How can you [Kol Israel] say that Alison Weir’s media analysis concerning the wide disparity in reporting between Israeli deaths and Palestinian deaths is perhaps correct yet in the same sentence say they [the media] don’t present the same type of sensationalized personal stories as she does? I think it’s implicit that they do present that type of coverage due to the mass amount of reporting weighted on one side, albeit under the guise of “impartiality” and perhaps in less emotional wording (the neutrality of journalistic language, right?). Consider, for example, how The New York Times will frequently humanize Israeli victims of the conflict (ie. sharing coverage of a victim’s funeral) while only briefly mentioning (if at all) that say, three Palestinian children were killed during an Israeli air strike.

Concerning the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the first thing to recognize is that Israel is a colonial state. It was founded by Western Jews (mostly secular), and was a project committed to before the Holocaust. Also remember that this project was not originally intended for Palestine: Zionists looked at all sorts of possibilities, from Uganda to Argentina. Thus, the only way to characterize the whole project, even after it had moved to Palestine, is as a colonial project. If we understand colonialism to be the dispossession of another people by an occupier, a settler, we can then see the absurdity in trying to justify a Jewish ing with the Palestinians before the rise of Zionism). When you mention that Israel at independence was attacked by a seemingly great number of Arab armies, it also seems to have been missed that these armies only counted one soldier to every two the Haganah/IDF had, at every stage of the war (with better arms, might I add, which US and British intelligence concluded could easily take on the Arab armies).[1] Also, what happened to those 750,000 Palestinians once they were kicked off their land in 1948? They haven’t yet been allowed to come back, so what does that say about the whole point of creating a Jewish state? In the logic of creating an ethno-religious majoritarian democracy (liberal democracy?), it seems “ethnic cleansing” is the only option. Don’t forget who has maintained hegemonic dominance throughout this whole conflict between a settler-colonialist state and, periodically, certain states and populations in the Arab world: Israel. Also, keep in mind that occupation is by definition offensive.

Concerning the ’67 war, I will only briefly mention the strategy behind the “activist” wing of the Israeli government that sought to goad both Egypt and Syria into war:

“Along the Syria border there were no farms and no refugee camps there was only the Syrian army… The kibbutzim saw the good agricultural land … and they dreamed about it… They didn’t even try to hide their greed for the land… We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn’t possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot.

If they didn’t shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that’s how it was…The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us.” (Moshe Dayan, Israeli military leader [2]).

Concerning the statement, “Much of what Weir presented was personal opinion that was not based in fact:” first, I find that hard to believe since much of Weir’s presentation was dedicated to showing the disparities in reporting Palestinian deaths versus Israeli deaths. Second, this was barely “interspersed” with personal stories: Weir first showed the graphs and statistics and then went on to share her personal stories during the latter part of the presentation, which she made quite explicit would be about her (and her alone) travels through the Occupied Territories. Third, Weir certainly added her personal emotions to her argument, but it would be unwise and unfair to ignore the blinders of those she seeks to oppose, Zionists in particular. This should be taken into account considering that the whole point of Alison Weir’s presentation was that even if she might be emotional or sensational at times, she reaches only a certain audience. The U.S. media’s pro-Israeli hegemonic discourse affects the opinions and actions of a hell of a lot more people.

[1]http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ssfc0005/The%20Debate%20About%201948.html

[2]http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Moshe_Dayan