
Remember: this piece concerns ONLY to what Hamas is doing to its own people. Same as Assad is doing to millions of Syrians.
Make no mistake: before 1967 and before Hamas, Israelis flocked into Gaza for vacation, restaurants and weekends.
There's much more that's not known and can't be depicted here.
Check this video here:
https://israelunwired.com/the-shocking-truth-about-mosques-in-america/
2
Palestine knows that the future of their neighborhood is about to change because the people in Palestine and Israel are about to vote for a new form of government where they watch the leader of their country for the entire time anybody ever leads their country. The government has been concealing civilocity because of their lack of ability to identify it as a solution to prevent every single leader, in every single country, from covering up murder while that leader of that country is leading that country. I am a Palestinian and we which includes Israelis are taking over the world and exposing the technology and ideas the governments are reluctant to expose whether it is nanotechnologies ability to read our brains neurons which has been able to cure pain and hear our thoughts without detection to the point and ability to obscure any and all love stories by controlling the nervous system creating a person to have an instant orgasm or arousal or lack there of. The technology can allow us to communicate without headphones or phones and see when our eyes are closed and even cameras now can be placed in our eyes for others to see when they are open.
It's natural for democracies to expect more from a fellow democracy than they do from armed thugs.
3
Good for Brett and the NYT for
printing this exposure of the
plight of the Palestinian people.
We should all care about them
and be reminded of the hypocrisy
of the world. I am certain that if
the Palestinian people “beat their
swords into plowshares, and their
spears into pruning hooks”, Israel
would gladly embrace peace rather
than war.
9
Yet another insightful piece by Stephens...
[...drumroll...] ... may the countless head-in-the-sand rants begin!
5
When grieving journalists align themselves with the Arabs that promote destruction of property and death, they are expressing their own biased desire to embrace anti-semistism like their forefathers before them. Mr Stephens has seen the pervasive anti-Israel madness now destroying his profession and correctly calls out the mob of co-journalists and Turner media who bay for the destruction of Israel.
5
That's funny...does The Guardian not count as a "Western news account"? Because Oliver Holmes has an entire story on this topic on The Guardian's homepage.
1
Would the Times publish a piece suggesting that the real problem black Americans suffer from is gang or other violence within their own communities? Or that the real problem is that Africans haven’t done enough to help them? Without acknowledging slavery, Jim Crow, or all the other endless types of oppression and discrimination that African Americans have suffered?
That is what this piece boils down to. It would be different, of course, if he had written in the past condemning Israel’s many human rights violations of Palestinians. But given he consistently writes only to defend Israel and blame Palestinians for their own misery- and as the daughter of a Palestinian - I find this piece grotesque and offensive. But certainly not surprising.
6
A little context is always helpful. The fact that Palestinians are limited to a few short hours a day of electricity, that the Gaza Strip has been described in UN reports as 'uninhabitable' (due to Israeli policies), that the population is literally being poisoned by the water they have no alternative but to consume......and, while not apologizing for any of the outrages of Hamas is it not worth noting that they actually were democratically elected?
This article is intellectually dishonest and does not meet the professed standard for 'all the news that's fit to print'.
6
@Glen
Palestinians, per capita, are among the top recipients of foreign aid. Palestinians, not Israel, decide how to spend this money. Palestinians could have decided to use this money to build water & sewage treatment plants & electric power plants. Instead, Palestinians decided to use this money for weapons & attack tunnels to murder innocent Israelis. Because Hamas was democratically elected, most Gazans probably share some responsibility for the lack of fresh water & electricity.
2
Here we go again with another twisted, bizarre piece by B. Stephens blaming Palestinians for apparently their own "occupation."
So, based on Stephens' claim, Hamas has "usurped power in 2007": false, they were elected in 2006, with internationally recognized free elections. Mahmood Abbas, on the other hand, has never been re-elected, but he and his croonies have been in power since 2005, and with the blessing of Israel and its open police cooperation.
With the same line of inaccurate pronouncements, Stephens claims that Hamas has "started three wars with Israel", really? So the heavily planned and staged Israeli military campaigns against Palestinians civilians in Gaza were provoked by Hamas? Too much credit, or too much bad journalism. What happened to "double check your sources before reporting"?
But the worst of all is to assume that Palestinians have no right to resist and fight against illegal occupation, that self-determination is not for them. Palestinians should simply accept more land grab by Israelis, go through Israeli military check-points and be happy about it.
6
@Dauphin
The Palestinians have no right to resist and fight against the occupation because the occupation is legal. The occupation is legal because Israel was attacked just as our occupation of Japan was legal because we were attacked. Even if the occupation were illegal, Palestinians have no right to target innocent Israelis. Firing unarmed rockets & mortars at residential areas is a crime against humanity. Setting crops on fire is a war crime.
The Palestinians are responsible for the occupation because they attacked Israel just as Japan was responsible for its occupation because Japan attacked us.
2
Well done.
8
And as if on coordinated cue, the "but Israel" crowd appears in the comment section to deflect from the fact that the Palestinian People's worst enemy is their own leadership abetted by the western political left that infantilizes them.
8
hmmmmmm....
Hamas builds tunnels and Israel build walls
Hamas is corrupt with money from Qatar and Netanyahu is corrupt with money from businesses and cronies
Hamas has not held elections and have Israel is purported to be a democracy
hmmmmmm.....
3
Finally an article which makes sense. And there is no mention anywhere in the press about the balloon missiles that are being sent to Israel on a daily basis. Seemingly innocent balloons sent to kill innocent civilians. Israel is always held to a higher standard. Do we ever see Israelis rejoicing and handing out candy as we do the Palestinians when Israelis are killed? And do we hear about the Palestinians who are treated in Israeli hospitals, only to be released to kill Israelis again? Can you imagine if the situation was reversed??
10
Remember the world wide protests against Israel in the last Gaza war?
Well, the war in Syria caused the death and displacement of many more Palestinians. Did you notice the protests?
The NYT and other outlets admitted during the last Gaza war, that they never publish pictures of Hamas fighters, only of Palestinian "victims" of Israel.
Pictures of Hamas rockets being fired from schools, hospitals, and residences aren't published as they take place - b/c Hamas threatens the reporters and the reporters' families with revenge if they are.
Yet somehow news reports from Gaza never mention that they are effectively censored by Hamas. But if Israel makes minor limitations on reporting to protect her troops and civilians, we hear about how IDF censors are limiting the reporting.
9
So, why are there Palestinians in Syria? Isn't because they were fleeing Israeli oppression?
@yulia
No one would have been killed, displaced or lost any land if racist Palestinians had not tried to exterminate the Jews.
The day after the UN Partition Resolution in November 1947, racist Palestinians started a genocidal war to exterminate the Jews. Haj Amin el-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem – “I declare a holy war, my Muslim brothers! Murder the Jews! Murder them all!”
Wars create refugees!
1
Stephens will be punished for this. Liberals like to keep their messaging neat and tidy, and this ball of inconvenient truth is anything but. If only for saying that Hamas started the three wars with Israel, he will now be banished to the outer darkness. Maybe he can pick up a gig at Fox.
4
Maybe if the residents of the Middle East could get out of their own way and graduate to a more complex consciousness, that is less focused on some mythical religious belief system that they use to selfishly take what they think is rightfully theirs b/c their myth tells them it’s theirs, and instead focus on sharing and helping and finding prosperous ways for people to exist and live together then maybe the residents of the Middle East can stop burdening all the rest of us with their trite desires to destroy the other.
It’s getting old Israelis and Arabs. The rest of us are ready to move on even if y’all aren’t.
@Mike
"WE EXTEND our hand to all neighbouring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighbourliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East." - Israel's Declaration of Independence
2
The solution is simple. Get Trump to Tweet about it, and you'll have all the coverage you need. Let him know that Muslims are acting exactly like he thinks Muslims act and he'll 'tweet storm' it to the top of the fold.
Nice “whataboutism” there....unreal
3
Really, how much money do my tax dollars go to support Hamas?
4
Black lives don't matter (unless the police are to blame).
- see where this kind of rhetoric takes you?
5
The “Viet Cong”?
For those who criticize Israel over human rights, or for any and all its faults, they should take notice how Hamas runs Gaza where it's lethal to hold protests for LGBTQ rights, women's rights, economic rights, etc.
But chanting "Death to Israel" and dressing kids up as future suicide bombers? That's practically mandatory.
6
When I read an Israel supporter's concern about the disinterest of Palestinians for their own people, I think "Gee, thanks for the crocodile tears."
The expression of disquiet about neglected Palestinians must be on the current edition of "Israel Talking Points", since it is now ubiquitous, and shows little variation in formulation.
You moan about bias against Israel in the Western Press. C'mon, there are several writers associated with the Times who give us a near daily barrage of pro-Israel articles. You are of course one of them.
But, the Times has never had a stable of Palestine supporters. I find the other main US paper to be even more enthusiastic for Israel.
You should only have been around during the fifties and sixties. ALL US media shared the passion for Israel of Exodus, the book and film. Poor brave little Israel was always facing annihilation. But, over and over, the courageous little country pulled off an amazing victory.
Any deviation from this line, a tear for Palestinians, was antisemitism, and carried a stigma far greater than today.
So, knock off the crying. Our side gets some favorable press finally. We even have a few supporters in Congress. Of course, they are drowned out by the hundreds of members whom you guys have somehow persuaded to line up with you. And drowned out by your Times and Post colleagues.
Does even this tiny opposing voice scare you? If so, you are in big trouble: the voice is growing rapidly.
4
@alyosha
"neglected Palestinians" ?
Palestinians, per capita, are among the top recipients of foreign aid.
2
It seems anti-Semitism, thinly disguised as anti-Israel, is alive and well in the Comments section. I thought the op piece brought forward what we see too seldom in the mainstream media - the brutality the Palestinians and other mideast nations dish out to their own people - Syria being a stellar case in point!
9
Hamas is a direct result of Israeli colonization, just as the IRA was of British.
5
@Jr
Palestinians were oppressing Jews for centuries before the first European Zionist arrived.
"The Wall also drew the spite and malice of the resident Arabs, who took every opportunity to harass the hapless worshipers, scattering broken glass through the alleys leading to the Wall, dumping their garbage and sewage against it, fouling it with urine and feces."
The root cause of this conflict is that Palestinians believe that they are superior to the Jews & therefore should rule over the Jews. Because the Jews don’t want to be ruled by the Palestinians, then some Palestinians believe that the Jews should be exterminated. The Palestinians say “The Jews are our dogs!” & “The Jews are the descendants of apes and pigs.”
1
I see the light now Bret. thanks for your help!. there is no palestinian problem it is palestinian vs palestinian. right!
Thank you for this brave piece of writing, especially for deviating from the typical Palestinian narrative that appears in the NYT.
7
Question:
Why is it that Palestinian sympathizers like Congresswoman Omar are rarely heard complaining about the thugs, murderers and robbers who constitute the leadership of Iran, Syria, Hamas and Fatah?
Or expressing the hope that after the passage of more than 70 years these bums will finally commit to concluding a permanent peace agreement with the Jewish State of Israel.
Or complaining about goings on in the U.S. like this:
https://www.memri.org/tv/aqsa-islamic-society-philadelphia-imam-abouhatab-antisemitic-sermons-jews-vilest-people-control-media-manipulate-control-riches-knesset-plot
Answer: Because -- obviously -- Israel is responsible for everything bad.
9
But why the people who blame Hamas for plight of Palestinians, never admit Israeli oppression of Palestinians? Answer: because Palestinians are Muslims and there for deserve this bad treatment by Israel.
@yulia
Wrong! The correct answer is that racist Palestinians have been attacking Israel & Israel is just defending itself. Self-defense is not oppression.
“The pogrom began on the afternoon of Thursday, August 29, 1929 and was carried out by Arabs from Safed and from the nearby villages, armed with weapons and kerosene. Advancing . . . they looted and set fire to houses, urging each other on to continue with the killing. They slaughtered the schoolteacher, Aphriat, together with his wife and mother, and cut the lawyer, Toledano, to pieces with their knives. Bursting into orphanages, they smashed the children’s heads and cut off their hands. I myself saw the victims.”15
Brog, David. Reclaiming Israel's History: Roots, Rights, and the Struggle for Peace (p. 9). Regnery Publishing. Kindle Edition.
2
And to the disgrace of the NY Times, if it wasn't for this column, readers of the NY Times wouldn't have a clue these protests against Hamas have been ongoing for over a week now along with Hamas' brutality against protesters and journalists covering it. Even the BBC has been covering it --- after a delay of about three days (guess the BBC finally decided it couldn't ignore it any more).
Can you imagine what the headlines in the NY Times would have been along with the ritual anti-Israel op eds and the Roger Cohen style handwringing if Israel had done just a tenth of what has been going on in Gaza now at the hands of Hamas against their own people?
Now why oh why could that be?
8
While I agree that Hamas is a dictatorial and brutal organization, Bret Stephens has already told us last year what he thinks of Palestinian lives when he defended the shooting of unarmed protestors. And he wasn't the only NYT columnist to do so--so did Thomas Friedman, Shmuel Rosner, and Matti Friedman.
The simple fact is that Israel treats 2 million Gazans as caged animals and one can condemn both Hamas and the Israelis. But Stephens isn't capable of doing both. As for the rest of the press, they pay virtually no attention to Gazans unless there is a war or large scale massacre.
3
@Donald
Invaders should be called invaders, not protesters.
2
Another rant by the apologist for
Israel. Mr. Stephen has no empathy
for the sufferings of people in Gaza.
Blocked from all sides, flow of material
restricted, has made life miserable
for the people there. It is routinely
described as open air prison. Yet,
all Mr. Stephen cares is to let these
live in misery but don't criticize Israel.
4
Blindness to Palestinian crimes is not solely due to deep bias against Israel although that is the major part of it. Tribal hatreds, treachery and daily violence have been part of Middle Eastern culture and history from time immemorial; why would anyone notice it? Jews are held to a much higher moral standard than anyone else, so any act of self defense is conveniently branded as aggression.
4
A few years back a handful of noisy protestors against Israel and Zionism inserted themselves into the Gay Pride Parade in San Francisco. I had the urge to shout back " Free the Gays in Gaza" but didn't because there was no point. ... Hamas had already killed them.
Perhaps concerned elected officials should hold off on BDS sanctions until they get to attend a Rainbow Parade in Gaza City.
Great editorial, Bret. Nailed the issue.
