{"id":152722,"date":"2016-05-18T12:50:43","date_gmt":"2016-05-18T09:50:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitedwithisrael.org\/?p=152722"},"modified":"2016-05-18T12:56:33","modified_gmt":"2016-05-18T09:56:33","slug":"opinion-new-york-times-article-on-arab-jewish-project-turns-into-attack-on-settlements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitedwithisrael.org\/es\/opinion-new-york-times-article-on-arab-jewish-project-turns-into-attack-on-settlements\/","title":{"rendered":"New York Times Article on Arab-Jewish Project Turns Into Attack on ‘Settlements’"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s not clear why the article had to be mainly about the \u00absettlements\u00bb at all, rather than simply a feel-good feature about Jews and Arabs working together on energy and water. But for whatever reason, the Times and its sources unfortunately took the opportunity to fit this one into an existing [and false] narrative about the \u201coccupation.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Just how bad is Sunday\u2019s\u00a0New York Times<\/em> feature\u00a0article<\/a> about a solar energy array in a West Bank (Judea and Samaria) Palestinian Arab village that was built largely with funding from American Jews?<\/p>\n

Never mind how the article deals with the perilous shoals of the Arab-Israeli conflict; it can\u2019t even get the basic electricity facts correct. The article claims: \u201cA typical light bulb uses 100 watts.\u201d Maybe the\u00a0Times<\/em> West Bank bureau is lit at operating-room brightness, but a \u201ctypical\u201d incandescent light bulb in my house is closer to 60 or 75 watts. That bulb\u2019s work is nowadays likely to be done by an LED or compact fluorescent bulb that uses even less energy. The Times<\/em> reporter whose byline is atop the piece, James Glanz, is a PhD physicist with a background in science writing, but he doesn\u2019t seem to have been light-bulb shopping in an American hardware store anytime recently.<\/p>\n

The Times<\/em> article goes downhill from there. The first American Jew quoted in it\u00a0is Peter Beinart, one of the Times<\/em>\u2019 favorite sources, who views the whole situation \u201cas a sign that younger American Jews are less comfortable with Israeli control of the West Bank.\u201d Beinart views pretty much everything as a sign of that.<\/p>\n

In fact, the whole article is a one-sided exercise in settlement-bashing.<\/p>\n

Even the chief executive of the Jewish National Fund, Russell Robinson, is quoted as having<\/p>\n

Acknowledged that his fund had two projects in the Gush Etzion settlements south of Jerusalem, but he sought to distinguish it from its Israeli sister organization, Keren Kayemet Leyisrael, which supports parks, bike paths, an amphitheater and even a solar farm in West Bank settlements. There are separate boards of directors, he noted.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cKeren Kayemet L\u2019Israel\u201d \u2014 the Jewish National Fund \u2014 isn\u2019t given an opportunity to comment in the article. Neither is a single settler or defender of the settlements. Had they been asked, they might have said something like, \u201cWhat sort of perverted standard of moral vanity is on display by a person like Ben Jablonski, on whom the Times<\/em> lavishes praise for quitting the JNF board \u2018over its modest but politically fraught involvement in West Bank settlements,\u2019 but who has no problem working with PLO-affiliated Palestinians?\u201d<\/p>\n

Are Jews who live in suburbs of Jerusalem or in other places where Jews have lived for thousands of years supposed to be deprived of parks, bike paths or solar energy? Would Mr. Jablonski and the New York Times<\/em> editors, from the relative safety of Manhattan, order the West Bank immediately be rid of all Jews, so that the land there can be, like Gaza, used as a launching pad for terrorist attacks via tunnels and rockets launched at the remaining Jews of Israel?<\/p>\n

The one-sidedness of the Times<\/em> approach on this one is just bizarre. In an article that took up huge acreage in the Times<\/em> \u2014 a six-column headline, three photographs and a graphic over more than half a page of the print newspaper \u2014 they couldn\u2019t find room for a single voice or paragraph defending the \u00absettlements?\u00bb<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not clear why the article had to be mainly about the \u00absettlements\u00bb at all, rather than simply a feel-good feature about Jews and Arabs working together on energy and water. But for whatever reason, the Times<\/em> and its sources unfortunately took the opportunity to fit this one into an existing [and false] narrative about the \u201coccupation.\u201d It\u2019s also not precisely clear what brainpower was on display by whatever Times<\/em> editor okayed this one, but by the look of the article as it appeared, the editor was operating at well below 100 watts.<\/p>\n

By: The Algemeiner<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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It\u2019s not clear why the article had to be mainly about the \u00absettlements\u00bb at all, rather than simply a feel-good feature about Jews and Arabs working together. The ‘Times’ unfortunately took the opportunity to fit this one into an existing [and false] narrative about the \u201coccupation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1809,"featured_media":124473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[14143],"tags":[392,21967,4562,21152,6115,7335],"class_list":["post-152722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-outside-israel","tag-anti-semitism","tag-beinart","tag-jewish-national-fund","tag-kkl","tag-media-bias","tag-new-york-times"],"better_featured_image":{"id":124473,"alt_text":"Solar field","caption":"Illustrative photo. 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