CAMERA Snapshots..
17 June '15
Denis MacEoin earned a B.A. and an M.A. in English Language and Literature from Trinity College, Dublin, followed by a second 4-year M.A. in Persian, Arabic, and Islamic Studies from Edinburgh and a PhD in Persian/Islamic Studies from Cambridge (King's College). He has lectured in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle University, and written several academic books, numerous articles as well as reports on hate literature, Shari'a Law, and Islamic schools.
As an expert on Arabic and Islamic studies, fluent in Arabic and Persian languages, one might think that Dr. MacEoin’s point of view on the Arab-Israeli conflict and its related controversies would get some coverage in the press. Well, not so much.
Dr. MacEoin sent a letter to the Executive Council of the National Union of Students (NUS), an umbrella organization representing 600 student unions across the UK, calling them to account for voting to boycott Israel. The NUS, which comprises 95% of higher and further education unions in the country, recently passed a motion to boycott Israeli companies and to affiliate to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
But none of the popular press has covered this important response. Dr. MacEoin writes:
The world you live in is upside-down: you claim to act in defense of human rights, but your motions do not reflect this. You give free passage to the worst abusers of human rights -- countries that persecute religious minorities, suppress and kill women, throw homosexuals from high roofs, execute hundreds of dissidents every year, imprison, torture and slaughter -- without rebuke. Yet you fulminate against Israel, which does none of those things. It does not use torture, it does not execute anyone, not even Palestinian terrorists who have committed mass murder against innocent civilians and children -- and all this while being forced to defend itself against more wars, more terrorist attacks, and more hatred than are suffered by the rest of the world combined.
[…]
Your prejudice is as appalling as your refusal to act fairly and honestly. Criticize Israel if you must, but at least learn that it does great good for mankind and that the best hope for the Palestinian people, with whom you express solidarity, does not lie in further acts of terrorism and warfare, nor in defiance of international legal norms, but in encouraging the paths to real peace: free speech for the Palestinians, and freedom from their own barren leaders, who hope to keep their jobs-for-life by deflecting blame for their own corrupt governance onto their neighbor. You could insist on their ending their incitement, which is only radicalizing the Palestinians to turn to the waiting arms of Hamas and ISIS. Why not encourage the Palestinians to accept Israel's frequent offers to help them actually build their infrastructure and economies?
More of the letter can be read on the Gatestone Institute Web site. It is worth reading. The media should read it. And, they should write about it. Where’s the coverage?
Link: http://blog.camera.org/archives/2015/06/wheres_the_coverage_arabic_isl_1.html
Founded in 1982, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America is a media-monitoring, research and membership organization devoted to promoting accurate and balanced coverage of Israel and the Middle East. CAMERA fosters rigorous reporting, while educating news consumers about Middle East issues and the role of the media.
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