10
Finally some reason and sanity in a Times Op Ed piece! I may actually renew my subscription.
7
We know this situation is complicated but this article is so very helpful in addressing these issues of internal Palestinian conflicts. And the more that the US and Europe give credibility to Hamas as the voice of the people the less we get any resolution with the conflict.
5
It has always been true that leaders on both sides of the Israeli Palestinian conflict want to maintain the status quo of perpetual conflict for political reasons. It is the only way they know of to keep themselves in power. Netanyahu implements extreme anti Palestinian measures and turns to racists for support. Hamas pushes their supporters into suicidal confrontations with Israeli soldiers and the PLO maintains a corrupt and incompetent government. The only acceptable solution by hardliners on both sides is total victory for their side and the annihilation of the other side. They ware willing to sacrifice as many people (mostly Palestinians) as necessary to support their position.
2
Seems the GOP has a better approach than Hamas: instead of building tunnels with our money, spend a few billion on a Wall and make the drug smugglers spend their money on tunnels.
Or, there are those legal ports of entry. Maybe cheaper altogether.
No thoughtful person supports Hamas, least of all the Gazans suffering under their oppression. Most would do anything to get rid of Hamas. I've spoken to many.
Gaza is an outdoor prison for nearly 2 million people, imprisoned by both Hamas and the current Israeli government, which wields all the power in the region. What has Israel done to make it possible for ordinary Gazan people, to live their ordinary lives?
2
@Stephen
I am amazed at how good Israel is to the Palestinians. Israel delivers hundreds of truckloads of food & supplies to Gaza every day even though Gazans persecuted Jews for centuries & have fired thousands of rockets & mortars at innocent Israeli civilians. Israeli doctors treated 180,000 Palestinians last year. Israel even treats members of Hamas in Israeli hospitals.
2
It is terrible but it is internal politics and Hamas is not the majority of Palestinians is it. It is bad not as bad as a foreign occupier's behavior. Every country forgets their internal warts and blemishes. Israel, Palostine, China, the EU and the US. Setting the bar a little high aren't we?
Thank you Bret Stephens.
The hypocrisy on my side of the political aisle (the Left) is stunning.
8
Just a Trumpian venting of the spleen against "fake news" and more politics of media grievance by Bret. Add on top, a healthy dose of Dennis Pragerian defense of the greatness of "Western Civilization" to justify feeling smug and satisfied that anything Israel does is just fine. And how do you claim Castro and Maduro are non-Westerners? I have no idea their ethnic heritage but those sound like Hispanic surnames to me and last time I checked Spain is a European country. What a mess. Could have written a column rightly noting that Hamas governance is corrupt and awful and it results in many deaths of Arabs and Jews alike. Instead, we get this mishmash of media grievance and culture-war defense of the "West."
1
We need to help the Palestinian people - but that is impossible as long as a terrorist group who violently took control of Gaza remains in charge. Most of the ire directed at Israel has nothing to do with helping the Palestinians. BDS, for example, takes in millions and millions of dollars each month and not a single penny goes to help the Palestinians..their purpose is solely to destroy Israel and its that kind of thinking that does nothing for Palestinians.
4
Can Brett see any parallels with Trump and his bonkers billionaire backers? Where are taxpayer billions going? Eh?
1
Thank you for the insight Mr Stephens. It's a complex situation in Gaza; no easy answers. The poverty, unemployment and oppression there has been largely unnoticed by the world. Hamas is a terror organization committed to Israel's annihilation; it has maintained tight control over the territory. Qatar and Iran will continue funding the organization, to sow the seeds of discontent. Israel shows no signs of capitulating - nor should it. It has fought for its life all these years, and will continue to do so into the indefinite future. The two state solution is no longer a reality, with close to a million Jews living in the West Bank and Jerusalem...they're there to stay. The Palestinians will continue to look for a home..much like the Jews did when they arrived in Palestine back in the early 1900's. However, Gaza is where it appears they will reside for now, under the tyranny of Hamas. It's very sad, for the civilians..women, children, elderly..who cannot fight back.
2
Bret I checked and between where I live here in Seattle and the Gaza strip is approximately 6,800 miles. Like most people I cannot rely upon first hand accounts or experiences to possibly know about what is happening in Israel or the Gaza strip, we rely upon the media and our governmental leaders. You border on suggesting that there is some kind of media conspiracy to under report what is going on with Hamas and over report the actions of Israel. You work for one of the most far reaching credible news outlets in the western world and as such are in a far better position to enlighten us.
2
“Hamas bills itself as a “resistance” movement, and such movements, from the Irish Republican Army to the Viet Cong to Zimbabwe’s ZANU-PF, tend to behave in strikingly similar ways: fanatical, thuggish, militaristic, hypocritical and corrupt.”
Funny because “fanatical, thuggish, militaristic, hypocritical and corrupt” is exactly how America acted toward Vietnam when we started and perpetuated the Vietnam War. We also did the same thing when we started the 2nd Iraq war.
“They avow democracy but never hold a truly fair election. They create secret police, parallel security services, politburos, inner- and outer-party structures. They make war on their neighbors to distract from their inevitable failure to create prosperity at home. Their leaders preach struggle and martyrdom while living lavishly.”
This sounds exactly like what Trump does, maybe not to a tee, but very close.
Here is an article that very clearly adresses a nasty issue: how western media chooses to ignore the treatment that Hamas gives to their Palestinian subjects, a choice that clearly has ideological connotations.
This is clearly not an article that adresses how Israel deals with the Palestinians. And yet, most of the comments here absolutely refuse to address the substance of the article, and go straight to the argument that “Hamas may be bad, but Israel is worse”.
Mr. Stephens has a painful gift: he writes very clear articles, who expose without mercy people who operate based on ideological obsessions, and who definitely aren’t able to hold in their mind two apparently opposing thoughts.
4
Mr. Stephens, thank you, thank you, thank you for reporting on what those attack tunnels cost. During the last Israeli campaign against Gaza, when Gaza was really being flattened, Hamas refused to allow these tunnels to be used as bomb shelters -- for which, of course, they would have been perfect. Instead, Gazans were threatened with punishment if they left their homes to shelter anywhere, let alone in the tunnels whose construction represented the diversion of tens of millions of foreign aid dollars. This has always struck me as the perfect expression of what Hamas is and the evil it does: provoking Israel with their stupid, ineffectual rockets and then pushing their own people forward to the firing line to be "martyred" in order to win yet another propaganda coup against Israel by piling up the corpses (a tactic most recently repeated at the fence). And all of this to divert from Hamas' own corruption.
4
Mr. Stephens employs a standard tool used by "educated" conservatives" to discuss his point, known as the straw man. The straw man this time is that Palestinian protests against Hamas are not reported because of a "larger progressive fiction" that has an anti-Israel and anti-West bias. He then is able to group this straw man with Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and Fidel Castro, among others. What a hateful bunch!
He then proceeds to contrast this hateful bunch with "Israel and its friends," showing how they are the good guys.
None of this rhetorical mishmash provides enlightenment. Crimes of one person or group does not diminish or enlarge the crimes of another. His information would have been better presented if the focus had been on facts about the poor government run by Hamas than on the effort to bash those he sees as unfair critics of Israel.
As for the premise for creating the straw man, a search of "Palestinian demonstrations against Hamas" yielded multiple articles which I stopped reading at 7 pages. His argument for underreporting doesn't hold up.
The Palestinians are a highly abused group of people, used as pawns in geo and local politics. Articles which would tend to enlighten readers about this problem and its solutions would better serve all of us.
1
Great article. I just wish that similar essays were written by non-Jewish journalists as well.
5
Most reporting is now based on ideology. It's less a reporting of objective facts than a promotion of particular narratives. Clearly Israelis are on the wrong side of the narrative. Support for Israel is a violation of that ideology.
Eventually ideology becomes its own prison, and no conflicting facts are permitted.
3
Agree entirely. From cluster bombs in Yemen to outright slaughter in Syria the world and its press do not care if an Arab kills or maims an Arab, but if the violence involves Israel, and its defense forces, there is a huge outcry, no matter what the circumstances.
7
Netanyahu has stated “ Israel is not a state of all it’s citizens. According to the nation state law we passed, Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people and not anyone else “. From its inception Israel turned its back on the indigenous Palestinians and forced them to move from their villages. The Palestinian leaders have many faults but today’s situation would not be as violent as it is if in the beginning of the Zionists had not been so intent on a Jewish only country. The Zionists wanted it all for themselves and didn’t want a country that shared economic,social and political institutions with the indigenous Palestinians. This attitude set the stage for today’s stalemate.
2
From Turkey’s Erdogan to campus demagogues, it’s Israel’s evil blockade that’s destroying and dehumanizing Gaza. If Israel has to be a pariah state to defend itself (or worse, abet its enemies), then so be it. Take the political punches.
Unfortunately, until something changes with the Palestinians, there is no path to resolution. The people of Gaza suffer, and BDS gains steam.
Good work, you’all.
4
All lives matter, and freedom matters equally. Palestinians are alive but they don't have freedom. Part of the problem is their fault, but Israelis are driving all most all the aspects of the current conditions. So they bear responsibility for the violence, death, and absence of freedom for Palestinians.
1
There is a critical difference between being killed by occupiers and your own people. Israel must leave the occupied territories.
The fact that Mr. Stephen's cannot differentiate between occupiers and one's own people.
1
This article states what should have been reported starting at least in the 1990s when there was a possible peace process between the Palestinians and Israel.
3
Brett Steven's is arguing that the oppression of Palestinians by the Israeli government is justified because there are other nations and political leaders who are "worse."
Hmmmmmm!
2
Brett Stephens is accurate, as always, in describing events in our world, He is right on here because he knows the repressive dictatorial leaders of Hamas never are called out. Especially when they injure their own people . Really something that he has to bring it light and it is fortunate for us that he does !
4
Prisons are tough places to live in. It is even tougher when the prisoners food supply is cynically cut to the minimum number of calories to avoid actual starvation, their sewage system is destroyed and they are denied basic medical care and commerce or contact with the outside world. And the inmates are allowed to run the prison with the "official" guards only going inside periodically en masse to "mow the grass" as the slaughter with the latest high tech weaponry is quaintly described. All these things are true of the open air prison the Israel maintains in Gaza. The despicable behavior by Hamas authorities and others is the natural and intended result of the Israeli oppression.
Incidentally, Hamas actually won the last election and the coup was actually an attempted, failed coup attempt by the Israeli supported Fatah.
187
@Jack Robinson When will we be able to have an honest and open debate about the Israeli/Palestinian problem? The Palestinian people are being demonized, while the Israelis have access to all our political officials, are present in MSM on TV. All of us do know what miserable places Gaza and the WB are. Our politicians are leading the PR effort for Israel. Any critic of Israeli policies is demonized as anti-semitism. The MSM and government have lost all credibility when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians, we are awash in nothing but pro-Israeli propaganda.
12
@Jack Robinson Israel should let in people into their country who are trying to kill them, and they should allow weapons into Gaza to be used against them? I think not. Israel has a border, and is allowed to protect it. The Palestinians have a border with Egypt, yet when the Palestinians tried to destroy Egypt's government, Egypt closed the border, too.
Gaza is not an open air prison, but Israel does not have to have a border open to those who would murder them.
61
@Jack Robinson
According to the World Health Organization, obesity affects 26.8% of the Palestinian population (23.3% males, 30.8% females.
Due to widespread illegal well drilling, Gaza’s sole aquifer has been over-pumped for years, resulting in the salinization of much of its water.
Hamas has decided tunnels are more important than sewage treatment.
53
This is indeed an eye-opener of which I was not aware. I will not take sides, or will I criticize the media. I am neither Jewish nor Palestinian, although I have American friends who are of the above mentioned ethnicities and cultures. I will say, however, that both Israel and Palestine need to clean up their acts, beginning with their leaders. Hamas is without a doubt ruthless. However, and this is merely a question, do people believe that Netanyahu is pure of heart and soul? At some point, and I believe Jared Kushner is not the answer, Israeli and Palestinian heads of state must come together and reach an agreement. Too many innocent people are being victimized, and this must end. Israel, being the more developed and wealthier, must take this first step.
2
It isn't quite fair, to call this simply anti-israeli bias. International law enshrines under the concept of "sovereignty" the rights of murderous juntas to oppress their own people everywhere, while on the other hand it forbids wars of conquest. Does the author think we should insist on republican government and respect of individual rights uniformly in the world?
When we look at the failure to come to a peaceful two-state solution we need to consider who benefits from the status quo. I think the answer is Hamas and the the Israeli right. Settlements serve to enrage Palestinians, who end up supporting terrorist groups like Hamas, who launch violent attacks, which give Israel plenty of cover to avoid negotiating. Hamas needs the settlements. Netanyahu needs the terrorists.
213
There are no Jewish settlements in Gaza. Try another excuse for Hamas' bad behavior.
25
@EPI
Israel has not avoided negotiations, it is the Palestinians who have refused. The status quo which you claim benefits Israel requires Israel's children to spend at least two years in the armed forces. No parent wants their children to serve in the military and be in harms way. Israelis want peace more than anything. But they cannot make peace by themselves.
20
@EPI There's actually no reason to assume that anyone is benefiting from the Status Quo. Sometimes people just shoot themselves in the foot, over and over again, for no good reason. That seems to me to be what both sides are doing now in Israel/Palestine.
1
Why are Fidel Castro and Nicolas Maduro considered "non-Westerners". I believe their countries lie in what was formerly considered the Western Hemisphere. Also this piece is a sad counterpoint to the changes being made at the Museum of American History (also seen in today's paper), trying to portray indigenous people in a more historically accurate position. Look at what our "western culture" has done to those first people? Genocide can come in many colors and across longer histories.
1
I know what it means when it comes to the Chinese horrible suffering under Mao. I have close family members directly experienced that. When it comes to oppressing and torturing people I totally agree--which government does it should not matter. It should be rigorously exposed and condemned. Those who still defend the oppressive dictators just because they are "internal leaders" (versus foreign power) and justify their acts by referencing this or that history or politics are not looking at the life of those who have to live in real-time reality, not in the talking of ideologies. Those who have to live their life under dictators cannot afford that luxury.
I totally agree. For years I have asked the same question: Why don't the Palestinians in Gaza revolt at the lack of economic and social development under Hamas?
Yes, the Israeli's have made serious mistakes in their relationship. The settlements on the West Bank are wrong and should be removed. However, in the many years since they took over Gaza all efforts and resources have been focused on attacks against Israel.
7
I am sure they read and they considered the argument, they just found it is not convincing. Israel doesn't have the right to oppress Palestinians, just because Hamas is bad.
1
@yulia
It never hurts to learn, Yulia. With all my respect.
Israel has Arabs in all posts of their society.
The hospitals have almost half Muslim doctors and nurses. A Muslim supreme court judge sent a Jewish Israeli president to jail. I can go on and on.
Both Rich and yourself must buy an airline ticket and visit Israel. I'll bet anything that will change your mind.
2
@Dontbelieveit I am not so sure, how Arabs in Israel (even if there is no discrimination against them, what is not true) could justify the oppression of Palestinians.
A very clever column. It is abominable that Hamas treats Palestinians the way they do - hiding behind civilians as cover in times of war and destroying their lives when they're not. But that does not condone Israel and their aggression. Their actions against the Palestinians are greater in scale, way beyond as a matter of fact. Their retaliatory ( as the Israeli Government puts it ) with their sophisticated armies and weapons wreak havoc to hundred thousands of Palestinians and their infrastructure with one attack. So if the West is not making such a noise is because of perspective. Hamas or Israel? It's the Palestinians who suffer.
3
I wish I could believe that the passionate BDS crowd would be willing to read and meaningfully consider this worthwhile piece.
13
Right, right. The other guy is bad and you are somehow the victim of mistreatment. These are pretty standard tactics among human rights abusers as well. Not to mention Bret Stephens sounds like an articulate Trump.
The Viet Cong are an odd example to throw in the mix though. You do realize South Vietnam no longer exists, right? Referencing the NLA sends very mixed messages. I can't tell whether Bret means Hamas is a rouge gurreilla faction within an other was legitimate Palestinian state or whether Palestine under Hamas is a rouge political faction within an unified Israeli state.
In either event, South Vietnam was in many ways fanatical, thuggish, militaristic, and especially hypocritical and corrupt. That's why the DRV and the NLA ultimately won the war. Remember the US lost. Vietnam is now prosperous mixed socialist economy and one of the fastest growing and most peaceful places in the developing world.
Again, I'm not really sure what Stephens is trying to say here. I'd actually more inclined to support Hamas after listening to his historical comparison.
4
@Andy if you don't know what Stephens is trying to say you must be pretty thick skulled. he's talking about the double standard in reporting which is why you don't ever read about what he wrote about in his editorial. is it that hard for you to comprehend that? and why would his editorial encourage you to support hamas which is nothing more than a terrorist organization.
2
An odd conclusion to draw, and your assessment of Vietnam suggests you have little more than skimmed their government propaganda (one thing they are good at). Vietnam is corrupt at the highest levels, has a weak legal system, an oppressive censorship regime, and is a notoriously unstable place to do business. Much like Hamas controlled territory.
1
Bret's "blame the victim" argument falls apart when one realizes that the entire Palestinian situation stems from the Israeli occupation. Just as killers like the Boston Marathon bombers and the Orlando nightclub shooter were radicalized in response to American military intervention in Syria and Iraq, so too are Palestinians more likely to be radicalized as Israel bulldozes homes, burns olive orchards, bombs children playing soccer and sends thousands of settlers to steal land.
Hamas itself continues its grip on power in large part because it operates as Gaza's primary means of resistance to the occupation. The people of Gaza would be far more inclined to support a more moderate government if not for the occupation and the aforementioned acts of Israeli aggression.
I would remind Bret that under the Geneva Conventions, Palestinians have the right to resistance but the occupying Israelis do not have the right to prosecute further acts of aggression.
4
Bret Stephens should be recognized for finally revealing the stark truth about the Palestinian plight for the ugliness that it has been all along. Without question, the Palestinian people have been victimized by unjustifiable and harsh Israeli policies that have been fueled by hard right demagogues who enable Israel's version and ally of America's demagogue, Donald Trump.
Western journalists, in their zeal to capture Palestine's plight, have trained their spotlights on the extremism and corruption of Netanyahu, much of it justified, while largely ignoring the even worse crimes of Hamas against their own people.
Stephens is to be commended for bringing the systemic victimization of the Palestinian people, not by the Israeli people but by a minority faction of far-right Israeli factions, which in many ways constitute the Israeli counterpart of an increasingly histrionic Donald Trump and his alt-right fanatics, and the abuses and brutality of Hamas.
5
Agree wholeheartedly with this column. There are strong parallels to the Republican party in the USA--they, like Hamas, have inflicted a great deal of hardship on their supporters, but have gotten away with it by demonizing and blaming a common enemy (Democrats and Israel respectively). Clearly, if Hamas ever attempted the hard work of actually building a functioning society (or even just built a hospital) it would destroy their narrative. I remain mystified as to why my fellow liberals strain their necks so hard to avoid a critical look at Hamas and the Palestinian leadership over the decades.
3
We created Israel.
Americans should pay attention to what the Israelis do. For a long time now Israel has been the biggest beneficiary, by far, of American taxpayer funded foreign aide.
Israelis owe us and they reflect on us.
5
@Tracy Rupp
“We created Israel”.
Jews created Israel. Through THEIR labor.
THEIR blood, sweat, and tears...NOT ours.
4
@Shenoa
Right!
Sometimes I have doubts i it is a product of those that "do not know what they don't know", plain Jew Hatred, or opportunism.
This last one human attribute has been the main ingredient of the millennia persecution and massacres: what's safer? Side with the Babylonians, the Romans, Torquemada, Adolf, Islam or .... the Jewish people?
Europeans, facing an incredible influx of specific refugees are having this dilema as we speak: side with Israel or Islam?
I elevate this modest question in the spirit of constructive action to solve the conflict once and for all. Justice is achieved only by brave individuals.
2
What constitutes the desperate reality for Palestinian people under Hamas leadership in Gaza can be extended to address crucial issues surrounding the Israeli/Palestinian conflict itself. One addressing what the media chooses to report and how it chooses to report it. For over time it has become the rhetoric and narrative of the PA/Hamas propaganda machine that has come to be appropriated by the international community as defining the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Consistently avoided and going unrecognized as part of the discussion is Palestinian leadership victimizing their own people.
1
Nothing can shake Stephen's support of Israel no matter what they might do. I suspect that the criticisms of Israel grow out of the mistake that was the creation of the state of Israel in the first place. Religious states are always a bad idea. Non ending war has resulted with no hope for peace in sight.
4
This analysis is suspect because this guy denies human caused climate change. Inability to interpret reality in one sphere suggests that he is likely to struggle to see the truth in another.
3
This is a typical Bret Stephens column: smart, to the point and well written. But is tells only part, albeit an important part, of the story, as, I believe, Stephens would agree.
It is my hope that Stephens will soon write a piece that offers an approach, if not a solution, toward resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In that piece I would like him to balance the Zionist dream of establishing or reclaiming a homeland against the fundamental and visceral grievance of Palestinians that this Jewish homeland was and continues to be build at their expense and often on their land?
Should the Palestinians, like all of us in life, just get over their grievances and accept reality and make the best of things.
But still: what is "the best of things" now for Jew and non-Jew alike? And is it actually achievable?
Why shouldn't Israel not just continue to "muddle through?" It has worked in the past. It has annexed East Jerusalem, established West Bank settlements and marginalize Arab-Israeli citizens. Led by a pioneering tech sector, Israel is prospering economically. Internationally, it is working cooperatively (if under the table) with Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. It is not opposed by any international power in the region, except Iran.
But can the Palestinian "can" be kicked down the road indefinitely? I don't believe so. What do you think Mr. Stephens?
1
Please, Mr. Stephens, continue to be a balancing voice on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. I wonder how many Americans (and how many "woke" "progressives") are aware of the many Hamas atrocities (including ones that victimize the people of Gaza)? I'd wager very few people are! And why is that?! THAT'S the point of the Stevens column: biased press coverage. If "progressives" spent even 5% of their time on Hamas atrocities AND the genocidal Hamas charter, then the American left wouldn't be discredited on this issue.
7
Stephens applies a broad brush. In his view, all resistance to the West since WWII is "fanatical, thuggish, militaristic, hypocritical and corrupt". His pen was sorely needed by Caesar.
The oppressed in the world have no voice in the Western press except the occasional progressive commentator. There is no solution for Palestinians offered by Stephens or any other conservative.
The fact that progressive commentators may be biased against the stronger nation--in this case Israel--is something we can learn from and correct. But note that Stephens has no hope to offer those who live in Palestine. He plays the blame game himself. Palestinian lives don't matter to Stephens--unless liberals are to blame.
1
No, and I'm not surprised by the existence of prison gangs either.
1
The Arab world will NEVER help Palestinians in any appreciable way. They need Palestinians to be kept poor and apparently ill-treated in order to keep up the illusion that Israel is the sole creator of their dysfunction. If the Arabs with wealth and power wanted to they could ease the suffering of Palestinians but they have to maintain their narrative of Israel the Evil.
The suffering is real but it's not all due to Israel.
9
Gaza is an "open air prison" as Noam Chomsky once called it, because the Hamas regime that governs it (badly) is implacably hostile to Israel. If a government came to power in Gaza that was able to come to terms with Israel (say, recognize Israel's right to exist and declare an end to hostilities in return for favorable trade relations), conditions in Gaza would improve immeasurably. But a Gazan politician who dared suggest such a rapproachment would be assassinated, most likely. Hamas would rather have perpetual hostility and perpetual poverty.
4
This piece provides valuable insight into an underreported aspect of the Palestinian issue. However, Mr. Stephens seems only to use it to further the dualistic nature of debate around Israel—that one of the political players, Israel or Palestine, is good while the other is bad. In fact, the failures of one do not absolve the failures of the other. That Hamas deserves scorn does not mean that Israeli violations of human rights no longer merit attention. Hamas is wretched, Fatah is corrupt, and Israel is pushing the idea of an ethno-centric security state to dangerous levels that are unique among contemporary, functioning democracies. All deserve criticism for making the lives of Palestinian civilians miserable.
1
I think people get that there are no good guys. Yet, the bad guys being bad with our money generate more questions because in theory we ought to be able to do something about them.
1
Certainly the press has done a poor job on some various stories, the coverage of Trump in 2016 was a massive mistake in many ways. The fact that the press isn't covering Arabs shooting Arabs isn't much of a surprise as sadly there is a constant stream of such stories and the powers that be in the press don't see them as newsworthy at least to the American public. Regards Hamas they are certainly not a great ruling party but Fatah is not doing a great job either and the Palestinians don't seem to have any good options and I think that perhaps Hamas just gave the Palestinians hope albeit false hope. Not all that different then Trump somehow giving hope to enough Americans to get elected. Perhaps it is an American ideal that the rich and powerful should take care of the weak that makes the story of Israelis persecuting Palestinians more newsworthy to the powers that be.
It's interesting how some of the comments here are still more concerned with how Israel is still a villain rather than calling for a better media coverage of the Palestinians' suffering. Meanwhile for the most part the article is talking about how the common Palestinians being victimised by different parties, including their own government. It kind of confirms what the title of the article is suggesting, doesn't it? No one should ever be excused for inflicting pain and suffering on innocent people anywhere, and I believe the press has the power (and with that comes responsibility) to shed light on these grave issues as objective and factual as possible, not cherry-pick what would most incite responses from the rest of the world.
4
Bravo, Mr. Stephens. "Narrative" journalism doesn't help anyone in the long term, but it sells papers. Check out the coverage of the Christchurch massacre (which as a religiously based hate crime deserved tons of coverage) vs. that of the Nigerian massacre of Christians on 3/4 (which also deserved tons of coverage as a religious based hate crime).
What Nigerian massacre? you ask. Exactly.
6
Well written Bret. And right on. Hamas is corrupt and incompetent, let alone savage. The failure is on journalists for now adequately reporting these things. Thank you
5
A wedding was disturbed in Israel years ago with no injuries and Netanyahu bombed Palestinians. Palestinians have had a very hard existence. Netanyahu has now gone further recently to state only Jewish Israelis have rights. Israel has a choice in upcoming elections.
3
Israel needs to tell West Bank Palestinians that they can forget about an independent state on the West Bank. They had their chance. They didn't take it. That ship has sailed.
The West Bank needs to be incorporated into Israel-proper. West Bankers should get full Israeli citizenship and rights. Palestinians who lost land, money or businesses should get Just Compensation as under the legal Doctrine of Eminant Domain. No "right of return". They get cash instead. You want your land back, take your cash and buy it back if it's available.
West Bank Palestinians can get some autonomy as French Canadians do in Quebec. And that's it. Case closed. With the huge influx of Jews since 1948 the region alloted to Jews is too small to support a viable state for Jews much less two states.
The UN should declare Gaza an independent state whether Gaza wants it or not. Israel vacated Gaza years ago. Egypt doesn't want Gaza back. Independence is the only viable outcome.
There's your Palestinian State. Gaza!
3
@MIKEinNYC
'they had a chance and they didn't take it'. Imagine the opposite, Mike. Like the Arabs gaining the upper hand and treating the Jews, as the Jews are treating the Palestinians. Just imagine.
The leaders of Hamas seem just like the kind of people Donald Trump would admire, alongside Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Rodrigo Duterte and MBS.
The citizens of Gaza deserve better, and so do the citizens of the United States.
4
This is classic whataboutism. Unhelpful and just attempts to turn attention away from a legitimate critique of Israel without addressing it at all.
5
@Zainab Akbar
Not quite..
This piece illustrates how the Palestinians in Gaza are being attacked and pressured by their own elected government - Hamas.
But yes, let's make sure the Israelis are totally to blame for the Gazan's misery...and not shine a light on how horrific Hamas truly is for the Gazans...
3
A disgusting and predictable attempt to shift accountability for the plight of the Palestinians from Israel, where it belongs, to Hamas.
Yes, Hamas is brutal and corrupt, but it operates under the shadow of 70 years of illegal occupation by a "fanatical, thuggish, militaristic, hypocritical and corrupt" power called Israel.
Supporters of Israel have no moral defense for its institutional and openly stated racism against the indigenous Palestinians. So they're left with whataboutism and casuistry.
Cohen, Stevens, Goldberg, and numerous other pundits on these pages are defenders of Israeli racism, for which they should be condemned.
2
Disgusting? Really just by pointing out that Gazans are protesting (and having their protests violently stopped by Hamas) is what you find disgusting??? Thanks for proving Mr Stephens 100% correct and you win today’s “obliviously Ironic Comment Award”
2
@Hoody 16
a fanatical, thuggish, militaristic, hypocritical and corrupt" power called...HAMAS!
