PM adviser’s letter to ‘New York Times’
By JERUSLAEM POST STAFF
12/16/2011 08:47
Netanyahu’s senior adviser Ron Dermer writes letter to ‘New York Times’ explaining why PM “respectfully declined” to write op-ed piece.
Talkbacks (40)
Dear Sasha,
I received your email requesting that Prime Minister Netanyahu submit an op-ed to the New York Times. Unfortunately, we must respectfully decline.
On matters relating to Israel, the op-ed page of the “paper of record” has failed to heed the late Senator Moynihan’s admonition that everyone is entitled to their own opinion but that no one is entitled to their own facts.
A case in point was your decision last May to publish the following bit of historical revision by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas:
It is important to note that the last time the question of Palestinian statehood took center stage at the General Assembly, the question posed to the international community was whether our homeland should be partitioned into two states. In November 1947, the General Assembly made its recommendation and answered in the affirmative. Shortly thereafter, Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel, and Arab armies intervened. War and further expulsions ensued.
This paragraph effectively turns on its head an event within living memory in which the Palestinians rejected the UN partition plan accepted by the Jews and then joined five Arab states in launching a war to annihilate the embryonic Jewish state. It should not have made it past the most rudimentary fact-checking.
The opinions of some of your regular columnists regarding Israel are well known. They consistently distort the positions of our government and ignore the steps it has taken to advance peace. They cavalierly defame our country by suggesting that marginal phenomena condemned by Prime Minister Netanyahu and virtually every Israeli official somehow reflects government policy or Israeli society as a whole. Worse, one columnist even stooped to suggesting that the strong expressions of support for Prime Minister Netanyahu during his speech this year to Congress was “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby” rather than a reflection of the broad support for Israel among the American people.
Yet instead of trying to balance these views with a different opinion, it would seem as if the surest way to get an op-ed published in the New York Times these days, no matter how obscure the writer or the viewpoint, is to attack Israel. Even so, the recent piece on “Pinkwashing,” in which Israel is vilified for having the temerity to champion its record on gay-rights, set a new bar that will be hard for you to lower in the future.
Not to be accused of cherry-picking to prove a point, I discovered that during the last three months (September through November) you published 20 op-eds about Israel in the New York Times and Palestinian Arabs. After dividing the op-eds into two categories, “positive” and “negative,” with “negative” meaning an attack against the State of Israel or the policies of its democratically elected government, I found that 19 out of 20 columns were “negative.”
The only “positive” piece was penned by Richard Goldstone (of the infamous Goldstone Report), in which he defended Israel against the slanderous charge of Apartheid.
Yet your decision to publish that op-ed came a few months after your paper reportedly rejected Goldstone’s previous submission. In that earlier piece, which was ultimately published in the Washington Post, the man who was quoted the world over for alleging that Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza, fundamentally changed his position. According to the New York Times op-ed page, that was apparently news unfit to print.
Your refusal to publish “positive” pieces about Israel apparently does not stem from a shortage of supply. It was brought to my attention that the Majority Leader and Minority Whip of the U.S. House of Representatives jointly submitted an op-ed to your paper in September opposing the Palestinian action at the United Nations and supporting the call of both Israel and the Obama administration for direct negotiations without preconditions. In an age of intense partisanship, one would have thought that strong bipartisan support for Israel on such a timely issue would have made your cut.
So with all due respect to your prestigious paper, you will forgive us for declining your offer. We wouldn’t want to be seen as “Bibiwashing” the op-ed page of the New York Times.
Sincerely,
Ron Dermer
Senior advisor to Prime Minister Netanyahu
?Israel?s Disproportionate Restraint.?Israel is guitly of anything it?s of disproportionate restraint.Israel has the right and obligation to defend its citizensThe brutal slaughter of a family of 5 in Itamar just shows that we are dealing with a barbaric mentality.Add to it the bomb at a bus stop in Jerusalem.The daily launching of rockets from Gaza against civilian population and schools.No country and government that cares about its citizens would tolerate such atrocities.Terror should be handled in the following manner. When a poison strikes the human body, the only way to address it, is to remove it and destroy it completely.It is a known fact that any country if attacked, its citizens kidnapped, rocket bombardment on a daily basis.Has the right and obligation to defend its citizens.It is sad that innocent civilians are hurt, but that is the cost of war and conflict.Any government and its citizen who do not resist terrorism and let terrorist organization entrench themselves in their country and utilize those countries as bases of armed terrorism against a neighboring country. Eventually pays the price for permitting such actions.If you gave the Arab population a vote in Israel and the west bank and Jerusalem the option to vote freely and without intimidation, you would find out, that they would rather be living under Israel?s government. They derive more stability more benefits, pensions, welfare, etc.If the United States or any other government were to be attacked from across the border on a daily basis, have its citizens kidnapped, rockets launched at them on a daily basis, the citizens would demand that immediate military action be initiated with no holds barred, collateral damage or not. That is the fact of life.Terrorist and those who support them do not know what peace is, they thrive on violence. That is the only way they control the masses. Any negotiations or compromise only strengthen those terrorist organizations. When a poison strikes the human body, the only way to address it, is to remove it and destroy it completely.There is no such thing as a ?disproportioned response to terror.?Our problem today is ?Israel?s Disproportionate Restraint.?This puts Israel and its citizens in grave danger.When a poison strikes the human body, the only way to address it, is to remove it and destroy it completely.That is the way the terrorist organizations should be treated.?Like all sovereign nations, Israel has not only a right, but moreover, an obligation, to ensure the safety and security of her citizens?.As quoted in a statement ?the only time of a chance for peace is, when the Arab mother would love her children more than she hates the Israelis.The big mistake is that people are missing the economic benefits for Israel and its neighbors. That is if there was a true peace, you take the Israeli Technology and know how, add to it the Arab labor and natural resources ? and you have an economic prosperity beyond your widest dreams.The Qur’an 17:104 states the land belongs to the Jewish peopleEvery time there is a terrorist act, Israel should vacate an Arab village and raze it.YJ Draiman