Laura Bush, 700 Club, and Dorell

Media Watch

Laura Bush, the 700 Club, and Oren Dorell

Laila Yaghi

5/22/02

When Laura Bush gave a speech in France, I was shocked by the statement she gave about children respecting their lives and the lives of others (ABC and NBC news, 5/21) in referral to suicide bombers! Has she been closing her eyes to the fact that Israeli soldiers have been killing innocent civilians with no respect to human life? Has she been deaf to the news about an Israeli soldier shooting a young woman walking with two children and killing them? Or are these people not regarded as human life? And what about all the people who live in Jenin? What about respecting them as human beings who have lost their homes and family members due to bulldozoring homes while people still in them? What do you think happens to all these people? The massacre that happened in Jenin is very obvious! The guilty, terrorist Israeli government, who refused to let the UN investigate all the killings that happened in Jenin is by all means a proof that an atrocity has happened in Jenin. I have come to the conclusion that the Bushes either don't know or are closing their eyes to what is really happening in Palestine.

I have rarely met an American who stands by the Palestinian people or who sympathizes with their plight. Only the very educated Americans are the ones who empathize with the Palestinians! I refer here to the educated person, as one who understands reality and searches for the truth while reading a different kind of objective articles about Palestinians that are written not by Zionists, but by objective writers or by the Palestinians themselves.

The American media has fostered hate against Muslim people, brainwashing many shallow- minded Americans. The TV show that is called, The 700 Club, that airs on Fox TV every day at one o’clock. paints bad pictures of Muslim people all over the world! In addition to that, the news on every channel especially NBC, Fox and CNN have told defamations about Muslim people, and show the suffering of only one people, the Israelis.

There was a series called, Triangle Connections to the Mideast, by Oren Dorell that views Israelis as victims. The editor seems to be very biased. He describes the tremendous suffering of the Israelis living in the occupied territories. The victimizers are viewed as victims in his articles. This is one of the examples that I give about the ignorance of many Americans and their unconditional siding by the Israelis without any regard to the suffering of the Palestinians. After many letters written to Dorell, he wrote an article about the Palestinians. Unfortunately it was an article with not much substance or content. In fact, toward the end of his article, he goes back to state, “…Eliahu, 47, who lived his entire life and raised three children Dor, called the notion “a waste of time.”” This was in referral to the Palestinians right to return to Palestine!

Another article also written by the same writer, Dorell, wants people to empathize with a Jewish family that lived in the USA. The heartless mother states about the Palestinians, "I know they say they are oppressed," Ilana Kleiman said. "But if they think they are oppressed, they can take up their stuff and go away. There are a lot of Arab countries all around”! How can people have so much hatred? The very same people who were victims of a holocaust have become the victimizers themselves! Why doesn’t Kleiman take up her stuff and leave? Kleiman furthermore states, “To think that there will be peace is something that will never happen. They don't want peace." But Kleiman is the one who obviously does want peace! She furthermore lies about the existence of the Palestinian people before the occupation, “”She rejects Palestinian claims that the land was inhabited for centuries before the Zionists started to arrive about 70 years ago. "What was it, a few Bedouin tents?" she asked.””

These are the articles that American people read all the time. Articles that support Zionism and always view the victimizers as the victims! It's time for Americans to know the truth and seek for it.

* Laila Yaghi is a contributing columnist in aljazeerah.info