It always amazes me how people become "blind" to what Hamas is and how they burden their people in Gaza.
But I get it....its much easier to blame Israel than it is for the Palestinians to look within and see the mistakes they have made.
And there has not been nor has there ever been any type of "illegal occupation" by Israel. Another falsehood to deflect off the Palestinians' failure
2
Until the Six Day War USA's Middle East policy was fairly well balanced. After Israel's attack on the USS Liberty [a lightly armed spy ship navigating in international waters] Navy analysis uncovered that the Israeli torpedo boat gunners had targeted the spy with 40-mm tracer rounds Made in America.
In Nov. 1967, Republican Representative from Iowa, H.R. Gross introduced an amendment that "not one dollar of U.S. credit or aid of any kind [should] go to Israel until there is a firm settlement with regard to the attack and full reparations have been made [and Israel] provides full and complete reparations for the killing and wounding of more than 100 United States citizens in the wanton, unprovoked attack…I wonder how you would feel if you were the father of one of the boys who was killed in that connection-or perhaps you do not have any feelings with respect to these young men who were killed, wounded and maimed, or their families."- James Scott, "The Untold Story of Israel’s Deadly 1967 Assault on a U.S. Spy Ship"
The Pentagon dismantled the spy ship program in 1968 but USS Liberty survivors and supporters continue to pursue justice: a true Court of Inquiry conducted by the Navy as to WHY the LBJ Administration called off the rescue and ordered the survivors to never speak about their eye witness experiences.
However the USS Liberty Veterans Association broke that silence and their supporters are growing: https://usslibertyveterans.org
How can Brett Stephens decry bias against Israel after witnessing how Ilhan Omar was treated for merely questioning the Israel-US relationship? We are in bed with Israel and provide massive amounts of aid, so naturally our standard for them is higher. I love how you use the last paragraph to assert that any human rights violations are wrong after you spend the entire article undermining said violations under the guise of political convenience.
"Israelis and their friends abroad often complain about slanted coverage that seems to find fault in everything they do, while finding excuses in everything their adversaries do." Everyone thinks they're treated unfairly. A loud-mouth in the WH claims the same thing. Is this your threshold for deeming something truthful?
2
One thing that is overlooked completely in all of this is that in Israel there are churches, mosques as well as synagogues. Tell me which Muslim countries, especially Saudi Arabia allow other faiths to exist in the open in their countries. How do you make peace with people whose concept of peace has always been death to the Jews and the complete removal of the State of Israel from this world.
9
Well, this was refreshing! I hope it will spur some media outlets to do the hard work of reporting based on facts, rather than just the easier -- and erroneous -- "Israel Causes All Palestinian Misery" point of view.
4
It is only relatively recently that U.S. media have begun to pay more attention to Israel's treatment of Palestinians. One reason why U.S. media and U.S. citizens might choose to focus on Israel's behavior toward Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel is because the U.S., via U.S. government aid (particularly military aid) as well as some of our personal and corporate purchases and stock holdings, help to support the state of Israel, and by extension, its behavior toward Palestinians. In also attending to the harms that Hamas causes the Palestinians, we might want to consider whether and how U.S. withdrawal of aid to Gaza may have exacerbated and continues to exacerbate those harms.
Before there was Hamas there was a corrupt Palestinian Fatah/Palestinian Authority. That is what brought about Hamas. Arafat stole millions of dollars and paid off his cronies rather than build the institutions of a state.
On the verge of a peace deal (Camp David), Arafat walked away and sent suicide bombers into Israel. Terror begets more terror. Moderates get silenced as radicals become more prominent on each side. The separation wall gets built to protect Israelis from suicide bombers. The cycles continue.
Better yet, go back to 1948. 2 states were created by the world of nations. The surrounding Arab countries rejected the international proclamation and started a war. They lost. They continued war making and continued to lose. Rather than absorb the tiny Palestinian population, they refused to allow them citizenship.
That is the history. Any fair criticism must begin with that backdrop. While I do not approve of Netanyahu's policy of settling the West Bank, nonetheless, to understand the issues one must also look at the history that preceded.
One must also question: with whom is Israel to make peace with?
The P.A. and Hamas cannot make peace with each other. Suicide bombers and martyrs are glorified, school teachings at kindergartens and nurseries preach hate of the Jews. Another generation is being lost. Hamas' charter calls for the murder of Jews, not just the state of Israel!
Any balanced, objective reporting must place blame accordingly.
13
"Any balanced, objective reporting must place blame accordingly." Please consider: a well meaning statement which is mantra-like in meaning(s). “Balance,” a dynamic consensualized state, personal as well as systemic, is a measurable,
+ valenced goal. To be sought by many. Aspired to. Not by ALL. Never fully achievable outside of circus performance balancing acts!
“…objective reporting,” representing semantic surrealism, is a myth. It may be more possible/feasible, re objects. Be they complicated or complex, rather than living organisms of whatever state of their evolutionary-effected development and functioning interacting with their choices. Learned from or not. The eye of the beholder, whatever its evolutionary trajectory, is not dimensionalized with "objective" DNA.
As for “blame,” righteous or not, however close-of-kin with “responsibility,” both continue to co-exist in dynamic realities and environments in which “personal accountability” is more a voiced or written word, term, and concept, than being a live, expressed, experienced value. Norm. Ethic. Dynamic + valenced process. BE coming as well as BE ing a viable, sustainable, menschlich outcome. For ALL of US as individuals; kin, friends,neighbors, strangers. Wherever each of US IS. By choice or not!
1
Thank you, Bret Stephens! For years, I challenged the New York Times' coverage of Israel. I engaged William Borders, a Times editor, in a fierce debate by mail. (There was no email then.) Finally, I adopted an approach recommended by organizations that fight widespread anti-Israel coverage: word counting. In any given article, I counted the words quoted from the Palestinian side and the words quoted from the Israeli side. The imbalance was striking! Palestinian words far outnumbered Israeli. But then I gave up. Borders stopped replying to my inarguable word counts; and over the years, through many Times journalists covering the area, the slant did not change. Every single article about the conflict--or not even the conflict but Israeli politics and even lifestyle--had a unique headline but the same subtext: Bad Israel, bad bad! Mr. Stephens does a brilliant job of deconstructing the reasons for this biased journalism. I applaud him.
8
Your not alone!!!
2
Stephens and his co-defenders of whatever Israel and the Zionist propaganda machine does simply cannot bury the facts, no matter how hard they try.
Without the violent oppression and continuing occupation of what used to be the Arab half of the former British mandate and the wholesale disenfranchisement of what we today call 'Palestinians' none of this deep seated hatred that gave birth to Hamas, Fatah, Hezbollah, and the rest would exist.
I watched a delightfully funny movie over the weekend with Adam Sandler in the title role titled 'Don't mess with the Zohan' which had a beautiful message of peace at the end, when the commando (Sandler) meets his chief protagonist, a top Hezbollah terrorist but instead of trying to kill each other (again and again nd again) they realise that all this hate and killing must stop so that they both can realise their dream: the commando wants to become a hair dresser and the terrorist just wants to sell shoes.
Excellent advice.
3
Mr. Stephens is the former editor of the Jerusalem Post, who now writes a regular column for probably the most important single platform for opinion in the US Media. Yet he is complaining that the US media is anti-Israel and Pro-Palestinian. Last I checked, Sari Nusseibeh or Edward Said were not columnists on the op-ed page of any major American newspaper.
5
A well argued piece.
To those saying this doesnt let Israel off any moral hooks - of course not. But those of us who understand the issue is a people stuck between a rock *and* a hard place, hearing acknowledgement that there is a hard place and not iust a rock, is the starting point for rationale discourse. Too many of my progressive allies make themselves appear incapable of having a rational, factual discussion on the issues, when they start from the false premise that there is only a rock.
274
@Rob
Respectfully, you need to be factual. Fact, Israelis perpetrate offenses that are indefensible at this point. If Israel's bar now is that we treat the Palestinians better than they are treated by Hamas- good luck with that. Again, tell that to a 9 year old. Your parents caused all of this. Please get the stats on how many Palestinian children are incarcerated in Israel with no due process.
Look at the land confiscations, the walls of segregation, the dehumanization of Palestinians by a state that has lost all semblance of moral high ground with the kind of leadership it has. Ultimately. we can not justify evil by looking at other evil. Thanks.
9
@Clear eyed Why was the embassy moved to Jerusalem if not to provoke the Palestinian people.
5
@Clear eyed: Rob's last sentence, "Too many of my progressive allies make themselves appear incapable of having a rational, factual discussion on the issues, when they start from the false premise that there is only a rock," doesn't say that we should justify what Israel is doing by looking at Hamas. It says we shouldn't pretend that Hamas isn't ALSO partly responsible for the suffering of Gazans.
Your twisting of his comment illustrates perfectly what he is saying. Unless we are open-eyed and fair about ALL the parties in the Middle East, there will be no solution. In fact, focusing solely on Israel's responsibility has two effects that work against your own goals:
1. It hardens Israeli attitudes, pushing most of its citizens to believe they are under siege from critics around the world.
2. It gives Palestinians a false sense that they have the unlimited support of those critics and that they do not need to temper their actions, only point at Israel's and make demands without offering anything in return.
Stephens's op-ed cites specific instances of evil committed by Hamas. Either you disbelieve what he's saying or you don't think that these evils matter. If you truly want peace between these peoples, then you need to be consider ALL the facts.
16
Why is Israel always in a position where it has to defend itself? If you look at the last 70 years the Palestinian status quo has been nothing but terrorism, instability & war. Israel moved out of Gaza more than a decade ago. It has been rewarded with constant attacks emanating from a territory where the infrastructure of mayhem & destruction — rockets, tunnels and the like — is the only growth industry. Hamas doesn't want peace. They've always chosen violence. Always. Imagine a scenario where the Arabs won the 1948 war they initiated against Israel. What would have happened? Here's what Arab League's Secretary-General Azzam Pasha promised would happen: "This will be a war of extermination & a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres & the Crusades." How can Israel negotiate with that kind of mentality? They can't. Palestinians have had a chance for peace many times. They're where they are today because they're leadership is committed to terror. The so called "Peace Process" is a fraud & the people who have pushed it are self-deluded charlatans. In the past 70 years trillions have been spent trying to solve this problem. A 2013 Harvard study estimated that future medical care & disability benefits for veterans of these war will exceed $900 billion. We've engaged in horrifying wars with no end in sight because of our involvement in the "Peace Process". What do we have to show for it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Time to chart a new course.
309
@Bill Brown
Ben Gurion (arguing for a Jewish) state to be established in Palestine: "land without people for the people without land".
Except it wasn't either.
15
@Bill Brown
That is a great point and I don't understand why Israel is being put under all this pressure. Why can't the Hamas just stop? You know, the world would become a better place if they did.
15
@waldo- Read any report of travel in that Turkish province in the late 1800's. Samuel Clemmens (Mark Twain) made the same comment!
16
This is a good description of one specific subject. It can also be part of a more general principal that is of even greater importance: Arab lives don't matter if they are taken or ruined by other Arabs. Saudi Arabia's cutting Khashoggi into little pieces seems to prove this in two ways. First, it was only noticed because he has ties to the United States. We have recently heard that the team that murdered him and cut him up has been quite active at evil deeds for a long time. Second, there will be no actual consequences. Trump and Pence and Pompeo, who try to convince us that the Saudis are completely innocent, have seen to that.
And throughout North Africa and the Near and Middle East there are plenty of other, larger examples of this general principle.
5
This paper in particular does not cover Palestinian internal news, what their "leaders" say about Israel and Jews, their prison system which tortures its own to the point that sometimes those who survive are willing to spy for Israel, their open theft of billions of dollars for personal use, and their absolute determination to never reach any long term, let alone permanent, agreement with Israel on its right to survive/exist. That includes the "moderate" Abbas.
Because the western media, with rare exception, is so biased in favor of the Palestinians, it allows its despotic, long unelected "leaders" to continue stonewalling attempts at reaching a negotiated settlement with Israel. It also gives them the luxury (take that literally) to censor any criticism, be it how they misspend foreign aid money, their cruel treatment of internal prisoners, or the cynical exploitation of using young children and teens to "demonstrate" - violently - at the Gazan fence, which is BTW, funded by Iran.
Some commenters fantasize that American soldiers will monitor a demilitarized zone between Israel and a future Palestine, except they fail to grasp that "Palestine" sends in hundreds of thousands of workers, daily, into Israel, let alone the 20% of Israeli-Arab/Palestinians who are citizens of Israel, and whose behaviors are often in sync with Palestinian rage. Few grasp that most Palestinians disfavor a two state solution, and insist on one state run by sharia law. Jews? Are you kidding?
224
@Rosalie Lieberman Have you seen how the Settlers talk about the Palestinians? Watch the documentary, The Settlers, on Prime Video. You'll think twice about what defines terrorism.
8
@Rosalie Lieberman
What is your source for your claim of Palestinians wanting "Sharia law".?They want equality and justice like anyone else.
8
@David Breitkopf
I agree that settlers are a problem too and the cynic in me thinks that they're being used as a future bargaining chip. The religious right has waaay too much power in Israel, far more than their numbers represent due to an extreme version of Proportional Representation. That said, the way this group talks about Palestinians isn't the norm in Israel, they're extremists like any other. The Settlers documentary makes it seem like their numbers are far bigger than they are.
9
Bret writes: "That’s odd: Some media outlets are prepared to devote months of journalistic effort in order to trace the trajectory of a single bullet that accidentally kills a Palestinian — provided the bullet is Israeli."
What reputable news outlet has ever done this? Please cite.
2
The New York Times did this exact thing this summer
1
Thank you thank you thank you
7
The problem is rather than highlight the Hamas terror on their own people, a racist Israeli government continues to enact policies that push the people back into the hands of Hamas. Yes Hamas is a terrorist organization. The Israeli government is openly racist and anti democratic.
3
Opposing power blocks vying for control of Middle Eastern oil have long used Israel and Palestinians as their proxies in a decades old battle for control of the oil rich region. Violence by the use of military force, terrorism and rockets could not continue without very large outside cash subsidies and ongoing supplies military weapons. Until the “benefactors” on both sides decide that militarism is no longer in their interests — no lasting peace is possible.
@Phil
Huh? Israel left Gaza 14 years ago. Hamas is in charge and turned it into a forward base for Iran at the expense of its people. Please explain how that is racism, Phil. Facts, not reflexive regurgitations.
