Only point of Ashrawi talk at SCSU: Vilify Israel

[note: a letter to the editor in the New Haven Register. Ashrawi spoke at Southern Connecticut State University]



Propaganda is dishonest and destructive not because it tells outright lies but because it tells partial truths that masquerade as reality. Hanan Ashrawi's talk at Southern Connecticut State University distorted reality in just such a way.
The talk was to focus on the role of women in the Middle East conflict. In fact, it simply vilified Israel. What Ashrawi left out was more significant than what she said.

She never condemned the suicide bombings.

She never dealt with the 19 years (1948-1967) when Palestinians were herded into refugee camps by surrounding Arab countries and refused citizenship. They were a lot poorer and more oppressed than now, but they launched terrorist attacks against Israeli Jews instead of against their Arab oppressors. Was that because of racist hatred of Jews?

Ashrawi justified Palestinian terrorism as a response to Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. But she overlooked the terrorism of the Palestinian Liberation Organization from 1954 to 1967, when there was no Israeli occupation of those territories. What was the PLO planning to "liberate"?

Ashrawi claimed Palestinians want peace, but she never dealt with Palestinian parents who hold parties to celebrate the death of their children and that these parents are paid up to $25,000 for each child who explodes himself or herself and kills Jews.

Ashrawi pretended to talk about women, but she ignored the brainwashing of Palestinian girls who have been filmed being trained to become suicide bombers.

Peace will come to the Middle East only when people like Ashrawi start telling the truth and start helping their people prosper economically instead of turning them into bombers and blaming everyone else for their problems.

Rosette Liberman

New Haven source: url