Letter to The Washington Post

Re: "Israel says it won’t forcibly deport illegal African migrants, but it wants them to leave" (12/21/13) Dear Editor, Instead of a front page article about Syrian children receiving life saving medical care from their sworn enemy Israel, The Washington Post published yet another critical piece on how Israel responds to illegal African immigrants, actually extremely compassionate compared with its neighbors. Curiously, there has yet to be a Post story on why the African immigrants don't stop in Egypt, which is closer, and that is because they are robbed, raped, or murdered there. Further, in Egypt there is no freedom of Press, so Post reporters wouldn't be able to write such a piece and live to tell about it. Ironically, in Israel, the only nation in the region with freedom of the press, journalists exploit this freedom to find fault with the country. So Israel, which has taken in millions of Jewish refugees, many of whom with no place to go otherwise, is vilified for not taking in Muslim or Christian refugees. Israel, a country that makes up .1% of the Middle East shoulders the blame for what the 99.9% of the Middle East should be doing, courtesy of The Washington Post. Michael Berenhaus