2
Who has superior power?
Who has the backing (and weapons) of the US?
Who is occupying whose land according to the UN?
Who is building illegal settlements, again, according to the UN?
Who suffers the greatest fatalities? A bullet for a rock.
Oh I get it...we should kick the Palestinians when they are down.
That should help keep Israel secure..
4
@Rob
I know what it means when it comes to the Chinese horrible suffering under Mao. I have close family members directly experienced that. When it comes to oppressing and torturing people I totally agree--which government does it should not matter. It should be rigorously exposed and condemned. Those who still defend the oppressive dictators just because they are "internal leaders" (versus foreign power) and justify their acts by referencing this or that history or politics are not looking at the life of those who have to live in real-time reality, not in the talking of ideologies. Those who have to live their life under dictators cannot afford that luxury.
2
@Rob Who is sending rockets and incendiary bombs into Israel? Who is digging tunnels? Who is teaching their children that Jews and Israel have no right to exist?
3
Bravo. Palestinians, BTW, have been the underclass of the Middle East for generations, relegated to the same status as African Americans. Black on Black crime? "No news here, folks, just another dog-bites-man incident."
1
Shame on you, Bret !
Israel, given its apartheid-state stance ever since Netanyahu has led it, is well known as the main culprit in the Middle East.
Hamas would not have the problems you describe...in fact, it may not exist by now if a two-state solution had been implemented.
3
@Dan Botez
Israel is a multi-racial multi ethnic society. Please explain how it is an apartheid state? Facts, not blind regurgitations. Have you ever been there, Dan to see for yourself? Or do you simply swallow at face value every blood libel posted by Israel's enemies?
3
Main culprit of what? Surely you can’t mean Israel is the main culprit for the wars in Syria and Yemen or widespread abuse of immigrant workers in the gulf states?
Use pronouns slightly more carefully please.
2
@JW
Once the so-called "nationality law" was passed, which defines the country as the Jewish homeland, Israel has ceased to be a democracy.
Just two weeks ago Netanyahu has declared:
"According to the basic nationality law we passed, Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people - and, only it."
and that :
" Israel is "not a state of all its citizens", in a reference to the country's Palestinian Arab population"
If that's not an apartheid-state stance, I don't know what is.
1
Religion and administration manner reflect level of civilization of the population. The only anti-Muslims I know are basically Muslims themselves.
This comment, I know, will not be published by New York Times (what you are actually doing with many others) which became a censorial body of the Ministry of Truth unthinkable in a truly democratic society.
Oh, this reminds me of the "Black Lives" movement except when it comes to black-on-black violence, that's when it does not matter?
6
It is the gigantic step for the journalism that the NYT doesn't hire any longer just the opinion columnists but the biased ones too - the ones who don't report on the Palestinians deaths unless somebody else is responsible for them...
1
@Kenan Parodic
And to show how parochial and insulated the mental state of the NY Times readership is as a whole, there was quite a stink raised when the NY Times announced it was even bringing in Brett Stephens as an additional viewpoint, to its credit.
1
The blame here lies with countries refusing to deal with the Palestinian problem. The US is in discussions with the Taliban and N Korea. Why not Jana’s and Iran. Sanctions starve the people not the leaders. Diplomacy! Sorry Trump does not have any. Just the raised fists of Pompeo and Bolton.
I am often in disagreement with Bret Stephens on many points, but in this case I am completely in agreement with him. Notwithstanding my deep sympathy with the historic fate of the Palestinians, I consider their strategy of militancy or violent resistance to be absolutely counterproductive and stupid. To send rockets from Gaza to Israel for example is the epitomy of idiocy. Palestinians and their leaders should rather draw inspiration from the nonviolence of Ghandi and should see where this would eventually lead to. Violence ist just not the solution.
2
This editorial raises a worthwhile point. I would take it further.
As a liberal, I cannot help but be disturbed by the focus many of my fellow travelers put on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I am bothered by that focus because it is incredibly rare that the BDS kufiyah wearing crowd is interested in the Syrian conflict or the Saudi support for the war in Yemen which any true and just accounting would acknowledge are far more harmful to far more people than the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.
I cannot think of a good intellectual reason to focus more energy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than those other (presently occurring) humanitarian disasters, so I think the typical pro-Palestinian liberal is either too stupid to think for themselves (authority = bad, anyone oppressed = good) or a closet anti-Semite missing some self awareness.
As a last thought, I shudder to imagine what would happen if people in Mexico launched rockets that landed anywhere near New York. No country other than Israel is expected to tolerate random rocket attacks at civilian population centers without using overwhelming force in response.
5
This reminds me of the time I wasn’t allowed to care about the immigrants at the border during the trump administration because I didn’t care about them during the Obama administration.
@JoZouMa
And if a Democrat was in power now instead of Trump with the same policies as Obama, you still wouldn't be caring about them.
2
Well said. This was breath of fresh air. Hamas and Fatah are nothing but criminal gangs. And the people they “lead” are just fodder to them.
7
Stephens identifies another symptom but the fundamental cause remains: the Arab refusal to recognize the rights of any indigenous people in the Middle East lands their forebears conquered in the 7th century (and lost by the 12th but were returned by the British after WWI) to self-determination on any portion of their historical homeland. It just so happens that the one group that succeeded, the Jewish people, happens to be the same people the Quran marked out for special vilification. That the Arabs rule over 99.75% of the land is not enough, apparently. The specific problem is uppity Jews who forgot their divinely ordained place in society: the bottom rung.
Arabs have been at each other's throat since the succession dispute at Mohammed’s death. Those divisions are so deep and intractable that the "usual" response, identifying some Other that everyone can rally against (often, in Western and Muslim history, the Jews), doesn’t work. Hamas and PA repression of their own people is a microcosm of the larger dysfunction bedeviling Arab societies. A supercessionist supremacist ideology cannot easily deal with real world setbacks. Historically, the reaction is either abandonment or doubling down.
The real fight is not between Arabs and Jews or even Arabs and the West. And we do them no favors by pretending otherwise. The real fight is, and has always been, among the Arabs themselves and only they can fight it. Here’s hoping the side that can accommodate reality prevails.
8
Bravo Bret
thank goodness we have people like you to write the truth
thank you!
7
When you feign some sort of act of kindness by creating a wretched prison, don't act all surprised by what the inmates do.
1
"behave in strikingly similar ways:
Gee, it sounds somewhat like the trump administration: fanatical, thuggish, militaristic, hypocritical and corrupt.
It's their country, who else is there? This is a smear job to deflect accountability. And what of the West bank, who have been following the rules and cooperating for 20 years? Disgusting
2
Corrupt Arab government is now the justification for the occupation of the West Bank?
2
@Pecus
True. Stephens didn't mention that the Palestinians have rejected each and every proposal ever offered them that would have given them a state and ended the so-called occupation (of disputed land which happens to be the heartland of the Jewish People, including Jerusalem which the Jews built 1500 years before Islam) whose last recognized sovereign was the defunct Ottoman Empire, and which was recaptured by Israel in a war of self-defense in 1967.
4
Gaza is an open air prison. Some of the inmates behave badly under these conditions. It is a lesson of history that when you have a blockade such as Israel and Egypt impose on Gaza, a small percentage of adolescent males will rise up, some outrageous leaders will emerge and further repression will follow. Nothing is new here. How about trying something different such as appealing to the vast mass of Gazans who want only to educate their young and a lead a normal peaceful life.
1
Two wrongs don't make a right. This many column-inches should be wasted on simple whataboutism.
2
This sounds like the classic childhood excuse, "He's doing it, too!"
When Israel ends the illegal occupation and stops the isolation of Gaza and lets the people there live like human beings, then reparations can be discussed. Until then, Israel still has a lot of blame to bear.
2
@penney albany
Blame for what? For leaving unconditionally from Gaza in 2005 only to see the territory soon become a forward base for Iran controlled by fanatical Islamists sworn to its destruction, who spend all their energy on making rockets to fire at Israeli civilians and terror tunnels to infiltrate Israel to kill or kidnap its citizens? Exactly what the Israeli Right had predicted would happen. Why should any Israeli in his/her right mind want to go through that again? To please someone sitting on his/her rear end 6000 miles away pontificating with absolutely zero skin in the game?
3
When a people are oppressed the focus is on the oppressor. It does not absolve their involvement. I would assume that Brett finds fault in the lack of coverage of why women's flirty behavior in the workforce is a primary reason for their failure to progress or why black people should look inward to their failures.
2
Neither situation is remotely analogous. That said, at least one of your analogies raises a real issue in my opinion. I do think the media should devote more attention to Roland Fryer’s work suggesting a substantial portion of black economic disadvantage is self inflicted. I also think many of the Times’ longer pieces on individual homeless black people do a good job of giving the subjects appropriate agency (including when they use that agency in ways which harm themselves).
1
Pointing out the failures of Hamas does not justify the inhumane and deadly activities against the Palestinian people by an Israeli government that even Jimmy Carter described as a regime of apartheid. Bret Stevens is playing the equivocation card to distract from completely indefensible actions of Israel to disfranchise the Palestinian population.. It is arguably the greatest example of oppression in the world today. If not for the brutality of Israel towards the Palestinians, Hamas would likely not exist.
4
Smells an awful lot like the argument made here in the US to excuse systemic and institutionalized oppression of people of color.
Summed up, Stephens’s thesis is no different than the old racist line: “well, what about black-on-black crime?”
2
The Israeli responses to demonstrations at their border with Gaza were disproportionate to the risk that they posed to Israel.
No one with any knowledge would argue that Fatah and Hamas are inept and probably corrupt. And no one with any knowledge would deny that Israel treats Palestinians with utter contempt.
But as a non Jew living in America I see that nothing that happens in the Middle East as a threat to the security or economic well being of the United States.
Why should we spend billions of dollars there and political capital? Why, who cares?
After almost most than 100 years of struggle, We can clearly state that Palestinian people purely oppressed in todays geopolitical status.
Oppressors are
Israel-Iran-Arab Nations.
They do not care.
A shooting war starting just before elections? Israel needs a strong leader in these times of great trouble will be the call.
I would bet a months paycheck that Netanyahu has paid to have rockets launched into Israel.
Wait until our election ,you can bet all the coup setup in Venezuela by the US will be utilized for Trumps reelection.
Why are the Palestinians in Gaza, Jordan and Syria?
Why don't they just walk into Egypt or Israel and claim asylum to escape death, torture and persecution at the hands of a despotic regime?
Questions you may choose to address in future columns.
Palestinian people life, freedom and land was stolen from them by Rich (living in Europe) Palestinian land lords, Arabs, Israel and Iran.
This is a ethnic group of people they do not own a hay stick.
Oppressors ( Iran, Israel, Arab league) have their own agenda.
Palestinian were used as a tool against Israel and Israel never committed to understand them.
The point this article is trying to make, that all of the Hamas apologists are ignoring is; could you make peace with this group? You can’t tell me that if Gaza cleaned up its act, was a respectful neighbor and helped its citizens instead of being a corrupt war mongering group of thugs that there wouldn’t be peace? Also what happens if Israel once again withdraws from the West Bank as they did in Gaza and Hamas takes over there? Would you take this chance? Would you risk your children’s lives on the encouragement to withdraw and academic nonsense of the anti Semitic left wing of this country? Not me and not you either if you were in the Israeli position.
5
You would think sanctimonious Bret would have grasped two wrongs... But I guess not. Clearly the Times and the Journal see eye to eye on at least one topic.
Thank you Brett. I have been waiting for someone to say the unsayable (sp). The same journalistic failure is apparent in the coverage of Muslims killing Muslims in many countries. However, if a US soldier does it by design or accident it goes to the front page. Too often the Left is too ready to condemn and not anxious to point out the atrocities perpetrated by Leftist dictators, Mao, Stalin, etc. Journalists have often been complicit in this.
4
Anything to let Israel off the hook for violating human rights and shooting unarmed civilians I see. Bret is nothing if not consistent.
Sorry, this is not about bias. In fact it is similar to a man bites dog story. Dog bites man, not big news - man bites dog, big story. Let's try this one if you don't get the point: men associated with Russian intelligence kill a journalist, this story will die in a few days; men associated with the FBI kill a reporter - giant story (it has not happened yet).
Yes we do pay more attention to the actions of states that we view as civil (and not just Israel - we would do that same with Germany or France). The writer is trying to make a point. We get it, Palestinians are governed by thugs. So are the Saudis, Venezuelans, Turks and a host of others. This should not be news to anyone.
I get it; since Palestinians have sins of their own, more consequential for the Palestinians than my sin, I have no sin whatsoever. Got it!
Thanks for the moral clarity.
Good article, but I think the media bias is even worse than Stephens describes. The media outright lie about Gaza, about Hamas, about the riots at the border. Gazans have made poor choices. The responsibility of the Israeli government is to protect Israelis.
4
While Hamas has used force to stop the demonstrations, I don't believe a single protestor has been killed. If Israel also refrained from killing Gazans maybe it too would receive less harsh press coverage.
Take land and the hostilities never end . Give back the land and peace will blossom
1
@Average White Guy: Rejection of Israel's right to exist is in the Hamas charter. As a Jew and naturalized Israeli, I'm for coexistence but won't lie down before those who would destroy me and mine.
2
@Your Average White Guy Like communism, it is a beautiful concept in theory and massive failure in practice. Israel wholesale withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and the Palestinians got land, but instead of peace, Israel received more war, thousands of rockets launched from civilian locations to Israeli civilian centers, terror tunnels, weapons smuggling, attempts at infiltration and a terrorist regime whose charter calls for Israel's destruction. The Palestinians fared almost as badly. They have a corrupt thugocracy that steals their money and uses foreign aid to perpetuate war while they starve and are used as human shields. Land did not bring peace alone. Peace begets peace.
2
Israel returned Gaza. They got Hamas
2
Awesome column, sad truth. Reinforces my understanding that the world’s. obsession with Israel’s supposed evil-doings are just the same old anti-Semitism. Anti-semites will of course vociferously deny this with great self-righteousness.
2
This column is of course an indictment of anti-Israel bias in the press.
Anyone interested in this topic should review these articles:
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/how-the-media-makes-the-israel-story/383262/?single_page=true
https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/183033/israel-insider-guide
An excerpt:
Staffing is the best measure of the importance of a story to a particular news organization. When I was a correspondent at the AP, the agency had more than 40 staffers covering Israel and the Palestinian territories. That was significantly more news staff than the AP had in China, Russia, or India, or in all of the 50 countries of sub-Saharan Africa combined. It was higher than the total number of news-gathering employees in all the countries where the uprisings of the “Arab Spring” eventually erupted.
