Kristof's One-Sided Look at "Two Sides of a Fence"

Gilead Ini
CAMERA Media Analysis
08 July '10

In his July 1 Op-Ed in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof uses several villages near Hebron, in the southern West Bank, as case studies to promote his view that Israel's presence in the West Bank is "morally repugnant," "oppressive and unjust," and "wrong." Kristof attempts to draw parallels between these towns and the occupation as a whole. But the most glaring similarity is that, in his discussion of both the West Bank and the villages, he leaves out key facts with the effect of wildly distorting reader understanding of the issues at hand.

Remarkably for a piece entitled "The Two Sides of a Barbed-Wire Fence," not a single official from the Israeli side, the target of the piece's harangue, is given voice.

And so, for all his righteous indignation aimed at Israel and "the occupation," Kristof's piece fails to take into account that consecutive Israeli governments have clearly indicated their readiness to turn over West Bank territory for a Palestinian state. Indeed, former Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert both offered to withdraw from almost the entire West Bank as part of a peace agreement; but Palestinian leaders, who apparently had priorities beside statehood and independence, rejected the offers.

Kristof offers more specific distortions when he zooms in to the village level.

Particularly egregious is the columnist's description of Palestinians in the village of Tuba who, in Kristof's account, are compelled to live in caves "because permanent structures are destroyed for want of building permits that are never granted." In other words, Israeli policy in the West Bank for the past 40-odd years is so oppressive, so unjust and morally repugnant, that it pushes fellow humans into the last place most Americans would want to live.

(Read full analysis)

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