ALGEMEINER
by Tamar Sternthal
September 28, 2014
“Struggles for freedom continued across the Middle East and North Africa in 2013, but several countries faced worsening violence as antidemocratic forces asserted themselves,” according to a 2014 Freedom House report on the Middle East and North Africa. If the Op-Ed in yesterday’s The New York Times is correct (“How Israel Silences Dissent”), Israel is not the one “free state” in the Middle East, a designation it received from Freedom House.
Rather, it is descending into the surrounding undemocratic Middle Eastern abyss. The Jewish state, one would conclude from The Times opinion piece, joins the likes of Egypt, where over 1,000 demonstrators were killed this year, and Libya, which saw the killing of 43 demonstrators last November in Tripoli.
“The aggressive silencing of anyone who voices disapproval of Israeli policies or expresses empathy with Palestinians is the latest manifestation of an us-versus-them mentality that has been simmering for decades,” laments Mairav Zonszein in her Times Op-Ed. Zonszein’s hysterical polemic about new heights of “radical nationalism” and “erosion of Enlightenment values” (language which she attributes to Israeli political scientist Zeev Sternhell) suggest the mass killing of demonstrators like in Egypt or Libya, the widespread arrest of journalists like in Turkey, and the total crushing of dissent as in Syria……As freedom and democracy continue to decline in much of the Middle East with the notable exception of Israel, The New York Times’ disproportionate, obsessive criticism of Israel drives the paper’s coverage into a journalistic tailspin.
ArchitectGuy on Israel 