Yay is Yay and Nay is Nay; Anything Else Smacketh of Evil

emperors-clothes.com ^ | February 17, 2003 | Jared Israel

[uplandgame]

We at Emperor’s Clothes used to think Israel was mainly responsible for the Middle East conflict. However, we changed our minds. Consequently some people are mad at us.

We began studying the Arab-Israeli dispute and the matter of anti-Semitism last spring. We had a number of reasons.

First, we found the media coverage of the conflict in Jenin to be biased against Israel in ways reminiscent of anti-Serb media coverage in Bosnia and Kosovo. The media accepted outrageous claims (that hundreds or even thousands had been brutally murdered, etc.) without applying common sense skepticism. This coverage created the public impression that, in Jenin, Goliath was massacring David. After the smoke cleared, only a few newspapers had reports such as this:

[Start Quote From Washington Times]

“Kadoura Mousa Kadoura, director of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement for the northern West Bank, told The Washington Times on Tuesday that after receiving a report from four Palestinian-appointed investigators, he no longer believed there had been a massacre at the camp. He produced a list of 56 persons known to have died in Jenin.”[1]

[End Quote From Washington Times]

The more we researched Jenin, the more we found that the media was even ignoring information *from the Arab press* that refuted the charges against Israel [2], and that many of the same ‘experts’ being quoted against Israel regarding Jenin had previously been quoted by the media against Serbia regarding Kosovo and Bosnia - or even against Armenia![3] This contradicted my own view at the time, that Israel was simply an extension of U.S. power.

Second, we saw in the mass media, especially in Europe and the Arab countries, as well as on a variety of anti-war Websites and among critics of the US government, a growing campaign of anti-Semitism (in other words, not merely critical of Israeli government policies.) This campaign was geographically widespread and politically diverse. People with seemingly opposite politics attacked Israel in strikingly similar ways.

[uplandgame]

*bump

[CanisMajor2002]

Matthew 5:37
Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.

James 5:12
Above all, my brothers, do not swear–not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. Let your "Yes" be yes, and your "No," no, or you will be condemned.

(English NIV)