RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Lourdes myopic

By Tabitha Korol

If National Public Radio (NPR) were a garment manufacturer, US consumers en masse would be clamoring to return their merchandise for refund, citing shoddy workmanship and poor quality. Not so with this media, and certainly not when the news concerns Israel. NPR’s product, Lourdes Garcia-Navarro’s (LGN) interview with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, is fraught with holes and ripped seams, but prepaid by the taxpayer, it continues to be shipped at no evident charge to the duped American consumer.

Garcia-Navarro’s interview is permitted to twist Fayyad’s words, despite his explanations to the contrary. If Fayyad admitted the Palestinian Authority is not inspiring its people to take on the responsibility of growing the state, LGN blames the Israeli occupation. If Fayyad noted that Arab states have not met their financial obligation to sustain the Palestinian economy, providing only $750 million instead of the $1.1 billion pledged in 2011, LGN lays the bulk of the blame at the feet of the West and the ever-popular occupation (1967-1993) when, indeed, Israel actually improved life for the Palestinians.

The reporter intentionally makes no mention of several truths: that during Israeli’s administration of the Territories, life improved considerably for Palestinians. Military barriers were removed, enabling freer travel. Israel helped to modernize Palestinian infrastructure, increased manufacturing facilities, established seven new universities, expanded schools, taught modern agriculture, set up medical programs, opened 100+ health clinics, instituted freedom of the press, and introduced a Palestinian administration heretofore unknown to this populace that originated from oppression in Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Yemen. Unemployment fell while life expectancy soared, and the population nearly doubled (1967-1993). Historian Efraim Karsh noted, “During the 1970s, the West Bank and Gaza constituted the fourth-fastest-growing economy in the world – ahead of such ‘wonders’ as Singapore, Hong Kong and Korea, and substantially ahead of Israel itself.” Lourdes calculatedly omits such facts.

She omits other truths as well: that the Oslo Accords ended the occupation in 1993, and a Palestinian-elected government was put into place; that Israeli troops left Palestinian towns and cities by 1997; and that Arafat rejected the Camp David proposals and began the Intifada, which required Israeli troops’ deployment against renewed terrorist hostilities toward Israel.

Garcia-Navarro failed to report that Palestinians, more than any other peoples, receive funding from the United Nations, with no oversight as to its distribution for either genuine humanitarian aid or weaponry for terrorism, and never refers to severe mismanagement of funds by Arafat. She did not explain that UNRWA was established to assist and help assimilate the 700,000 Arabs made homeless by the war they began in 1948, but which has since bestowed perpetual refugee-victimhood status on all Arab (non-Jewish) descendants. Neither did she stipulate that these people now numbering in the millions, continue to eschew self-sufficiency, and require ever-increasing funds from around the world. Nor would she mention America’s $249.1 million in assistance last year alone (2011), followed by a more recent gift of $192 million, to an astounding $4.4 billion since 1949. Rather than acknowledge the billions of dollars in foreign aid from worldwide sources, the PA’s continued irresponsibility for wanton neglect of basic infrastructure; the hundreds of millions that remain unaccounted for under Arafat’s leadership; and Mahmoud Abbas’s wealth, estimated at $100 million, she continues the myths of Israeli occupation.

Although Fayyad expressed his concerns about the three-year-delayed Palestinian elections in the West Bank, control of Gaza by Hamas terrorists, and a discordant relationship between Fayyad and Abbas, the interviewer pushed these aside because they are internal problems for which Israel cannot be shown culpable.

She also failed to report the attempt by the Bank of Israel to assist the Palestinians with their financial crisis. Israel applied for a $1 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), on behalf of and to aid the Palestinians. Israel agreed to accept responsibility for the loan, and Abbas would repay the loan directly to the Israeli government. The IMF refused because Palestine is not a sovereign state. It is clear that NPR, aided by this reporter, has a strategy to unswervingly discredit the Jewish nation at all costs, and never report Israel’s virtues or blamelessness.

I fail to fathom why NPR continues to support those who threaten to destroy the only democracy in the Middle East and our democracy in the West, and why it still qualifies for federal funding.

LGN again places the failure of negotiations on Israel for not freezing settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, but Prime Minister Netanyahu did impose a ten-month freeze on settlement construction in November, 2009! Abbas waited for the last month to reject all negotiations and, instead, attacked Israel at the UN. Israel also uprooted families, ceded land – beautiful towns, good housing, viable businesses, – for peace, and the Palestinians again turned that land into launching pads for rockets and missiles. Be informed that Israel’s construction is, in fact, entirely legal, and the Arabs have no legal claims to the territories because they were gained by Arab aggression in 1948. And nary a word was uttered about the Palestinian violations of all previous agreements to end incitement.

There may never be peace as long as the Palestinians do not extend the same efforts as do the Israelis, and as long as they continue to maintain their ruse of self-imposed victimhood. There may never be peace as long as the Arab world continues to follow the dictates of their Koran – to kill and conquer, and globalize Islam. Islam has attacked nations in all manners, whether culturally or by the sword for 1400 years, succeeding in their subjugation of people in the Middle East, Africa, and parts of Europe. How truly naïve and haughty – and perhaps complicit – of the Western mind to think that by forcing Israel to cede a few square miles of land, Islam will cease its all-inclusive jihad and become a peaceful and civilized alliance of democratic Muslim nations – particularly when some of our citizens, such as NPR and its journalists, are conspiratorial with the foe.

Ms. Tabitha Korol