Keys article biased
USA TODAY’s article “Alicia Keys urged to cancel concert in Israel” reports as fact Palestinian allegations of “Israel’s large-scale abuses of Palestinian rights.” These charges are meant to induce entertainer Alicia Keys to cancel her Tel Aviv performance in the name of fighting “entertainment apartheid.” Israel is a shining example of “anti-apartheid.” Israeli Arabs — 20 percent of the population — exercise the same civil rights as the country’s Jewish majority.
“Large-scale abuses of Palestinian rights” are committed by the terrorist Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip, who attempt to impose an Islamic theocracy, and by the Palestinian Authority administration of the West Bank, the hallmarks of which are corruption and silencing dissent.
Israel so abuses Palestinian rights that polls repeatedly indicate that if the PA were to control eastern Jerusalem in a “two-state solution,” many of its Arab residents would move to western Jerusalem and apply for Israeli citizenship. Religious, ethnic, and gender apartheid does exist in Arab states, as news from Syria, Iraq and elsewhere demonstrates.
Eric Rozenman, Washington director
Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America; Washington, D.C.