Is it too much to ask the media to give us a balanced view of what is happening in the Middle East?
Every time there is a suicide bombing we get the grisly pictures, but Israel — which calls itself a democracy — would not allow the International Red Cross or any members of the press in to see the alleged slaughter and mass destruction that they had committed in Jenin and Bethlehem.
It's time for the media to stand up and develop. Americans have not illegally occupied any place for more than 30 years. We have not built houses on another's land, we have not imprisoned a people, bulldozed their houses, cut off their water and electricity. We have not mentally terrorized a country.
Israel is defining the war. Too much time has been spent on whether one side will denounce suicide bombing ... without equal weapons, that is what the Palestinians have been reduced to.
Israel behaves like a child doing something wrong who wants to draw attention away from his actions. For months Israel has been allowed to go into Palestine and assassinate alleged terrorists. This is not how American democracy responds. We have trials.
We must be responsible friends. We must tell our friends when they have gone wrong, when they are too blinded to see the big picture.
Palestinians are human beings and have every right to defend themselves. Let's consider giving Palestinians had to prove that Sharon's latest brutal tactic wouldn't work. Has no one learned anything from our war in Vietnam? The language is different, but the tactics are the same.
Today we call the guerrillas terrorists. Remember the United States with all of our modern weaponry fighting locals in a foreign land? At the beginning of the Vietnam era, no one thought we could lose that war. Secretary of State Colin Powell's failure was not his inability to secure a peace agreement. His failure was a moral one ... he left the area without going to Jenin or Bethlehem.
He lacked the courage to say Arafat is the chosen leader of the Palestinian people and must be included in any peace negotiations. How can Arafat — a 72-year-old man imprisoned for more than 20 days in a compound surrounded by dead men with no running water, working toilets or electricity, cut off from his people, his infrastructure destroyed — influence the pace of the peace process?
