Many Americans are confused and misled about the facts of the Middle East
because they don't understand the language of Israeli propaganda.

A terrorist is any Palestinian who wants to end the Israeli occupation. A
militant is anyone the Israelis kill. If they shoot you, you are, by definition,
a militant, even if you're only 6 months old or 10 years old or 80 years old.
The Israelis never kill anybody but militants, so all of the more than 70
Palestinian children 15 and younger shot dead by Israeli soldiers are militants.
Most civilized countries don't think militancy is a capital offense.

Unfortunately, members of the press often adopt the language of propaganda. They
report that the Israelis have killed 20 militants. In fact, they don't know
that. They themselves have never seen the 20 dead people. For all they know,
they might be Palestinian nuns or pacifists. A good reporter will just report
what he knows: The Israelis say they have killed 20 Palestinians.

Recently, one of the Fox Network's foxy blondes belligerently demanded of a
Palestinian spokesman why Yasser Arafat had not made a speech in Arabic
demanding an end to terror. When the Palestinian finally got a chance to talk,
he told her what everybody who follows the Middle East already knows: Arafat has
condemned terrorism in speeches made in Arabic. The spokesman even gave the
blond cutie two specific dates and occasions.

But what's important to us, as consumers of this bilge on television, is this: I
think it is a most safe assumption that the lady, ordinarily quite pleasant and
giggly, does not speak Arabic, does not understand spoken Arabic and does not
monitor radio and television broadcasts in Arabic. So the question is, how would
she know whether Arafat had ever made a speech in Arabic on any subject? The
answer is that she doesn't, yet she adamantly and obnoxiously asserted that he
had not condemned suicide bombings in Arabic. Where did she get that
information? >From Israeli propaganda.

It could be that these younger folks who are in-studio types are just naive.
Perhaps I can help them. All governments lie. Some governments lie on some
occasions, some lie on many occasions, and some lie on all occasions. The
Israeli government is a world-class liar. You can count on almost anything it
says as being all false, or partly true and partly false, or true but out of
context.

The members of the Israeli government are also the most self-centered people on
earth. To them it is unacceptable for any Israeli to die, but perfectly OK if
any number of Palestinians die. How little value they place on Palestinian life
is illustrated by a sentence an Israeli court gave a Jewish settler. His
sentence was a fine and community service. What was his crime? He had knocked
down a 10-year-old Palestinian boy, put his booted foot on the child's neck and
beaten him to death with the butt of his military pistol. But as one of the
right-wing rabbis is now saying openly, a Jewish life is more valuable than a
gentile life.

President Bush, perhaps the most naive American, wants everyone to call suicide
bombers murderers. I won't. They are martyrs. Those young Palestinians have done
exactly the same thing so many young Americans have done - willingly sacrificed
their lives for their country's freedom. If they are murderers because they kill
civilians during a war, then Mr. Bush's own father is a mass murderer. His war
and his embargo have murdered tens of thousands of innocent men, women and
children in Iraq. Young Bush is apparently planning to murder more.To paraphrase
the killer in the movie "Unforgiven," "We are all murderers, kid."

The irony is that while Bush keeps yapping at Arafat to stop the violence, Bush
himself refuses to stop the much greater violence inflicted on the Palestinian
people by Israel. In case he hasn't noticed, there are, to use his favorite
phrase, innocent men, women and children dying in the occupied territories
because of Israeli state terrorism practically every day.

Instead of playing self-righteous semantic games, Bush should devote his energy
to stopping the killing by everybody, including us. He should strongly support
freedom for the Palestinians. That's the only way the Israelis will ever have
security. And he should abandon the idea that the way to stop killing is to
kill.

(This article is not being sent by the writer, but is listed as a reference only)