Imagine If Nakba Denial Was A Crime

 

 

Imagine if the New York Times had any imagination about what would happen if Nakba Denial was made a Crime. In France and other European countries, denial of the Holocaust was long ago made a crime to assure that post-war Europe was de-Nazified.  A few years ago, France took another step forward and made denial of the Armenian genocide a crime. Bernard Lewis, a master apologist for Israel, was actually convicted in a French court for lying about the Armenian genocide.

Now, if only the French would make denial of the Nakba a crime. What would happen to the reputation and pocket books of The International Herald Tribune, which operates out of Paris and is jointly owned by The Washington Post and The New York Times.

As Iian Pappe, the Israeli Historian from Jaffe University, has proven, British and Israeli archives are full of information proving that the Nakba was a pre-planned well orchestrated campaign of ethnic cleansing.  But the New York Times has its very own archives, tailored to be in sync with Israeli mythology. Sulzberger’s edicts demand that his journalists cover up Israeli war crimes like Deir El Yassin, Qibya, Tantoura and Sabra and Shatila.  Just today, the New York Times’ James  Bennet republished the official Sulzberger mantra on the events of 1947-1948. “In 1947, Arabs rejected the United Nations plan to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, and when Israel declared its independence in 1948, five Arab nations attacked. The new Israelis drove them back beyond the allotted borders, and some 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were forced from their homes. Last week, Palestinians marked the day Israel declared its independence, a day they call the Nakba, or catastrophe.”  (Just Try to Imagine a Palestinian Democracy, James Bennet, NYT Week in Review, May 19, 2002).  Bennet long ago gave up journalism to enlist full time in the Israeli misinformation campaign.  He works for the same paper that has leased out William Safire for a stint as a public relations officer for Sharon.

You can find variations of this ‘official NYT version of Palestinian history’ in a thousand articles. The fact of the matter is that by the time the Arab armies entered the fray, the armed Yiddish expulsionist zealots had already completed their ethnic cleansing campaign and had occupied a major portion of the lands reserved for a Palestinian state. Bennet and Friedman and Safire think that by virtue of their volume of circulation they can forever propagate lies about Palestinian history. They never stop to answer questions like why the expulsion of the Palestinians continued well into the early fifties and were again resumed after the 1967 war. Neither do they bother to pay attention to the fact that, even today, it is polite in Jewish circles in Tel Aviv and New York to talk and plan for future mass expulsions of the Palestinians.

The New York Times is a criminal enterprise that has actively participated in the repression of the Palestinians people. In the same issue, Thomas Friedman attacks President Bush in rather explicit language for his “Failure to Imagine” (NYT, May 19, 2002).  “President Bush is not alone in this failure. He has had the full cooperation of the Democratic Party leadership, which has been just as lacking in imagination. This has made it easy for Mr. Bush, and his oil-industry paymasters, to get away with it.”

Imagine that. A world that is ruled by “Mr Bush, and his oil-industry paymasters.”  How about lending our imagination to a world that is ruled by two American political parties that grovel at the feet of paymasters who are loyal followers of a deranged expultionist from a far away foriegn state called Israel. Imagine a world where and ex-Prime Minister of Israel can waltz into the New York Times and the Washington Post and lay out plans to rally 98 senators to derail American foriegn policy. How about this for little Tommy? Imagine that all major American news papers, follow the lead of a pip squeak intellectually insecure midget publisher, whose name sounds like Sulzberger. Now imagine if they all conspired to keep silent about a war crime that took place in Qibya and another that took place in Sabra and Shatila and another that took place in Jenin. What kind of diabolical imagination would allow them to think they could cover up such crimes for ever.

Now imagine, if Thomas Friedman was in on the whole Nakba denial scam all along. Just imagine if at some future date, neither he nor Bennet nor Sulzberger could pay a visit to Paris on their way home to Tel Aviv.

Mr. Ahmed Amr is Editor of NileMedia.com in Seattle and a regular contributor to Media Monitors Network (MMN).