Monday, September 26, 2011

Cartoon in The New Haven Register: Despicable and Incendiary


Editorial cartoons are supposed to be thought-provoking, but a responsible cartoonist does not mislead and does not promote hatred. Atlanta Journal-Constitution cartoonist Mike Luckovich did both in a hateful cartoon published in The New Haven Register September 26, 2011.


Ed Wood wrote the following letter about the cartoon to the Editorial Page Editor of The New Haven Register, Charles Kochakian ckochakian@journalregister.com.


The cartoon may be viewed at http://blogs.ajc.com/mike-luckovich/files/2011/09/mike09232011.jpg.

Dear Mr. Kochakian:

Even though I have reached my letters limit for the year, I
promised to keep sending them on topics which show up on the op-ed page
that I believe require a response. Mike Luckovich's particularly nasty
and biased cartoon today fit that category.

In it he has Benjamin Netanyahu saying "I'm finally willing
to accept a two-state solution." He is pointing to a map indicating that
Wyoming and Nebraska are the two states in which he wants the
Palestinians to end up.

I know that a free press should allow many points of view,
so I hope to see another cartoon soon which might go something like
this:

"Mahmoud Abbas and the PA Finally Agree to a Peace Treaty" 

It could show Abbas signing the document while standing on
the beach of the Mediterranean with a whole fleet of payloaders pushing
all the Jews into the ocean.

HOW'S THAT FOR BALANCE?

Sincerely,
Edward Wood

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Setting Stanley Heller Straight


After Stanley Heller's latest anti-Israel rant published in The New Haven Register, Ed Wood wrote the following letter to the editor. Heller is the leader of the Middle East Crisis Committee, a group with the singular goal of eliminating the world's only Jewish state, which happens to also be the only true democracy and America's only enduring friend in the Middle East.


Because The New Haven Register has a policy of not publishing more than four letters from a single individual in a year, Ed's letter wasn't published, but his message is worth reading.

Stanley Heller is, if nothing else, predictable. Again he laments the "unfairness" the Palestinians have experienced at the hand of Israel with a stubborn refusal to look at the facts. Here are some of them which he has ignored:

1) In return for decades of concessions, Israel has reaped only increasing scorn, contempt, and attacks from the Palestinians and their allies around the world.

2) When given the choice, the Palestinians chose Hamas to represent them whose goal to exterminate Israel has never changed.

3) The conflict between Israel, the Palestinians, and its Arab neighbors is very much a religious war, since their opponents adhere to a religion whose own Quran and teachings direct its followers to either convert, subjugate, or eliminate all those outside Islam. More and more these militant directives are being taken literally by Muslims, including the Palestinians.

4) A free society has no obligation to allow those very freedoms to be abused by those which would seek to destroy it. In fact it is obligated to protect itself and its citizens from this very thing.

5) By continuing their animosity toward Israel, the Palestinians have very much brought their present fate upon themselves.

To have peace ALL parties involved must truly be seeking it.

Unless the Palestinians recognize Israel's right to exist, this will never come and all the U.N. declarations to impose peace will not be worth the paper they are printed upon.

Sincerely,
Edward Wood

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Ecological Considerations in the War Against Israel


The following letter was submitted to The Hour (Norwalk, Connecticut) immediately after that newspaper published virtually the same later twice in eight days. Although The Hour publishes almost everything sent to it, this letter has not been published, even after it was resubmitted about two weeks later just in case it got lost in cyberspace.

To the Editor:

It's encouraging to learn that in these days of diminishing resources, The Hour has initiated the revolutionary concept of "content recycling." The letter, "Nervy of the letter writers to suggest editorial policy," by Lynn Carlton published August 15 was almost identical to the letter by the same writer, "Defending Scott Kimmich," published eight days earlier and also similar in message to the letter by Aletha Carlton, "Focus the conversation on what is happening now," published just four days earlier.

Each of these anti-Israel letters, like Scott's, also recycle false information and unsupportable opinions. The latter are acceptable but the former, such as the obviously false assertion "Israel has … separate license plates for people of a different faith," are not. The known truth is that Israel issues the same license plates for all its citizens, whether Jewish, Christian, Muslim or adherents of any of the other faiths who practice freely in Israel. These license plates of course differ from those issued by the Palestinian Authority, the corrupt governing body for almost all the Arabs in the disputed territories.

Interestingly, these anti-Israel writers completely ignore the apartheid policies of the Palestinian Authority, which go far beyond issuing different license plates based on religion. The Palestinian Authority insists that no Jews will live in its future state and  long ago made it a capital crime to even sell land to a Jew.

Those who claim to be interested in human rights should be protesting the racist policies of the Palestinian Authority and its refusal to even negotiate with Israel.

In terms of suggesting editorial policy to The Hour, I would not suggest it stop publishing the anti-Israel diatribes by Scott Kimmich and the two Carltons, but I would suggest it pay more attention to Article IV of the Statement of Principles of the American Society of News Editors, which reads: "Truth and Accuracy. Good faith with the reader is the foundation of good journalism. Every effort must be made to assure that the news content is accurate, free from bias and in context, and that all sides are presented fairly. Editorials, analytical articles and commentary should be held to the same standards of accuracy with respect to facts as news reports. Significant errors of fact, as well as errors of omission, should be corrected promptly and prominently."

In other words, I suggest The Hour exercise its responsibility to eliminate the false information that pervades those anti-Israel letters and issue its own, official corrections when it inadvertently publishes false information.

I recognize such a policy would create tremendous difficulty for the anti-Israel writers, since it is very hard to make a case against Israel while sticking to the truth, but unfortunately sometimes life can be fair. And the anti-Israel fanatics certainly have plenty of illogical arguments they can continue to recycle.

Alan Stein