To offer a sense of scale: Before the outbreak of the civil war in Syria, the permanent AP presence in that country consisted of a single regime-approved stringer. The AP’s editors believed, that is, that Syria’s importance was less than one-40th that of Israel.
5
It isn’t just when Palestinians hurt Palestinians that we hear crickets from the media. It is far more pervasive. When Palestinians hurt Israelis, like the recent stabbing and shooting deaths of a 19 year old solider and a rabbi who came to his aid last week, the only way to find out about it is to use google, and find articles from the Jerusalem Post, Haaretz and other solely Israelis sources. The rest of the world, New York Times, Boston Globe, Guardian, etc. literally do not report about it the 19 year old and rabbi’s death, at all. And when they do, it is only to show the response, i.e. “Israeli Troops Kill Two Palestinians” is the headline, while the byline says “Palestinians were ‘responsible for killing a 19 year old soldier and rabbi at a settlement’ according to the Israeli military.” Also, when a Palestnian leader says something anti-Semitic or violent, like Abbas urging Palestinians to murder Jews over the Temple Mount, you can only find it in Israeli media.
5
Even if every one of these claims is true, why does it justify Israel's half century of subjugation of the Palestinian people?
This is just more Trumpesque "what-about" ism.
2
What difference does it make if people, who care about the Palestinians in Israel, are unaware about their plight elsewhere? Does it make what Israel is doing to Palestinians right? I don't think so.
Anyone who has followed the peace process, though, understands full well that war is a business, and there has been hundreds, probably thousands, of articles along the way telling us so. The war was in 1968. That was over half a century ago. Israel has as much responsibility as any one for the rise of Hamas, occurring some 20 or so years later in respect to their treatment of Palestinians on the West Bank, and elsewhere. Hamas is what you get, when you put people in desperation mode. Hamas is not pretty. We all know that.
But I don't think that "war is just a business" to Hamas. There is a greater cause they are serving, and it might not be a good one. No one is elevating Hamas above Israel, but Israel is lowering itself in the eyes of many, who want to see a resolve of the disputes.
Mr. Stephens seems to come from the "School of Guilt, the Gift that Lasts Forever." It would have been better to be more forthright and explain Zionism in the context of Israel's priorities today. Israel does not want peace, and has no interest in a two state solution. There have been peace plans that almost reached agreement, but there was always the demand by Israel that they be recognized as a Jewish State. The meaning of that has some pretty sad consequences attached to it for Palestininans.
2
What's the point here. Hamas fighters are not nice and resemble the Viet Cong and the IRA. Is the point that the Viet Cong and the IRA succeeded in lifting their people out of colonialist rule, and so will Hamas?
What's the point in this case? More Palestinians have died in Syria, which is ruled by Assad, than have been killed by Israelis. Wouldn't it have been better to compare "killed by Assad" to "killed by Israelis"?
Or here? The press spends more effort on Israeli-oppression of Palestinians than on Hamas-oppression? Is the point that Israel is constantly getting bad press? This would be ludicrous. Until 2019 the press and media were at best silent about Israeli's awful treatment of Palestinians. To criticize Israel, and not at the same time every other awful regime, was supposedly anti-Semitic, a literal hate crime (which real anti-Semitism is.) If Bret Stephens has taken on the role of the Times' defender-in-chief of Israeli policies toward Palestinians, he'll have a hard time escaping this type of illogicality.
62
@John Mullen
"Until 2019 the press and media were at best silent about Israeli's awful treatment of Palestinians"
You must not have read anything in the press between 1995 and 2019
28
@John Mullen What press and other media have you availed yourself of before 2019? Almost everything I've read before 2019 was very, very pro-Palestinian. The Israeli-Palestinian problem is extremely complex and has mostly been viewed by the public as all the fault of Israel. Palestinian propaganda has been excellent. Remember the Jenin massacre? That never happened, but when that was revealed as a hoax, no one seemed to care. Hamas's goal is to wipe Israel off the map. BDS has the same goal, as it speaks to Palestine being from the river to the sea. As an aside, I think if someone from Canada started throwing bombs across the U.S. border, we'd take appropriate action.
27
@John Mullen
I am amazed at how good Israel is to the Palestinians. Israel delivers hundreds of truckloads of food & supplies to Gaza every day even though Gazans persecuted Jews for centuries & have fired thousands of rockets & mortars at innocent Israeli civilians. Israeli doctors treated 180,000 Palestinians last year. Israel even treats members of Hamas in Israeli hospitals.
11
Hamas is corrupt, but if a Palestinian journalist in Gaza writes that, then they are in trouble.
http://www.thetower.org/5461-hamas-prosecutes-journalist-for-exposing-corruption-in-gaza/
The few Christians that still remain in Gaza are persecuted by Hamas. That too rates no news coverage.
But Hamas killing its own and subjecting them to dictatorship is really no different than what happens in the rest of the Arab or Muslim world.But in Iraq and Syria, it is not politically correct for media to stress this. In Gaza, it is not even politically correct to mention this.
As Mr. Stephens write, only when Israelis are involved does the media wake up.
203
Unfortunately, we expect no better from the butchers, of which Assad is the prototype, in the various other-than-Israel nations. Americans see them as "other", while the perception is that Israel is not of that other Middle East but, by its very own assertion, a modern democracy and effectively a member of the Western family of nations, adhering to the ideals that such nations espoused in the pre-Trump era. We expect better of Israel for that reason, though in recent decades Israel's evolved into a far-right quasi-theocracy dominated by the ultra-Orthodox there and supported by the Christian far right in this country.
Should we stop pointing out what's happening in Israel and mentally relegate it to the category of just one more Middle Eastern kakistocracy? I don't think so. Those of us Jews in this country who feel marginalized and excluded by the aggressive settlers, the beards, black hats and Bibi are not yet ready to give up. Let the reporting go on and let's be thankful that such atrocities are infrequent enough at Israeli hands to be worth reporting on in detail when they do occur.
@SML You can feel marginalized by settlers or by Mr. Netanyahu but the comment regarding "beards, and black hats" I would deem anti-Semitic if it did not come from a Jew. I have a beard. I am sorry that you feel marginalized by me (although the only black hat I own is a baseball hat I once borrowed from my late father and never gave back). If you have a problem with the ultra-Orthodox, or bearded religious Israelis,then state it please with common decency, even you do not like them.
12
Perhaps so, however consider how those of us who don't fit into that category felt about this, referring to the Pittsburgh massacre, when it appeared:
"...In the interview with Makor Rishon, a newspaper popular in the Israeli Modern Orthodox community, Rabbi David Lau said that “any murder of any Jew in any part of the world for being Jewish is unforgivable.” But rather than acknowledge that the crime had been carried out in a synagogue, he referred to the location as “a place with a profound Jewish flavor.”
Responding on Twitter, Yizhar Hess, executive director of the Conservative movement in Israel asked rhetorically: “Really, chief rabbi of Israel? A place with a profound Jewish flavor? Perhaps a synagogue?”
Tomer Persico, a prominent Israeli scholar of religion, tweeted in response: “Chief Rabbi Lau refuses to say it was a synagogue. And that’s while Jews were murdered when praying.”
The photo in Haaretz that accompanies the article shows Rabbi Lau replete with beard and black hat. It was perhaps impolite to refer to a class of Jews by their hair and attire however Lau fits the stereotype perfrectly in appearance and mindset. Even Netanyahu admitted it was a synagogue, but not the chief Rabbi of the Jewish state. A homeland for whom, exactly, is Israel nowadays?
2
Israelis will never admit that we committed the first two sins.
We declared half of Palestine to be Israel. And that just happened to be the half on the Mediterranean Sea with ports.
And we prohibited the refugees to return to their homes, their own property.
And now many Israelis want to make Israel a Jewish state.
How would Jews here feel if Mike Pence made the US an evangelical Christian state.
Then there are the settlements.
9
Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank are together the western 20% of British Palestine. The British have the eastern 80% of Palestine to dictators from the distant Arab peninsula.
1
@Independent
No, Israel settled for 25% of British Mandate Palestine. The rest going to Jordan, of which the West Bank (about the size of Suffolk County on Long Island) was captured in 1967 in a war the Arabs started. A territory when occupied by Jordan didn't raise a peep of protest from the so-called nation of Palestine who were ruled by the Hashemites in Amman at the time.
The second sin was not to annex the territory as soon as it was captured. No state is obligated to give any territory back in a war of self-defense by any provision under international law.
And notice people like you never mention the fact that the Palestinians have rejected each and every peace proposal ever offered since 1937 that would have given them the state they claim is all they want to make peace.
3
Bret, you remind me of the SS officer in Martin Walser's brilliant dark comedy, "Eiche und Angora." [The Rabbit Race]. Quoting from memory:
The officer confronts a former concentration camp inmate:
"And what you people talk about behind barbed wires?
-- Food. They only talk about food.
-- You see! We Germans would be talking about Goethe and Schiller..."
6
OK ... so bret stephens discovers fake news. welcome to our world.
sure, hamas is an idiocy. what do you say about a country that flouts international sanctions so it can build more settlements in another people's territory as recruitment for religious fundamentalists?
yeah ... i thought so.
none of us are so stupid as to believe that israel is a blight on humanity. or that the palestinians, the poor palestinians, are evil incarnate.
please: your readers are not straw men.
what is the middle east? from the high vantage of "seen it before, it will happen again" (thank you, thucydides), the simple principles here are, well, simple: spatial separation is helpful between peoples who vehemently disagree; most moral reasoning is colored by vengeance; the impoverished and disenfranchised are ripe fruit for exploitation -- first come, first served.
instead of blaming hamas, wouldn't the better course be to plead for a solution? oh wait, we've tried that without effect for half a century.
something more is required in the middle east than pleading for solutions, equating moral wrongs, standing up for the weak -- all that moralizing nonsense.
bret: read about power politics, think about the hsitory in this situation, and get back to me with a real column that shows real insight about a practical solution.
as of now, bret ... you're treading water.
3
But how can there be a solution when the Islamist Hamas which controls Gaza does not accept the right of Israel to exist within the 1967 borders? Hamas considers Tel Aviv to be occupied territory as much as any place on the West Bank
5
It's well known that when reporting on genuinely oppressive regimes, journalists from what we know call the west (and what in past decades we called the "free world") have always maintained their access to cover those regimes by agreeing not to report on details that did not fit the propaganda message of the oppressive regime. That holds for Hamas, but there are descriptions of the same phenomena going back to when reporters from the New York Times were covering Nazi Germany.
Part of the reason for this pattern is undoubtedly a journalist's willingness to be manipulated by despots in order to maintain their access, and some of it undoubtedly is about fear. Real despots, as is known, can make journalists who report the truth (like Marie Colvin in Syria) disappear so that unflattering coverage stops. Colvin, as too few people know, was killed by a missile strike in Syria after reporting on aspects of the civil war there that Bashar al-Assad did not like.
However, if our fourth estate is really serious about informing the public, and not allowing democracy to die in darkness, to use WaPo's slogan, then more journalists need to get serious about what the profession is supposed to aspire to, and to honor those journalists who best embody that spirit.
4
This is an example of an incessantly-repeated trope seen in discussions of the plight of the Palestinian people that can be expressed "they deserve the combat boot that's been on their necks for generations."
4
Implicit in Brett Stephen's column is another mendacious attempt to deflect attention away from Israel's insidious occupation of the West Bank and it's criminal policies toward the people of Gaza. Hamas is a terrorist organization and the innocent, unarmed citizens of Gaza have no way to resist. That's why the collateral damage and death caused by the Israel bombing several years ago is war crime material. Stephen's is raising a false equivalency.
8
How many greenhouses were destroyed in Gaza after Israel withdrew in 2005? Thousands. Hamas has made it impossible to build anything worthwhile. The liberals ignore their crimes and savagery; it's much easier to blame the only democracy in the region.
10
Fact: The United States is the biggest enemy to the Palestinian people and greatest obstacle to peace in the region.
4
Governance based upon religious law, whether talmud, koran or bible, are inevitably corrupt, oppressive, and in the 21st century simply insane.
3
Palestinian leadership both in the West Bank and most especially Gaza is vile. No argument there. If only Israel would stop the settlement building, Hamas and Fatah would be left with fewer convenient excuses. Sometimes Israel seems to be its own worst enemy in the battle for favorable world opinion.
3
Yes, Hamas are an awful bunch, but Stephens fails to mention they won an election. Overall, this piece is so wildly unbalanced--for example, putting Nicolás Maduro in the same category as mass killers Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein--as to raise questions about Stephens's fitness as a journalist.
8
It is pure poppycock to equate Hamas violence against the civilian population of Gaza with the Israeli violence. All forms of violence are fungible whether economic, political, legal , racial, or hot. Hot violence is what I think the author alludes to. Bret fails in his logic to discern that the Israeli violence envelopes all these forms and that they are deliberate, insidious, malicious, constant and continuous and designed for slow , drawn out death of Palestinians and blaming the victims for their plight. Bret doesn't grasp that the UN erred in displacing the Palestinians to create a country for the Europeans when in fact that country should have been created in Germany and Poland. Palestinians won't go away but the intruders will, one way or another,
1
Are you surprised?
American Progressives and the European Left are only outraged when the culprit is seemingly Israel.
The U.N. reserves the majority of its sanctions for Israel.
The media is riled up when it can drum up a good Israel-bashing story.
But, as Golda Meir used to say, it’s better to have a bad press than a good epitaph.
9
As with many Israeli arguments, the intellectual dishonesty is sky-rocketing (for the record, I'm an Israeli Jew so can we not yell 'anti-semite' when I criticize?).
Yes, the world has MANY problem. Human rights are trampled on by many countries, many regimes, many US allies, many US agencies and localities etc. Does any of that mean the Israel cannot be criticized until all the world's other problems has been fixed?
Back in the day (Biblical day), the idea was for the land of the Jews to be 'Or LaGoyim', meaning a shining example for all other nations. The prophets wished for justice, peace (turning your weapons into plows, yada yada). Isn't that ironic that the religious/right-wing/those parties who wave biblical rights as justification for their constant human rights violation ...oh it's self-explanatory.
Bad is bad.
