Who pays attention to the facts and figures about Israel?
In each year of the seventies and eighties of the last century Israel published a booklet called: “Facts and figures about Israel”. In it you could read all about its inhabitants, the country itself and the developments during that particular year. They are facts that cannot be ignored and can be used by journalists to write articles based on the truth.
Parroting
It has been simmering in the back of my mind for a while, but recently I read quite a number of articles in various newspapers about the terrible news that Jews would have shouted en masse in the streets of Jerusalem “death to the Arabs”. There are not many fact-checks and one repeats the other. Even Jewish and Christian columnists and Twitter users are seriously concerned about these verbal massacres. You read statements like: “Jews are unworthy”, “here the settlers go way over the top” and “this is the outcome of uninspired religious and secular Zionism”. A couple of quotes intended, I suspect, to disassociate us from these “monsters”.
“There are not many fact-checks and one repeats the other”
On June 15, hundreds of journalists from home and abroad were united in Jerusalem to report on the annual Jerusalem March of Flags. The march was through the old city of Jerusalem to the Kotel (the Western Wall of the Temple). Nice riots were expected: the Jewish settlers would certainly want to make their dislike known to the Arabs. And indeed, they succeeded in capturing a number of rioters, to provide them the topping on their sandwich.
Journalists, hoping for violence and other incidents during the Jerusalem March | Photo: Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90
You read statements like: “Jews are unworthy” and “here the settlers go way over the top”. Now it so happens that I have a number of friends who joined the parade to commemorate the unification of Jerusalem. They reported to me about this special event that Jews could walk freely through their capital after 2000 years and where happy about it. About 5,000 Jews were up for a walk and to pray and sing at the end of the march at the Kotel. After the Arabs razed the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem to the ground in 1948, they could start to rebuild it again in 1967.
“Not “death to the Arabs”, but “Am Israel Chai” for Jew and Arab”
Am Israel Chai
Not “death to the Arabs”, but “Am Israel Chai” for Jew and Arab. Nearly one million Jews had to flee from the Arab countries and they had to leave everything behind. With every pogrom it sounded “death to the Jews” and that is what they literally did. In Amsterdam, New York, Paris and every major city everywhere in the world, in May of this year, during the Gaza war “death to the Jews” sounded again. Here and there you read something about it, but it seems too insignificant to give it media attention. It looks as if Israel has become the only country where Jews are protected.
Not “death to the Arabs”, but “Am Israel Chai” for Jew and Arab | Photo: Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90
Jews can move freely in Jerusalem after 2000 years. Israel’s enemies want them out of there and therefore they conspired and are still conspiring devious attacks.
It is about time that facts and figures are looked at again, so that one-sided messages and demonization of Israel and Jews will be stopped. It would be a relief for Israel when politics and media would want to take responsibility.
