Saturday, November 26, 2011

Pathetic and Desperate Israeli press

Look at the silly headline of this silly and dumb article:  "Arab revolutionaries look to Israel for inspiration".  And then you read the text:  ""We want a democracy like in Israel." I heard this sentence twice in January, once in a shopping center in Tunis and a second time on a street near Tahrir Square in Cairo. When I tell people that neither of the men who said this to me were aware of my being a reporter for an Israeli newspaper, I am usually greeted with disbelief."  What kind of evidence is this to generalize about 350 million Arabs?  You who are professors: Do you allow your undergraduate students to cite an anecdotal evidence based on a conversation with two--two damn, it--strangers as basis for generalizations about a whole people? What kind of journalistic standards are those?  I follow Arab political literature: press and books rather extremely close, and I am yet to encounter anyone suggesting that they were inspired by Israeli "democracy" and its war crimes?  If anything, when people speak about minority rights, they use Israel as the example of what should not be emulated.  And then the writer of this silly piece adds:  "I would give you their names, but they are in two different notebooks buried somewhere in a stack back home. So you can choose whether you want to take my word for it."  Kuwaiti newspapers (and they are the most yellow of the yellow press) would not resort to such irresponsible and pathetic evidence and language.  Let me guess: one of the two Arabs who gave you the opinion that the paper took to generalize about all Arabs is this man? Am I right? (thanks Farah)