3
Muslim peoples against other Muslim peoples: Hama massacre Syria 1982 perhaps 20,000 dead; Iran-Iraq war 1980-88, perhaps a million dead; Syria since 2011 about 400,000 dead; Yemen since 2015, 150,000 dead. Not to mention the fratricide in Afghanistan or by ISIS and al-Shabab in Somalia, or Boko Haram in West Africa. The world does not see a responsible party to be held in account.
The Chinese have put as many as one million Muslims into concentration {re-education} camps to stamp out their religion and culture. The world is mute. It's far away. Photojournalists are not welcome and China is powerful.
The focus on Israeli militancy is unique. Israel, as a western country, is held to a higher standard. Photojournalists have much freer play. And, yes, within the House of Islam {define the borders of such a concept however you wish} for the non-believer to have sovereignty is an anathema.
4
This is like blaming Winnie Mandela's thuggishness for black oppression in South Africa, or the kapos in camps for the killing of prisoners, or rappers for Black crime. It's a green light for scapegoating people who are under onslaught from our "democratic" ally. When a society is torn apart by war and oppression, society's internal structures break down. Moral authority is lost because the moral center is often destroyed. It's not a case specific to Palestinians. Mr. Stephens neglects to say that Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on earth. Squalid. Unsanitary. Hemmed in. Like a prison-camp. No stable infrastructure, separated from its people on the West Bank. Most people can't work. Get an education? Have a future? Have a childhood, even? Who made it that way? Hamas? Did they split the Palestinian nation in half and wall one side off? Give me a break. Mr. Stephens is part of the media bias that looks the other way. Just read anything from the non-western press. Americans are in a bubble.
6
Good point Bret. We should judge Hamas and Israel by the same standards. After all, Hamas rejects a two-state solution and wants a single state instead that is an Islamic theocracy. Israel, especially under Netanyahu/Likud/right-wing, rejects two-state soliton and has steadily moved towards an ethno-nationalist (admired by white nationalists and nationalists of all stripes and autocrats all over the world; Netanyahu and company ally with white nationalists in Europe and nationalists/autocrats all over the world), Jewish theocracy. Hamas charter calls for the destruction of Israel. Likud charter calls for a Jewish state only in all of Palestine (rejects a Palestinian state). The world correctly designates Hamas as a terrorist organization. If Netanyahu gets re-elected in April, his coalition will include Jewish Power Party, an openly racist party that admires Jewish terrorists, a group filled with admirers and followers of Meir Kahane and Kach, a racist party banned as a terrorist group by Israel.
Hamas gets less coverage because we already know it’s an unacceptable, disasterous, vicious terrorist organization.
Israel gets more coverage because we judge it by democratic standards. We still believe that Israeli democratic values will prevail in April, that Israel will reject Netanyahu. If Netanyahu wins (a real possibility), Israel will continue its march towards being ethno-nationalist, Jewish theocracy, Apartheid state and we can judge Hamas and Israel by the same standards.
1
He's not wrong.
4
You raise the issue of Hamas taking money from foreign governments and using that money to shore up defenses. The entire state or Israel is propped up by US money.
Basically, your argument comes down to typical Republican philosophy: what is okay for me is not for thee.
That those who are your targets tend to have darker skin can't be a coincidence, and your denial of US involvement in killing millions of people over the past hundred years is despicable.
1
This may be so, or not, but let us not forget the fundamental mantra of journalism: "Simplify, then exaggerate". (Also, "If it bleeds, it leads".) Nuanced, detailed, and subtle analysis is not currently available in any news outlet, as it would contradict the above dictum and thus undermine sales. (And the New York Times is in it for profit.) It is thus naive, at best, and disingenuous, at worst, on the part of Stephens to demand better reporting of the plight of Palestinians, or others.
1
Bret Stephens pursues his usual bias justifying the Israeli occupation and domination of the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza, accusing the Western media of ignoring the suffering of Gazans unless they are victimized by Israel. Until recently the media has covered alleged anti-Semitism with little mention of Palestine. Now that is changing - slowly - which could explain the latest diatribe. Recently an international happiness index ranked Israel 13th out of 156 nations; the Palestinian Territories, occupying the same land, ranked 110th. And who is responsible for this disparity, Mr. Stephens? As the entity occupying the West Bank and blockading Gaza, Israel is responsible for Palestinian misery, and Hamas.
1
Absolutely spot on, Bret. I’m still waiting for coverage of this in the Washington Post, NYT, NPR, PBS, etc. etc.
I also suspect that the comments count to this column will be light, because, as the adage goes, “if you have nothing bad to say about Israel, why say anything at all”?
7
Here you go again Bret, carrying water for the Zionists. Israel's policies created Gaza; its ensuing blockade caused the poverty, unemployment and hopelessness that fueled the creation of Hamas; and its continuing stranglehold on Gaza, assisted by Egypt and Trump's suspension of U.S. aid to the Palestinians, has only made things worse.
2
Normally Mr. Stephens is a thinker yet here, he falls short of the mark by suggesting western outrage for Palestinian oppression is only expressed when Isreal is responsible. He misses the mark largely because western outrage is directed at western responsibilities. The west claims support for Isreal. This insinuation is tantamount to “see these savages are doing this to themselves, what we do doesn’t matter” that is a shame.
I didn't know that bad behavior by one group justifies the bad behavior of another group.
This is classic whataboutism. Mr Stephens can't defend the Israeli government so he has to reach to the IRA.
Does Hamas deserve our support? No. Does it get our support? No.
Does the Israeli government deserve our support? No. Does it get our support? In billions of dollars and laws that fire teachers the United States for supporting boycotts of Israel outside of their job.
But then Mr Stephens can't draw a line to where his own morality matters cause he has none that stands beyond his politics. All is allowed as long as it supports him.
12
@Edward Brennan
Notice that we almost never hear from the NYT what Palestinians have to say about Palestinians.
1
Yes, the money spent on Palestinian war aims could be used for more humanitarian purposes like hospitals and schools. The same could be said of every popular uprising in which a people fight to free themselves from an occupying power and to (re)gain control of their own lands. Including Ireland and, yes, the United States of America.
4
The main culprit for Hamas should be Egypt and not Israel. The Egyptian blockade is even more severe than the Israeli blockade, and the Egypt is Gaza's natural trading partner. The reason that there are not daily demonstrations trying to take down the Egyptian border wall is that Gazans know that the Egyptians will shoot to kill en masse and not think about it.
151
@Observer of the Zeitgeist
"Culprit"
Except that Egypt considers Hamas a terrorist organization. And rightly so. Don't forget that Hamas is the offspring of the Muslim Brotherhood, which assassinated Sadat.
13
@Observer of the Zeitgeist
Excellent point.
Also, inciting Egypt, which controlled Gaza before Israel captured it in the ‘67 War, wouldn’t fit the global, UN or BDS narrative.
24
The Gazans know that in fact Egypt will shoot to kill en masse, that’s why they don’t protest at their border. The Egyptians turned on their own people who were peacefully protesting, why wouldn’t they fire at Gazans?
13
The US does no favors for Hamas; gives little aid; does not defend it at the UN. Israel is held to a much higher standard because we do apologize for it and protect it at the UN, we do give military and other aid, we do treat it as an advanced nation with regards to trade and other cooperation.
.
I don't disagree with Mr. Stephens analysis of the problem. My solution differs, however. I would prefer that we group Israel with Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, and Egypt as a regional group of warring nations that has a lot to figure out and settle before we will know any peace in the Middle East. I think the US should not offer aid or close ties to any of these powers.
I'm not worried about oil; the Middle East needs to sell oil to the world even more than the world needs to buy Middle Eastern oil. There's no shortage of oil. What worries me is that the US sullies itself by association to any of these powers, including Israel. The best way to deal with this next of vipers is to keep it at a distance, sup with long spoons, avoid picking sides.
Israel is not a liberal democracy because of how it treats the Arab people under its control; fair enough, there are many worse countries. Hamas and Fatah are far worse. Let's just pull away and leave them be, no more aid or comfort. No country in the Middle East deserves our support. No country is a reliable ally. Our goal should be wary containment of the region, not engagement. The Middle East is a contagion to be avoided.
15
Bret Stephens has focused attention on an often overlooked subject, the violation of the Palestinians by governments run by Palestinians.
This has implications for those with fantasies of a benevolent independent Palestinian government, regardless of how they want to draw the political map of the region.
If we study the history of government violations, we can more easily realize that these fantasies are unrealistic -- even if the Palestinians were to write a constitution with vastly more substantial safeguards than those in the U.S. Constitution for the rights to which every person is entitled. The resulting regime will be ethically illegitimate. We can know this by examining the violations, not only by distant governments, or past ones, but also by the current ones in the region such as the Israeli government. Political science has not solved this problem.
Yes, some governments are better than others, and this differs at varying times; e.g., the dictatorship of Egypt's Mubarak killed far fewer innocent people than the U.S. government in the decades before he was overthrown.
Yet his government was ethically illegitimate. I doubt this matters a whit for the ardent nationalist, but it does for the victims of government.
6
Yawn! Another pro - Israel polemic by Stephens. Yes, Hamas and Hezbollah are stupid in providing Israel with an 'excuse' for more illegal action by Israel, but It is very clear that Israel is not interested in a 2 state solution (despite the 1948 and later resolutions) and will continue with the illegal settlements (despite UN condemnation). It is clear that Israel is attempting to surround Jerusalem to stop anyone except Israel annexing the whole city as being the Jewish capital while continuing with its apartheid stance against non-Jews in Israel. The US should be ashamed as this Israeli behaviour only perists because the Israelis are sure of US support in any military conflict.
32
@Gary The Palestinian leadership has continually turned down the two state solution. See: Arafat. Demonizing Israel is an old trope that seems to never die.
3
“Apartheid stance against non-Jews in Israel”?
Seriously? There are non Jews in the Knesset. There are non Jews on the Supreme Court. There are non Jews in all aspects of Israeli life. Study first. Then comment.
3
@Gary You fail to address any of the valid points made by Mr. Stephens. Instead of "Yawn!" perhaps you should wake up to the truths in this article and stop being an apologist for a cruel and destructive Hamas. When Israel first withdrew from Gaza there was an opportunity to establish a responsible government that would have demonstrated that a withdrawal from the West Bank could be accomplished without creating an intolerable security threat. By the way, the only areas that were completely ethnically cleansed between 1948 and 1967 was the forced removal of all Jews from the West Bank and East Jeruselum. To better educate yourself I strongly recommend a thorough review of the Palestinian Media Watch's work www.palwatch.org which translates the violent exhorting hate and lies said, written and broadcast in Arabic (that you won't find in English). As for "UN condemnation," any unbiased review of the UN would show a disgraceful bias towards condemning Israel while ignoring more serious violations elsewhere.
4
What is the point of this article? Look Ma! Not me! Jimmy's hand's are dirty too!!!
Why do you think we are so naive that we don't understand that Hamas has issues? If you really cared about the Palestinian people, then write about Hamas. Not some absurd "but those other people are bad too" argument.
This seems very much like the black on black crime statistics that racist white people like to quote to indicate that a) white on black crime is limited b) how violent black people are.
One evil does not forgive the other.
Please do better with your article because the topic is very important.
16
An exactly analogous situation would be if only crimes committed by whites people against black people were covered by the media and the media elected to ignore all “black on black” crimes. That is, to the best of my knowledge, not the white supremacist complaint (but not being a white supremacist, I wouldn’t know).
The fact you feel the same about the two cases does not make them equivalent in any sense but your emotional reaction. Care to try again without resorting to puerile name calling equating support for Israel to neo-nazism?
Oh, so now they're angry about the shooting of protesters, I guess if they're reporters or throwing rocks killing protesters is ok =_=
1
Right on. This is not about the Palestinians but about the difficulty some have to see see Jews defend themselves and not walk head-down into the wagons.
14
@Eden Nonsense! I absolutely abhorr Netanyahu and don't get me started on Sharon. I believe Israel has the right to exist and for Israelis to live safe and long lives BUT I believe in a two state solution. Into the wagons? Really? You insult me.
I have read many a negative piece in the press about each of Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, Idi Amin, and Nicolás Maduro, and I know the countries with which each of them was/is associated; but, you know, I don't know the name of the leader of Hamas. Why is that ? Maybe it's even a woman (Ha !).
2
https://www.timesofisrael.com/meeting-pompeo-netanyahu-calls-for-recognition-of-israeli-golan-heights/
Mike Pompeo is in Israel to support Netanyahu and his apartheid regime that makes Arabs second class citizens, and here Bret Stephens does what he can to weaken the alliance of those who oppose the Occupation and Israeli apartheid. It is an organized campaign to destroy the hopes of those wishing for the end of apartheid.
If there will never be a Palestinian State, then Israel is going to always be an apartheid state, and Hamas is going to always be relevant.
Want to make it go away? Work to help the Palestinian people have a state of their own, and acknowledge that the Israeli government has said there will never be a state for the Palestinians.
I am no more anti-Jew because I am anti apartheid than I was anti white because I demonstrated against South African apartheid.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon
9
Arabs second class citizens?
Israeli Arabs serve in the Knesset and on the Supreme Court. They serve in every area of public life, including the army (for those that choose to).
Facts matter. Use them.
2
@Gershwin
Facts.
Gaza and the West Bank are prisons. How can Netanyahu say Israel if only for Jews, and for you to say it is a democracy?
If Israel ever becomes a single state with Palestine, Zionism disappears. If Israel ever lets Palestine become a separate independent country, then and only then is Israel a democracy.
Hugh
If I wanted to read a shrill columnist from the Jerusalem Post, then I would read that newspaper. Why does the NYT give this guy a soapbox to regularly make excuses for Israeli brutality? Reading between the lines, it is clear that social movements in this country have started to resonate politically and US blanket support for might be ending (one can hope). Until then, Israeli brutality will continue unimpeded, and more land will be illegally confiscated.
14
Bret has hit a new high in his ranting, perhaps some underdone potato? Bret's pro-Israel bias drips in this latest piece. So the oppression by Israel is o.k. because there allegedly is corruption in Hamas? Nonsense! Look no further than Bibi to understand corruption.
15
@tbs . Allegedly? That was funny.
1
@tbs great reference to underdone potato from A Christmas Carol.
So why isn't this reported as actual news? Why is it buried in an opinion piece, with a misleading and, one might even say, tricky headline?
1
I was just thinking yesterday, how no liberal groups are protesting the violent repression of Islamic people in China. China has used mass incarceration in "detention camps" and now is destroying the homes and towns of its Islamic minority.
