THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Powerline ^ | 20 Nov 2023 | Scott Johnson

[Rummyfan]

Michael Oren is the prominent historian and Israeli ambassador to the United States. His 2015 memoir Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide remains timely and illuminating. He writes in his Free column “A war against the Jews” (November 20):

This war is not simply between Hamas terrorists and Israelis. It is a war against the Jews.

The insight began with the international media’s coverage of the conflict. Again, it wasn’t the press’s insistence on calling mass murderers “militants” or citing Hamas and its “Health Ministry” as a reliable source. For close to fifty years—as a student activist, a diplomat, a soldier, a government and military spokesman, and, above all, as a historian—I’ve grappled with the media’s bias against Israel. I’ve long known that the terrorists are “militants” solely because their victims are Jews, and only in a conflict with Israel are terrorists considered credible.

Instead, it was the media’s predictable switch from an Israel-empathetic to an Israel-demonizing narrative as the image of Palestinian suffering supplanted that of Israelis beheaded, dismembered, and burnt. It was the gnawing awareness that dead Jews buy us only so much sympathy.