CAMERA Op-Ed in Jerusalem Post: “Why Egyptian Hate Speech, and NYT Reporting on it, Matter”

A CAMERA Op-Ed commends the New York Times for prominently highlighting anti-Jewish hate indoctrination in Egypt, and explains why the newspaper must likewise begin to give adequate attention to Palestinian incitement, which is an even greater obstacle to peace.

The Op-Ed, published on January 20 in the Jerusalem Post, begins:

Would it be a problem if a society, following the encouragement its leaders, nursed millions of children on hatred for a religious group? Would it matter if a people was taught that bigotry is a form of worshiping God? Few would deny that such incitement does matter, as it would have a dangerous impact on both those encouraged to hate and on the targets of that hatred.

So it is important that The New York Times reported Tuesday on Mohammed Morsi’s chilling 2010 entreaty to Egyptians: “We must never forget, brothers, to nurse our children and grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists, for Jews.” The children of Egypt, Morsi said, shortly before anti-regime protests swept him to the presidency, must “feed on hatred…. The hatred must go on for God and as a form of worshiping him.” In a separate speech, brought to light in recent days by MEMRI, Morsi evoked the anti-Semitic slur casting Jews as “the descedents of apes and pigs.”

It is important that Times correspondent David Kirkpatrick wrote about this because such rhetoric serves as potent fuel that can overwhelm – for generations to come – attempts to extinguish the Arab-Israeli conflict, along with the suffering and bloodshed it causes.

And it is important because the Times has all too often ignored, at the expense of reader understanding of the conflict’s complexities, the ongoing phenomenon of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel indoctrination in Palestinian society and in the wider Arab world.

Later, the piece turns to the incitement that is all too prevalent in the Palestinian territories:

If it is important to understand that Egyptian hostility is not solely about Israel but is also about Egypt, and not merely about the Jewish state’s actions but also about its Jewishness, it is all the more important to realize that this dynamic plays a key role in the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis.

Palestinians deny Israel’s legitimacy not because it is illegitimate, but because they are taught that the Jews have no connection to Zion and told that the idea of two states for two peoples should never be accepted.

They strap bombs on themselves not merely as a reaction to perceived Israeli transgressions, but also in reaction to explicit calls to violence by Palestinian leaders, to clear messages that those who kill civilians are heroes, and to repeated rhetoric no less vile than what we have heard from Morsi.

Palestinian leaders have repeatedly rejected peace plans, not because those plans would not have led to an independent Palestinian state – they would have – but in part because those leaders have raised the masses on the idea that the so-called right of return, widely seen as a way to demographically destroy Israel, is holy, and that Tel Aviv, Haifa and other Israeli cities are actually Palestinian cities in need of liberation.

THE TIMES must educate readers about the malevolent role played by delegitimization, demonization and incitement to violence, not only by Hamas but also by Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority.

Finally, the Op-Ed explains how adequate coverage of Palestinian hate-speech could advance the cause of peace, by showing how its coverage of Morsi’s vile comments rippled all the way to Egypt.

Read the piece in its entirety here.

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