Dear The World,

Today (Monday 16 Aug.), Katy Clark introduced yet another remarkably one-sided piece by Matthew Bell on proposed Palestinian-Israeli negotiations. Predictably, everyone interviewed was Palestinian. Predictably, all blame was placed on Israel. One PA functionary talked of 17 years of negotiations without progress.

There was not a word, not a hint, that the Palestinians and broader Arab world have anything to do with the lack of peace. The sole balancing phrase in the entire interview was the phrase at the end that Mahmoud Abbas rejected a two-state solution with the previous Israeli PM. It is remarkable that The World so consistently shills for the Palestinians, and ignores the fact that they have not offered a single compromise, or return gesture.

How long will it take for The World to point out that

(1) The Palestinians and broader Arab world have repeatedly rejected any two state solution that would leave Israel as a permanent Jewish state.

(2) Abbas continues to demand resettlement of descendants of Arab refugees in pre-1967 Israel, not a future Palestinian state. Thus he demands a purely Palestinian state in the West Bank, and a largely Palestinian one in what is now Israel. This impractical and spurious claim denies the rights of the similar number of Jewish refugees from Arab lands. It sidesteps Arab responsibility for starting the wars that led to BOTH refugee issues.

(3) Abbas and the PA continue to engage in incitement and indoctrination in their media and schools, and mosques. Thus Abbas recently lauded the mastermind of the Munich massacre, and named streets and computer centers after the perpetrators of the worst attacks on Israeli civilians.

(4) The PA and Arab League continue to press for Israel’s isolation and exclusion from international bodies.

(5) The Palestinians (and much of the Arab world) see the peace process as a means to dismantle Israel after the failure of all the wars. Indeed all Palestinian maps shows Israel as part of the Palestinian state.

(6) Instead of soft soaping Hamas, to point out its outright calls for Israel’s destruction and the murder/ethnic cleansing of all its Jews.

The anti-Israel bias was mirrored by the piece on President Ahmadinejad’s so called coarse language. What can be more offensive than his repeated denial of the Holocaust, his calls for Israel’s destruction, and the chants of “death to America”, “death to Israel” at every public meeting? What is worse than the frequent boasts of many Iranian officials that “one bomb” will destroy Israel (the fact that it will also destroy all Christian and some major Islamic sites, and wipe out most of the Palestinians, does not seem to worry them)?