From: Dr. Michael Berenhaus [mailto:mberenhaus@comcast.net]
Sent: Friday, October 15, 2010 3:49 PM
To: Dr. Michael Berenhaus
Subject: letter to wash post
Dear Editor,
In "Palestinian Authority counters Israeli offer on settlements" (10/14/10), The Washington Post refers to Israel's "1967 borders." This is an erroneous reference on the Post’s part - there weren't borders in 1967, only armistice lines. The Washington Post incessantly strives to carve out its own storyline with respect to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Another instance: the Post refuses to grasp that Israel won the West Bank from the Jordanians (not the Palestinians) after being attacked. So the territory is arguably Israeli territory until the dispute of what to do with the land is resolved. In what any objective observer would deem odd, Israel has been attempting to give the lands to the Palestinians for what is now decades so they can form their own state but the Palestinians won't even sit down to negotiate for it. If Henny Youngman were alive and an Israeli citizen he would be saying, "take my land, please."
The Post continuously parrots the Palestinian narrative, that the growing Jewish settlements in the West Bank are somehow impeding the Palestinians as if physically blocking them from sitting down at the negotiating table. And if the Palestinians were so concerned about growing settlements, one would think that they would be running to the negotiating table, as more and more of their state would be shrinking - but it isn't the case. What percentage of the West Bank consists of Jewish settlements with all their so-called expansions? Less than 5%, but you would never find that information in the Washington Post. The Washington Post is guilty of disproportionate anti-Israel coverage consistently providing one-sided evidence from the Palestinian point of view on an almost daily basis. This imbalanced coverage has yielded dozens of articles condemning Jewish settlements but virtually no criticism of the Palestinians’ excuses, finger pointing, pre-conditions, threats, terrorism, corruption, internal hostilities, and general lack of motivation to build the Palestinian state that they ostensibly want so much. When will this biased coverage change?
Michael Berenhaus
