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Coal in Israel's Stocking

[Scripps Howard] Clifford D. May - In this holiday season, one of the journalistic conventions one comes to expect are stories blaming Israelis for the problems afflicting the Holy Land. Reuters, the BBC, McClatchy, ABC News all have run pieces in this category in recent days. But the one that troubled me most appeared in the Wall Street Journal on Dec. 24 by Ken Woodward. His op-ed was headlined: "The Plight of Bethlehem: Why Christians can't visit the holy shrines in Jerusalem." According to Palestinian tourism officials, 450,000 foreigners will have visited Bethlehem by the end of this year - a 50% increase over the 295,000 who came last year. Every hotel room was filled. Woodward also seems unaware of the extent to which Bethlehem's Christian population has declined since 1995 - the year Arafat's Palestinian Authority took over the West Bank and Gaza as part of the Oslo Accords. Arafat quickly fired the city's Christian politicians and replaced them with his cronies. Woodward singles out the security barrier separating the Christian village of Beit Jala from the Jerusalem neighbor of Gilo, but fails to mention that Palestinian snipers had used locations in Beit Jala to shoot at Israeli men, women and children in Gilo. The writer is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
2007-12-27 01:00:00
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