Another ‘NY Times’ columnist needs a history lesson - by Stephen M. Flatow

The Michelle Goldbergs of this world would have us believe that today’s conflict consists of Israel having a state in historic Palestine and preventing the Arabs from having one if their own.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
11 December '18..

New York Times op-ed columnist Michelle Goldberg has stirred quite a hornet’s nest with her recent article declaring that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitic. Others will wrestle with the anti-Zionism/anti-Semitism debate. I prefer to focus on one particular sentence that really goes to the heart of the issue—and which also reveals Goldberg’s gross ignorance of the basic history of the issue she is addressing.

According to Goldberg, Palestinian demands are reasonable, and it’s Israel that is being unfair because “the de facto policy of the Israeli government is that there should be only one state in historic Palestine.”

Ms. Goldberg is a journalist, and I don’t expect journalists to be historians. She has written books with titles such as The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World, so I don’t expect her to be an expert on the Middle East either.

On the other hand, according to her New York Times bio, Goldberg has “reported from countries including Iraq [and] Egypt,” so it seems to me that she does have a basic responsibility to be acquainted with the major developments in the history of a part of the world she has covered.

But anybody who can write such a sentence as “the de facto policy of the Israeli government is that there should be only one state in historic Palestine” clearly has not fulfilled that basic responsibility.

So, I offer Ms. Goldstein a brief history lesson.

(Continue to Full Column)

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