Letter to the Editor

Dear Editor:

Over the past year, the poster boy of the Israel bashers has been 12 year old Muhammad A-Dura, a Gaza boy killed when he and his father - who got wounded - found themselves in the middle of a firefight launched by the PLO when it was attacking Israeli soldiers. Photos of the dead boy and his wounded father have become the most sought-after and popular icon among anti-Semites. They adorn all PLO web sites. They are also regularly waved about by Israel's own anti-Jewish Leftists. The Arab students on Israeli campuses feature posters of the martyred boy in their protests and propaganda tables. The boy has for the past year served as the Number One proof of the justness of the cause of the Palestinians and the evil of Israel. Except for one itsy bitsy problem. The boy and his father were not shot by Israeli troops, but by the PLO. We reported this to you over a year ago.

Now the fact that they were shot by the PLO has been confirmed in a carefully checked documentary by the German television station ARD. The Palestinian 'reporter' who reported the original story and became the instant number one source for the anti-Jewish world media in the matter has refused to comment. Surprise surprise. Neither has Haaretz al Ard, the Hebrew Palestinian newspaper that celebrated a-Dora's martyrdom and death at the hands of soldiers defending settlers violating Palestinian rights.

Now we have been discussing the decision by Israeli governments to fight the public relations war by not fighting it and by forfeiting it to the Arab fascists. Here we have the best possible illustration. In Israel people who wanted the truth knew about the fact that the PLO murdered the 12 year old 'Martyr of Israeli Aggression'. Yet the Israeli government never made any effort at all to make this simple fact known. It invested zero effort as always, and its abandonment of the public relations battleground is just one small part of its overall strategy of defending the country by abandoning all segments of the battleground. And so, in the Orwellian 21st century, the only way to defend the honor of Jews and of the state of Israel is to get German television to do it.

STEVEN PLAUT
Haifa, Israel

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