From the Editor

Lubin on Segev

Reviewing Tom Segev's One Palestine, Complete in this issue, Peter Lubin reveals just how shoddy is the work of this Israeli "revisionist historian." This is important because Segev by now has become probably the best known and most widely read "historian" of Israel in both Israel and this country and has just produced another future pop best-seller, The New Zionists, celebrating "post-Zionism" for setting Israelis "free of the myths which created this society." Myths like Jews have a legitimate claim to Jerusalem--Segev praises Ehud Barak for "smiting nationalistic idols" in his willingness to relinquish much of the city, including the Temple Mount.

Exposing the "Real" Shimon Peres

A silly dreamer? We have it all wrong. A more profound analyst of character than your editor, the Egyptian government daily Al-Akhbar, has Peres's number (keep in mind that Peres in Hebrew means vulture): "In reality he [Peres] is nothing but a bird of prey, masterful in killing the innocent...This professional murderer, who is no different from the rest of the gang who rules Israel, met with the Security Council in New York. [He] expressed his opposition to the Palestinian demand for international protection for the Palestinian people who suffer persecution, violence, and terror at the hands of the Israel occupiers [who are] worse than the Nazis."

No doubt Simple Shimon would dismiss this rhetoric as merely another birthpang of the New Middle East.

Cheers for Andrea Levin and CAMERA

Recently CAMERA issued a welcome report on the BBC, whose supercilious tone and truly outrageous "reporting" on Israel makes CNN look like a Zionist mouthpiece. The title of Andrea Levin's piece on the BBC is no exaggeration--the BBC Goes to War. As Levin points out, the BBC "delivers the commentary of reporters who regularly ignore, distort and invert the facts about the six month mini-war launched by the Palestinian Authority in September, 2000."

There is one additional element in the BBC's war against Israel that Levin could have mentioned: the use of "experts." After many of its distorted journalistic reports (the BBC covers the conflict as a morality tale, with villainous Israelis pitted against purer-than-snow Palestinian children), the anchor interviews at length a so-called expert, whose chief claim to expertise in many cases is in Israel-bashing. Apart from Arab academics, a favorite source of BBC experts is the Institute for Policy Studies, the far-left think tank whose directors and "Fellows" have been viciously attacking Israel for at least three decades. (Anyone interested in the details can read them in "The Fight Around the Institute for Policy Studies" in Midstream of February 1981). Of one thing you can be absolutely certain: the BBC will never interview an "expert" who has understanding or sympathy for Israel's position.

Arafat at the Belle Etoile

Worth magazine may seem an unlikely source for insights into how the Palestinian Authority spends its money. But in the March 2001 issue, in an article on the world's most luxurious hotel suites, we find a description of the Meurice in Paris, with its hand-tufted carpets, special china, sumptuous sofas, and hand-painted arabesques. The suites don't come cheap. The most expensive is the Belle Etoile Suite at $8,200 a night. And who, does Worth report, was recently esconced at the Belle Etoile? Why, none other than Yassir Arafat. Maybe the Europeans or the U.S. might want to ask a few questions about his choice of hotels as Arafat pleads for money for his supposedly desperately short-of-funds administration.

The Tanzim Tax

The Israeli daily Hatzofeh reports that civil servants in the Palestinian Authority have 2% of their salaries deducted for a "Tanzim tax." So much for the claim that the Tanzim are a wild card over which Arafat has no control.

Outpost               - 2 -               May 2001