There's plenty to criticize in there, from the direct linking of 9/11 to Israel to the creepy "like lips to teeth". Actually the whole thing is pretty wretched. But saying that injustices were done to certain people in 1948 isn't the same as 'calls Israel's creation an "injustice."'

I have never posted here before, but I tend to really
like the material. For this post though, I think we need
to look at the whole sentence:

>Stateless Palestinians have long been a casus belli among
>Arab terrorists, although removing the injustice done to
>them by Israel's creation in 1948 has also long been in
>the interests of the US and Israel, especially since the
>1967 war that led Israel to take new territory.

Did the Arabs of Palestine who turned down a UN-offered
state in 1947 prefer to attack 200,000 civilian Jews
in Jerusalem? Yes. Therefore, was it not an "injustice"
that many of them lost their homes? Certainly one could
argue in favor of this point. But did the CSM state that
Israel's creation was an injustice? I don't think so,
the editors seem to be claiming that what happened to
(some) Palestinians when Israel was created was unjust.
It is possible that the editors believe that had Israel
been created without a refugee problem, then Israel's
existence would not be unjust.

More importantly, is "doofuses" really the plural of
"doofus?" Shouldn't it be "doofi?"

Incidentally, try throwing "like lips to teeth" into Google to see who coined that charming phrase...

I disagree with you both.

"Stateless Palestinians have long been a casus belli among Arab terrorists, although removing the injustice done to them by Israel's creation in 1948 has also long been in the interests of the US and Israel..."

Not "by bad people who drove them off their land," not "by irresponsible Arab leaders who advised them to make way for the coming genocide," but "by Israel's creation."

Israel's creation was not an injustice, and no Palestinian Arabs were rendered stateless thereby. They were rendered stateless by their own non-acceptance and non-participation in the new state and a failed genocide, but Israel's creation in and of itself didn't do it.

The CSM isn't writing in a vacuum, and there ARE many people who try to peddle the idea that Israel's creation *in and of itself* dispossessed the Arabs, but that's not true, so at best, the editors used some turns of phrase that were ill-advised and which they can and should issue a clarification on. If they don't understand the implications, it just shows even more how little they understand the issues and how ill-suited they are to be offering suggestions.

That is one dreadful piece of writing.

I tend to agree with Solomon. In context with the overall tone of the article, which discusses "Clinton's failure" but not Arafat's, links that failure directly to 9/11 but doesn't mention the intifada (nor the decades of violence previously), and of course neglects to mention the fact that there was no Palestinian state prior to 1947 anyhow - and THEN assumes that Israeli "concessions" can "win over Hamas," which is absurd - I think the author clearly intended to state that Israel's very creation was a de facto injustice to the Palestinians.

I've heard this before; it seems to be a meme on the left wing blogosphere, where knowledge of the Arab position vis a vis the Jews is in short supply. Such information would apparently upset the carefully crafted point of view that the evil, heavily armed Israelis didn't drive up to the prosperous, heavily populated State of Palestine in an America aircraft carrier and "steal" it lock stock and barrel in 1948.

Unfortunately ignorance of the facts doesn't explain the Arabs' viewpoint toward the Jewish people and Eretz Israel. I have a theory: the idea that Israel's very creation constituted an injustice to the Palestinians isn't a left wing idea, though it's been adopted by many on the Left: it's the Arab point of view on the matter.

The very creation of Israel was absolutely not to be tolerated and her existence is not accepted, still, by many parties in the Middle East. It doesn't matter if Israel is postage-stamp size, Israel in and of itself is intolerable. The idea that Jews would have authority over Arabs, ie in a majority Jewish state of ANY size, was anathema in 1947 and remains so to many today and it is THAT which is considered "an injustice" in an of itself.

CSM is merely presenting this attitude in an editorial.

The question is, why?

>I disagree with you both.

And the fact that we can rationally discuss honest
disagreement is good thing.

I noted that the Arabs turned down 1947 partition. I also
noted that Arabs sowed their own seeds by their vicious
attack (siege) of the civilian Jews of Jerusalem. So I am
firmly in your camp on the ludicrous tone of this CSM
editorial. It is unbalanced on the anti-Israel side.

The only real issue is whether or not the CSM editorial
board implied that "Israel's creation" = "injustice" or if
they implied that "being refugees" = "injustice." I would
argue the latter, since I interpret the "injustice done
to them" as "their becoming refugees."

>The CSM isn't writing in a vacuum, and there ARE many people
>who try to peddle the idea that Israel's creation *in and of
>itself* dispossessed the Arabs, but that's not true, so at
>best, the editors used some turns of phrase that were ill-
>advised and which they can and should issue a clarification on.

Agreed 100%. They may well have *intentionally* stopped
just short of connecting the dots: "Israel's creation" =
"Palestinians became refugees" = "injustice" therefore the
reader is led intentionally by CSM editors to draw the
conclusion that "Israel's creation" = "injustice" w/out
the editors actually stating this. In other words, given
the one-sided nature of the piece, I am perfectly willing
to believe that CSM might be trying to skew their readers
to an anti-Israel opinion. I just think CAMERA went a bit
too far in saying that the piece *explicitly* claims that
"Israel's creation" = "injustice."

hattrick3 said just about everything I was going to. I'd just add that, as a fact-checking watchdog, CAMERA might want to stick to assertions that aren't based on this sort of hair-splitting.

"On Monday, he called for an international conference this fall to negotiate the creation of a Palestinian state that can exist peacefully with Israel. Such a historic step would do as much to prevent another terrorist strike on US soil as anything else Mr. Bush has done overseas in the nearly six years since the Sept. 11 attacks. His goal of democratizing the Middle East is a ways off, to say the least, with an unstable Iraq. And Al Qaeda has found a new home in Pakistan."

Another moron promulgating the myth that all the terrorist anti-US sentiment in the world is due to our support of Israel. This one also thinks that peace with the Arabs in Palestine will be accomplished with the establishment of a “Palestinian State”…that was planned and tried 85 years ago with the British mandate (e.g., Arab Palestine). Apparently this author is unaware of this Hadith: Sahih Muslim, Book 041, Number 6981: Ibn ‘Umar reported Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: You will fight against the Jews and you will kill them until even a stone would say: Come here, Muslim, there is a Jew (hiding himself behind me) ; kill him.