Rewriting history, again

The following letter was published in The Hour, in Norwalk, Connecticut, on July 6, 2011.

To the Editor:

As the late New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynahan said, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."

Scott Kimmich is entitled to his opinions, no matter how illogical and hateful they may be, but he's not entitled to make up his own facts, as he has once again done in his latest, fanatical anti-Israel diatribe, "Questioning those who question you," published in The Hour June 25.

As is typical, his rant was filled with half-truths and what might euphemistically be described as extremely creative versions of history. One could fill volumes analyzing his distortions; I'll restrict myself to the way he again insisted that Israel started the 1948 war.

As far as the fighting before Israel's actual reestablishment, on April 16, 1948, Jamal Huseeini, spokesman for the Arab Higher Committee, told the United Nations Security Council: "The representatives of the Jewish Agency told us yesterday that they were not the attackers, that the Arabs had begun the fighting. We do not deny this. We told the whole world we were going to fight."

As far as the actual war, with the invasion by five Arab armies immediately after Israel declared its reestablishment with a call to its Arab neighbors to live together in peace, Trygve Lie, United Nations Secretary General, reported to the Security Council "The Egyptian government has declared in a cablegram to the President of the Security Council on 15 May that Egyptian armed forces have entered Pales tine and it has engaged in 'armed intervention' in that country.

On May 16, I received a cablegram from the Arab League making similar statements on behalf of the Arab states. I consider it my duty to emphasize to that this is the first time since the adoption of the (U.N.) Charter that member states have openly declared that they have engaged in armed intervention outside their own territory.'

Scott Kimmich is right about one thing, readers can easily determine PRIMER's bias by perusing its website, www.primerct.org: PRIMER is biased to wards the truth.

Alan Stein
President, PRIMER-Connecticut, Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting.