One day in the mid-nineties, when the peace process was active and promising, we missed an important scoop. I contacted colleague Rafik Maalouf, who was at the time Al-Hayat's bureau chief in Washington, and reproached him for missing the news story. He gave me details that I did not read in the American newspapers, so I asked him why he did not send the news when he has all this information. Rafik said that he could not verify the news from two different sources, independently of each other. This is an approach that is unknown in our countries where one source is enough, and sometimes the news story doesn't even need a source. In [their countries], the news must be true, while opinions are a sacred right, as long as they are within the scope of applicable laws. I remembered the above as I read the New York Times and the Washington Post during the week I spent following the sixty-fifth session of the United Nations General Assembly. While I read both newspapers everyday online, reading the full print edition, in all its parts and supplements, especially the worthwhile Sunday paper, is a pleasure that I have not forgotten. In Washington, I used to read the Post with my morning coffee in bed, and when I travelled to New York, I would read the Times. I have lived in Washington in the eighties, and started following American sports news, especially that the basketball team at Georgetown University where I studied (The Georgetown Hoyas) had won the NCAA championship in basketball, while the Washington Redskins won the Super Bowl. I don't think that these two teams ever won another championship after I left Washington. I hence propose that I be offered a villa in Kalorama, a neighborhood of Georgetown, and that a lucrative salary be given to me. In return, I would live in Washington, and the two teams would return to winning. It is only a suggestion in which I do not have any personal interests of course. I was fortunate in that the Washington Post provided me with the information I needed on the Tea Party and its candidates, and in that my presence in New York coincided with the 40-year anniversary of the launching of the Op-Ed section (Opinion Editorials). I had previously thought that this section was as old as the newspaper itself. However, I found out that it was founded on 21/9/1970. I went over a selection of issues that we were contemporary to, from Vietnam, Watergate, and Bill Clinton's mistresses to Black Monday which unleashed a massive financial crisis in 1987. I specifically stopped at two articles, one written by Golda Meir on 14/1/1967, and the other by Yasser Arafat on 3/2/2002. The subsequent events were supposed to overshadow these articles. However, I heard two lines in the article of the American teacher who became the Prime Minister of Israel being mentioned again at the General Assembly. Golda Meir asked in her article why the Arabs did not establish a Palestinian state on a part [of Palestine], instead of Jordan annexing the West Bank and Egypt the Gaza Strip. Similarly, Avigdor Lieberman, who turned from being a brothel bouncer to the Foreign Minister of Israel, said in his speech at the General Assembly on the 28th of September that the West Bank and the Gaza Strip had remained under Arab control for 19 years between 1948 and 1967, and that nonetheless, no one attempted to establish a Palestinian state there. I have an answer to both of them. When the West Bank and Gaza were in the hands of the Arabs, there was no need for an independent state without the rest of the occupied territories. Palestine is the land from the sea to the river, and Israel that was established on this land has no historical or geographical legitimacy in it whatsoever, but is merely founded on biblical myths. At the time, we were demanding the restoration of all of Palestine, not just the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Then the post-1967 realities emerged and pushed us to accept 22 percent of Palestine. However, the Israelis did not accept this, and continued to build settlements, kill and destroy, as though they were in alliance with those who want all of Palestine, i.e. a policy that only means further deaths of Jews and Palestinians, until the day comes when weapons of mass destruction enter the equation, and everybody perishes. Every Palestinian knows the saying [that loosely translates as] “We accepted evil, but evil did not accept us”. Going back to the two newspapers, my addiction to reading them does not prevent me from noticing a fact that is common to both, namely, that they are liberal prestigious newspapers in everything except when the subject is Israel or Israeli interests, in which case they are no different than any given Likudnik publication. I do not need any other example than the Iraq war as evidence of their clear and blatant partiality. While it is the Iraqis that paid the price of the blood of a million of their children, thousands of Americans were killed and the American economy was ruined in a war motivated by Israeli and oil-related calculations. Also, American personal liberties declined. Instead of the Americans changing Iraq, as the Bush administration once claimed, it is Iraq than changed the United States, like a friend of mine once said. This does not mean that I do not appreciate the other material. On a Sunday when I was in town, the New York Times ran a story on Franz Kafka, and his documents which he wanted burned. His friend Max Brod took them from Poland to Palestine in 1939, and some of them ended up being in the possession of his secretary/lover Esther Hoff, who died in 2007. Her daughter then inherited the documents, and the Israeli Supreme Court stopped the sale of the remaining documents this year. Better then, to mention and remember the two newspapers through such exquisite subjects. [email protected]
