From: perlman@qso.Colorado.EDU (Eric S. Perlman)
Subject: Re: Friendship
Summary: 'Washington Report' article disgustingly biased.
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Date: Sun, 11 Oct 1992 06:07:07 GMT

In article <4026@copper.Denver.Colorado.EDU> aaldoubo@copper.denver.colorado.edu (Anisa Alnoor Aldoubosh) writes:
>"A Friendship Based on a Common Struggle Survives the Test of Time"
>
>Janet McMahon / August/September 1992 / Washington Report
>
>	"On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the occupation,
>	we have returned to the Israeli Embassy in London to voice
>	our protest.
>
>	"In 1973, we stood in this exact spot, at the gates of the
>	embassy, to express our opposition to six years of occupation.
>
>	"Nineteen years later, we have come together again, to deliver
>	the same message.  The situation remains unchanged, the
>	repression and violation of human rights continue.
>
>	"We hope that an equitable and just solution will soon be found."
>
>			-  Ghada Karmi and Ellen Siegel/June 4, 1992
>
>
>"Ghada Karmi and Ellen Siegel have been friends for 20 years.  One a
>displaced Palestinian, the other an American Jew, they have shared the
>same goal for the two decades of their friendship - that the Palestinian
>people should no longer live in exile from their homeland.
>
>"In 1973, on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, the two friends
>first stood in front of the Israeli embassy in London.  Ellen had come
>to London following her first trip to the Middle East.  She was visiting
>Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut when she heard that Israeli Olympic
>athletes, taken hostage in Munich by Palestinian guerrillas, were killed
>during a rescue attempt.  It also was in the refugee camps that she first
>heard Jaffa and Haifa referred to as cities of Palestine, not Israel.  She
>decided to move to London 'to work on the Palestinian issue'.

This is a disgusting minimization of the Munich Olympics massacre.  It
actually makes it appear as if the deaths of the Israeli atheletes was
Israel's fault!  We should remember that two of them had been killed
days before the rescue was even attempted.  There is no reason to
believe that if no rescue had been attempted that even one would have
survived.  The whole article is full of disgusting fallacies of this
type.

>"Ghada, meanwhile had been in exile for nearly a quarter of a century.  She
>was only eight when her parents fled their home in the Katamon neighborhood
>of what is now West Jerusalem, amid 'the most appalling atmosphere of
>terrorism'.  It was April 1948, a month before the state of Israel was
>formally established, but her neighborhood, located in the hills overlooking
>the city, was of great strategic value to the Zionists.  Jewish terrorists
>even hid in her family's garden, shooting down at targeted Palestinians below.

"Jewish Terrorists?  Excuse me - while I am sorry that Ghada's family
was displaced, the fact is that if al-Husseini's forces had gotten into
Jerusalem there wouldn't have been any Jews left there, in all
probability!

>"The family fled to Damascus, believing they would return 'in a matter of
>weeks'.  When, after a year, Israel still would not allow them to return to
>their home, her father took a job in London.  As her crisp British accent
>testifies, Ghada attended school and received her medical degree in England,
>and has lived there ever since.

Apparently they believed that the Arab forces would win the war.
Fortunately they did not.

>"In 1972, Ghada created an organization called Palestine Action, which
>published the newspaper Free Palestine.  Her aim was to place the Palestinian
>agenda before the eyes of the world, which at that time saw Palestinians only
>as hijackers and terrorists.  When Ellen arrived in London that year, she
>looked in the phone book for Palestinian organizations and found Palestine
>Action.  She and Ghada worked side by side for two years, until Ellen left
>London in 1974.  They were not to see each other again for 18 years.
>
>"During those years, Ghada continued to work for the Palestinian cause.  While
>advancing her career in Britian's national health service, she also worked
>with the Council for Arab-British Understanding and as a member of the
>University of London's Middle East Center at the School of Oriental and African
>Studies (SOAS).  She has also written numerous articles and appears often on
>British radio and television.
>
>"Ellen, a nurse, returned to Beirut in the 1980s to practice her profession in
>the same refugee camps in which she was introduced to the Palestinians and
>their story.  She was one of the Western medical workers in Beirut's Sabra
>and Shatilla camps who, in 1982, barely escaped with their lives when Lebanese
>Phalangists, protected by the Israeli invaders, massacred hundreds of men,
>women, and children there.  She returned to her home in Washington, DC, where
>she works as a nurse and, as a member of the Jewish Committee for Israeli-
>Palestinian Peace, for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

JCIPP is a far-far-left group which does not by any stretch of the
imagination represent a mainstream view among Jews.

>"A 'Desperate' Search"
>
>"Although they followed each other's progress over the years, a photo of
>Ghada and her daughter Salma that Ellen saw in the Palestinian paper Al Fajr
>prompted their reunion.  The newspaper described Ghada's 'desperate' as she
>calls it, attempt to find her childhood home during a visit to Jerusalem.
>
>"All of the old landmarks had been destroyed, and Ghada's first two tries
>were failures.  Then an Israeli friend found some elderly Jewish residents
>who remembered what the neighborhood had looked like when they arrived in
>1948.  Ghada's home had been turned into a synagogue.
>
>"As the two friends' lives diverged during their long separation, so,
>apparently, has their outlook.  Ellen says she 'has had to make peace with
>Jews, to show greater understanding and sensitivity to their fears and
insecurities.  That,' she explains, 'has been a moderating influence'.
 
And the only ones who can exert a "moderating" influence are the ones
who just happen to hold an anti-Israel appearance, hmmm???  Excuse me.
That's clearly a polarizing influence.  Also clearly disagreeing with
history, but that doesn't seem to matter to those from the Washington
Report.

>"Ghada, on the other hand, describers herself as 'more cynical and despairing'.
>In 1973, she says, when she and Ellen first stood outside the Israeli embassy
>in London, she had 'a powerful hope, a disbelief that such injustice could
>really last and last'.  In the intervening years, however, she has 'come to
>understand that the timespan of historical process is not tailor-made to an
>individual's life'.
>
>"Asked if they think the situation has improved for Palestinians today,
>however, both Ghada and Ellen immediately answer 'no'.  For the Palestinians
>remaining in their own land, Ellen says, 'the footage from 1968 is the same
>as today'.  This is precisely the point of their 1992 demonstration.  In
>Ghada's words, 'Nothing essential has changed, especially in the context of
>[Arab-Jewish] dialogue and the peace process.  My right of return is still
>not recognized'.
>
>"As I prepare this article, Ellen told me that Ghada had said she would like
>to hear someone apologize for what has happened to the Palestinians.  When
>I asked Ghada whether she wanted the apology from the United Nations,
>specific countries, or individuals, she responded:
>
>	"The apology has to come from the Jews.  Part of them actually
>	committed the physical dispossession, and part of them
>	supported it.  I would like all of them to apologize, to say
>	'We're sorry we did this to you', instead of behaving as if it
>	were all just a misadventure or accident of fate".

How about an apology for Al-Husseini, for starting a war which resulted
in the refugee problem but which was completely *NOT* the Jews - i.e.
modern-day Israel's - fault?  The fact is that while some actions by
Jewish forces did contribute to the problem, the Palestinians have their
own brothers to blame for their dispossession.

In terms of factuality, the article gets an F.  

-- 
"How sad to see/A model of decorum and tranquillity/become like any other sport
A battleground for rival ideologies to slug it out with glee." -Tim Rice,"Chess"
     Eric S. Perlman 				 <perlman@qso.colorado.edu> 
  Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy, University of Colorado, Boulder