Where are the Omar's and the college protests. Where are the articles and op-eds in the Washington Post?
No, it is so clear to me that the American Left/Democratic Party has a serious anti-semitism problem. They progressive members of the Democratic Party hate Jews. Plain and simple.
They say Israel is not a democracy ( despite the hotly contested election that is going on right now!), they say Israel engages in acts against humanity! That Israel should not even exist as a Homeland for the Jewish People. All this, the couch in "anti-Zionism". But what is "anti-Zionism"?
Israel exists! It is a successful, country of millions of people. Anti-Zionism simple is code for the destruction i.e. killing of millions of Israelis.
As a lifelong Democrat and Jew, I am never again voting for a Democrat. The unwillingness of the Democratic Party to rebuke Omar's anti-semitism was a watershed moment for me.
20
@JAG
Exactly. The Left is obsessed with Israel. Oppression in China, Nigeria, Venezuela, it's all ok. If you can't blame Israel who cares?
3
Every word in this piece is true, but that does not excuse the DUMB Israeli policy of occupation. I'm not saying Israel should leave the West Bank like it left Gaza. I'm saying Israel could easily maintain responsibility for security if there were no settlements and it left the West Bankers alone as long as there was no violence. Kicking people out of their homes so religious Jews from Brooklyn could live on the land is a STUPID policy.
13
The audacity of using a NYT Op-Ed column to complain that American coverage of Israel-Palestine is too biased in favor of Palestine is honestly breathtaking.
The U.S. government and elite media apparatus beats out an unending march of unquestioning support for Israel's government. You know this, because you are a primary contributor to it.
This article is a weak attempt at whataboutism aimed solely at continuing to excuse Israel's repeated human rights violations. The vacuum where Bret's soul should be grows larger every day.
13
Argument by reference to abstract rhetorical rules has never been persuasive. If Brett attempted to excuse Israel’s treatment of Palestine by reference to the US’s treatment of Latino immigrants I think you could more justly claim it was unrelated. That said, the article is about the media response to two superficially similar events. You have chosen to read into it an advocacy the text does not contain.
1
For thousands of years, the empires and kingdoms of the Middle East and Europe have persecuted and expelled Jews from their homes when they weren't slaughtering them. The Holocaust during the German Nazi era was the worst and almost complete genocide. Rather than encourage Jews to return to their homes in Europe, which Jews would not have trusted anyway, the post-war allies allowed them to settle in an independent Israel. Since the European powers had already sliced the Middle East into colonies with arbitrary boundaries, what did it matter to them? The historical anti-Semitism of Europe, including Britain, didn't go away, it just became more polite and recently, with the rise of Protestant white nationalism, more political. "We're not anti-Semites, we're just anti-Israel." Meanwhile, world powers, including the Arab and other states in the Middle East, have no interest in Palestinian refugees or rights except in-so-far as that is the excuse for the latest iteration of their historical hatred of Jews. The US and Israel can and should do better, but without change in the attitudes and policies of European and Middle East countries, and the Palestinians themselves, there will be no resolution.
11
The same ideology-based journalistic narrative focuses in on the anti-Muslim attack in New Zealand while ignoring the atrocities committed by Muslims in Nigeria against Christians the same week that left more than 100 dead. If it doesn't fit the narrative (of Muslims as victims of white men), you barely hear about it.
5
"such movements, from the Irish Republican Army to the Viet Cong to Zimbabwe’s ZANU-PF, tend to behave in strikingly similar ways: fanatical, thuggish, militaristic, hypocritical and corrupt."
Not unlike the colonial oligarchies of Britain, France, and the United States who they struggle against, and, now that you mention it, the American pit bull, Israel.
5
As Golda Meir said, "Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us."
Still waiting.
9
In June 2018, Israeli snipers shot dead Rouzan al-Najjar, a twenty-year-old Palestinian nurse. In this case, it did not take “months of journalistic effort in order to trace the trajectory of a single bullet that accidentally kills a Palestinian.” It took only common sense at the scene. Imagine, please, Mr. Stephens, a squad of Palestinian snipers in Palestine, and a dead Israeli medic just over the border in Israel, and how you would characterize it. And in December 2018, the New York Times itself found the killing to be no "accident," but “reckless at best, and possibly a war crime, for which no one has yet been punished.” And of course, no one has yet been punished.
Mr. Stephens has nimbly overlooked the fact that Gaza continues to live under Israeli occupation, with Israeli controlling its borders and airspace, who gets chemotherapy, and who does not. One billion dollars in aid from Qatar to Gaza since 2012? Outrageous! Why, that’s almost $77 a year per Gazan!
6
This is "but what about black-on-black crime" concern trolling gone global. It seems like it goes without saying that the oppression imposed upon a people by a neighbor, and financed by a superpower, would be of more interest to the average reader than violence visited by a militant group against its own people. Or it would, unless one was being willfully dense in order to provide editorial cover to Israel. Looking at you, Bret.
5
During WWII America diverted most of its financial resources to fighting the Nazis who had occupied most of Europe. Almost no one raised the issue that such money could have been better spent on schools, hospitals and other services.
Brett is attacking Hamas for doing what America did during the war. How else can Hamas fight the Israeli occupation and its colonial polices? Join the peace process. What a farce Israel under Bibi has never been interested in peace only in land,
9
@Kevinlarson When Israel left Gaza - with thriving greenhouses to benefit the Palestinians, guess what happened? They destroyed the greenhouses. So much for benevolent leadership. What a farce!
2
"Three wars against Israel, each started by Hamas..."
Brett leads off with a bald-faced lie. He thus shows his bigotry and bias, as well as the intellectual fraud in his case. In each of those instances, Israel deliberately provoked Hamas so it could impose more collective punishment on the people of Gaza.
Look at the latest round. Israel's own Army intelligence said the 2 missiles launched from Gaza were an accident. Israel ignores it, and bombs 100 Palestinian targets, including civilian targets. Israel's supporters claim that Israel was justified in imposing collective punishment even if the missile launches were an accident. Hey, Bibi needs dead Palestinians for his re-election campaign. Stephens says sure, what's the problem with dead Palestinians?
OK, if that's the case, the US would have been justified in attacking Israel for its "accidental" attack on the USS Liberty. And impose collective punishment on Israel by wiping out 100 Israeli military installations.
Stephens needs to refrain from commenting on the Middle East until he returns to reality. Until then, we must consider all his writings on it to be Israeli propaganda. His writings really are beneath the dignity of the the Times.
8
The puny Gaza Strip "started 3 wars against Israel."
That's rich, very rich.
4
Let’s make a poster of this editorial...the headline and subhead say it all. The Arab countries on the whole treat their so-called brethren so very poorly to the point it should be considered abuse by the UN; let’s not even get into how they treated Jews who lived in those countries...
Let me know when a modicum of truth returns to who the victims and victimizers are.
5
Man, the smugness with which you deliver this piece is so unnerving. Does it make you happy that the Palestinians are oppressed by literally everyone? Of course Hamas is terrible! But if you are looking to them as a moral sheild for Israel, you are simply proving evryones point!
It is impressive through, how steadfast you stay to your ghoulish neocon values. A good reminder that we need to continue fighting the ideologies of the Bush years, because ideas don't die due to their own stupidly.
*also, a billion dollars since 2012? Gaza has 1.8 million people in it. That is roughly 79$ per person per year. That is somehow too much money?
5
So the problem isn't the brutal occupation of Palestine by Israel, or the death of thousands of Gazans at Israeli hands, but how the press reports it? Seriously?
7
Anyone is to blame but Israel. Please remember Stephens is not a journalist but a neocon pundit that writes for a liberal news .I think he should get a job st cnn
3
Gee Bret, in your listing of brutal dictators you left out Batista, Castela Branco, Pinochet, Somoza, Syngman Rhee, Causescu, all supported if not puppeteered by the US and the CIA. They killed hundreds of thousands between them. And let's not forget MBS. By the way, the ones you listed were not actually financially propped up by left wing Americans or tax dollars.
4
The problem is liberals and Democrats who refuse to criticize Palestinians or Muslims but will endlessly criticize Israel. Israel has plenty to be criticized for, but they are also a thriving Democracy and American ally surrounded by countries and people with murderous intent towards Jews. Another problem is that the leftists in our country have allied with the same snakes who want to eradicate Israel and Jews. I won’t name names, but they are in full view of all of us.
4
Thank you Bret. I've been wondering why the latest news hasn't been picked up. Only if Israel/ white people/ the West can be blamed will we see certain stories.
1
Is there more than one oppressor in the Middle East? Yes. Before the Brits and French (Sykes-Picot) there were the Ottoman Turks. The dominant figure today is the US.
But contrary to Mr. Stephens' narrative: "That feeds into the larger progressive fiction that the great crimes of the post-World War II world are the ones the West perpetrated on the rest of the world. In fact, far worse were the crimes of non-Westerners — Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro, Idi Amin, Nicolás Maduro — perpetrated against their own people" - there are major and minor players and the minor players most often play a subordinate role to the major ones. Israel is a minor player acting on behalf of US interests.
Point of fact - the horrific misery and persecution of Jews at the hands of the Nazis was tragically channeled into the zionist project of constructing an outpost for American control in the Middle East - Israel.
As far as Mao and the rest - they express the bureaucratic, nationalist deformations initiated by Stalin and his ilk - as a direct consequence of the desperate 1918-1921 Civil War foisted on the Soviet Union by the supporters of Tsarist restoration - England, France, and the US. Mao was a Stalinist.
This is a total distortion of the history of the 20th Century. If you want to look for an instigator of Islamic fundamentalism look no further the CIA's role in overthrowing the democratically elected Iranian, Mossadegh, in 1953 or Bush's 2003 invasion leading to ISIS.
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@Robert
A Tsarist restoration would have saved the world the 10 to 30 million Stalinist killings. And, since Stalin begat Mao, which you point out, a Tsarist restoration would have prevented Mao's 40 to 60 million killings.
The ancien regime's killings were two or three orders of magnitude smaller: tens or hundreds of thousands. Not good. But not world class.
Too bad the Reds won.
@alyosha
The Reds won the civil war (in spite of the European and US interventions). They did that by 1921 based on the support of the workers in Petrograd and Moscow and the peasants who wanted to be free of the parasitic feudal nobility.
The October Revolution had popular support. The Whites (Kornilov, Denekin, Krasnov, etc.) were murderous defenders of anti-semitic pogroms carried out under the Tsar.
Stalin used his position as General Secretary (Lenin advocated his removal just before his death in 1924) to isolate and eliminate his opposition. He began the murders (of revolutionaries) in 1929. Stalin's wife committed suicide when she learned of the mass starvation in the Holodomor.
Stalin was no Red. He had probably been an agent of the Okhrana and he murdered Tukhachevsky (and 80% of the leading officers of the Red Army) by 1937. That's what created the later opportunity for Hitler's Lebensraum murder campaign.
Not to mention that Stalin entered into a traitorous pact with Hitler on the eve of WWII. Stalin (and Mao) were nationalists and the "gravediggers" of revolution.
Anti-communist propaganda has made a field day of that contradiction for years for the purpose of discrediting socialism. Fortunately, the younger generation today doesn't bow reflexively to the nonsense of McCarthyism.
Baseline - Stalin expressed the pressure of imperialism on what became a degenerated workers state. Stalin was no more a red than Putin is today. These are criminal elements.
How interesting. Groups like Hammas, IRA, Vietnam Cong, and others are turned to by people who see no other way to make things better for themselves, nobody else cares. Care to include Black Lives Matter in an update to your right wing missive, Stephens? Oh, throw in increasing our subsidy to Israel, too, might as well.
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Gaza, A Ghetto run by Gangsta’s. The value of oppression by limits on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I wonder why the UN assets in Gaza are not reporting on the “bullets” as boots, shoes on the ground?
"previously editor in chief of The Jerusalem Post"
Well, the problem in this whole story is right there.
Another apologist.
Not a mention of Israeli crimes, of course. The land grabs etc.
All Hamas' fault of course, right? Hamas exists because of Israeli policy.
Don't worry. Jerusalem post to the Washington Post seems like an oh-so-predictable step. A step only possible if you defend Israel as staunchly as the US. governemnt does and alsmost always it's ONLY the US and their hangers-on who have used their veto how many times to stifle global criticism ?
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Somehow I doubt I’ll be seeing this reshared, tweeted, or liked by my progressive friends. Being a pro-Israel liberal is an increasingly masochistic experience.
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No one would care how badly Israel treated the Palestinians if Israel wasn't Jewish.
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I must say as a long time loyal NY Times reader, I am concerned that most of their in-house opinion writers are extremely pro-Israel. Bret is right about Hamas but he uses it as a defense for the Israeli policies that have ghettoized the Palestinians and handed them to Hamas. The NY Times reporter on the ground in Israel had an article that indicated how both parties in Israel who have the chance of winning the next election do not consider Arabs and individuals of non Jewish religions equal citizens. Thee is open vile hate against arabs. However, it was buried in the papers while the NY Times Opinion stars trash the Palestinians. This is patently unfair and not worthy of the NY Times.
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Nonsense.
The lives of 6 million Christian Muslim Arab Palestinian Israelis don't matter in Israel, Gaza, East Jerusalem, West Bank and the Golan Heights.
Because the Palestinians are living under the dominion by occupation, blockade/siege, exile and 2nd class citizenship of 6.1 million Zionist Jewish Israelis.
The Palestinians are not divinely naturally created equal persons with certain unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
There is no Islamic Palestinian nation state. There is a Zionist Jewish Israel nation state that makes everyone who does not have that pedigree separate and unequal.
The anti-Semitic myth is that the Jews are the specially chosen moral measure superior people who have suffered the worst of historical inhumanity. And unless you condemn and attack any "canards" or " tropes " deemed anti- Semitic by Jews then you must remain silent. A privilege not accorded any other color aka race aka ethnicity aka national origin aka faith.
Either Jews are no better nor worse than othe r humans. Or not.
Judging Zionist Jewish behavior by contrast with the worst tyrant monsters of human history is the deceptive duplicitous hypocrisy of what aboutism. The lowest common human denominator is the antithesis of the virtue of humble humane empathy.
Bret Stephens formula is a version of Trump's good people on both sides at Charlottesville.
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The Western media also lets out a collective yawn when Muslims blow up other Muslims who are praying in mosques. Go figure.
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Will the Times ever hire a columnist who can present the issues from a Palestinian perspective? They are overflowing with Israeli apologists.
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