The liberal American press is liberal about all issues except those related to Arabs and Muslims, in which case this same press becomes the unadulterated voice of Israel. Perhaps this is because the majority of American Jews, including the owners of the New York Times and the Washington Post are centrist democratic liberals, and that those liberal American Jews do not want to believe that Israel is ruled by a fascistic criminal government, as they would be otherwise condemning themselves along with it. I have had my doubts over the true extent of liberalism in the major American newspapers over many years; these doubts were then replaced with certainty [regarding the lack of liberalism] with the onset of the Iraqi war, when the liberal American media became complicit with the Bush administration, or turned a blind eye in the least. Today, the liberal media is calling for the prosecution of those who tortured detainees in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, the Bagram airbase and elsewhere, which I consider to be evasive as those who should be prosecuted first must include George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and the warmongering neo-conservative gang surrounding them, along with the enablers and abettors across the right-wing think tanks, newspapers and magazines. I find this to be a painful subject for me personally since I am a fan of the New York Times and the Washington Post, and since I have been reading them for decades now. While I usually begin my day reading our newspaper Al-Hayat with my morning coffee in bed, those two newspapers are the first thing I read online after that, and I will carry on doing that for as long as I can still read. In any case, I have returned to this subject, after having raised it before, for two reasons: the first is related to something published by the Huffington Post's excellent website, and the second is the book “So Wrong, For So Long: How the Press, the Pundits, and the President Failed on Iraq”, written by Greg Mitchell, the editor of “Editor & Publisher” (E&P), which covers the news and newspaper industry. What happened is that the Huffington Post published blatant lies in a report entitled “Gaza Facts – The Israeli Perspective”, which I have mentioned when I was surprised by it the first time. However, I found out that it is still posted online; it should be mentioned that this report was initially issued by the Israeli foreign ministry, or in other words, the ministry of the brothel keeper Avigdor Lieberman, something that is enough to condemn it. However, the report was not branded with the word “advertisement”, if it was supposed to be so, and there is no way in the article to respond, although the reader can send a comment to the website, which should be moderated prior to being published, if it is to be published at all. I refuse to go into the details of the advertisement, since it is as obscene as all those Israelis who are behind it. I denounce the Huffington Post's decision not to publish the Palestinian point of view however, and for not leaving any room for readers to comment or respond; this is while noting that I immensely respect this liberal website, follow it daily, and appreciate the stances of its editor Arianna Huffington, who is a smart, fair-minded and moderate liberal (except when it comes to Arab and Muslim issues such as the UNESCO vote). Meanwhile, Greg Mitchell's book is a condemnation of the Bush administration along with the American press, documented with month-by-month information, starting with the time that led to the war and up until the book was published. In this vein, I choose to divide the members of the [Bush] administration and the media into two groups: one which is expected to lie, harm and engage in warmongering, and another one that is liberal. The latter surprised me with its pro-war stances, or its complicity with its advocates, which I now can most certainly explain with the fact that American liberals – with many great exceptions that I have written about in a number of articles – do not include for Arab and Muslim issues in their liberalism. George W. Bush is stupid and ignorant; for instance, he announced on board the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln on the 2nd of May, 2003, that “the mission is accomplished”, while Americans were being killed in Iraq every day. He kept announcing that “we have won”, and that “the situation is fine” while the violence was escalating. He even believed that what was happening was “a comma in history”, while 4000 Americans have perished and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed. Meanwhile, Dick Cheney, an advocate for the war who forged the grounds for its justification – and from which Halliburton benefited immensely –, continues to lie to this very day. Even after the official report of the 9/11 commission was issued, and which confirmed that Saddam Hussein had no links with al-Qaeda, Cheney went back to claim that there are [Iraqi] ties to al-Qaeda. He also took the side of the Likudnik William Safire, according to whom, a meeting took place between Mohammad Atta, the leader of the terrorists, and an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague in 2001. Cheney should be tried, along with Rumsfeld and other war criminals. At least, I was not surprised by their stances. I was taken aback by the speech given by the then Secretary of State Colin Powell at the United Nations, and his claims about tons of Anthrax and VX chemical weapon stockpiles, and who even claimed that there are mobile laboratories for these weapons, in addition to aluminium tubes used for a nuclear program. Years later, Powell himself said that this speech was the low point of his political career; I was also taken aback by the liberal press which failed to note the falsehoods in the above-mentioned speech and failed to warn from being dragged into war, all because those who were the targets of this war, in my opinion, were Arabs and Muslims. I will continue about this press in my article tomorrow.
