Stop the co-dependency

Letters

Editor: I was amused to read in a recent editorial ("Stop your navel-gazing," Bulletin, May 24) that local Palestinians, Unitarians and Jews for a Just Peace are concerned that the mainstream media is biased in favor of Israel. Whether the media is biased or not, Canada ranks a very decent 17 out of 186 nations that have a free press. What these three groups should be concerned about, if they truly want to help the Palestinian people, is the lack of a free press under the Palestinian Authority (PA). Freedom House, Amesty International and Palestinian rights groups indicate that the PA routinely harrasses, intimidates, arrests, isolates, beats and tortures journalists who write or even think critically of the PA or Yasser Arafat. These journalists need not be Palestinian. In October 2000, an Italian broadcaster who filmed the lynching and evisceration of two Israeli reservists in Ramallah was threatened not to report this event.

And let's not hear the same old PA excuses that shift the blame for its immoral behavior to Israel: humiliation, oppression and occupation. Jews have suffered worse for more than 2,000 years, yet of 14 Middle East nations only Israel has a free press. Furthermore, among 46 Muslim countries, only Mali has a free press. Ask Salman Rushdie about biased media.

If these groups want a better world for the Palestinians, free them from the oppression of the PA. When they concern themselves with blaming our media and blaming Israel for the woes of the Palestinians, they are nurturing the fascist PA at the expense of a free Palestinian society. They have been conned into becoming co-dependents of a psychopathic regime just like the "friends" of an alcoholic who keep buying him booze.

Our media may or may not be biased, but as the editorial states, "We have a variety of media reporting a variety of views." Let's not be diverted by this decoy of a biased press. We, including many Palestinians and Muslims from elsewhere, live here and not in these Muslim nations because we value our freedoms. I am sure that the local Palestinians, Unitarians and Jews for a Just Peace would rather have our "biased" but free media than the media that exist under the PA. And I am sure that they would want all the Palestinians to have a free press too. So put the blame where it belongs and stop being the PA's co-dependents.

Howard Stein
Vancouver

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