Frday’s long look at the Israeli Jewish colonies in occupied West Bank Palestine, complete with huge photos and detailed maps, has room for quotations from 11 different people, ranging from Benjamin Netanyahu to Nitza Farkash, an employee at the Eli settlement. But not one Palestinian is asked for his or her reaction. Not one. The reporters, Jodi Rudoren and Jeremy Ashkenas, did at least briefly notice the people who live under Israeli military occupation and whose land is being seized. One solitary sentence said that “. . . a Palestinian man grazed a few cows and sheep on a grassy hillside, and scores of teenagers in white Islamic head scarfs walked home from school.” But the reporters did not stop to ask them any questions. (This short description is a masterpiece of Orientalist haiku. The Palestinians are only backward shepherds and young women in “Islamic head scarfs,” contrasted with the nearby “boomtown” Jewish settlement.) There is more. We learn that back during Netanyahu’s first term as prime minister he “irked Washington in 1997 by adding 300 homes in Efrat.” He probably did more than “irk” the Palestinians who lost their land, but we won’t learn it from this article. Our reporters did find that the settlements might cause human problems in the future. They warn that a peace agreement might eventually pose “the challenge of someday uprooting Israelis, who are now raising a second and third generation in contested areas.” But somehow, the two Times reporters could not find any Palestinians who are being uprooted today. Source URL |
