PrintOprah: oy vey!
A reader has sent us an article from Oprah Winfrey's backyard in Chicago. The Chicago Jewish News features writer Joseph Aaron's lament that Oprah has apparently bought—into a number of chilling myths about the Palestinian terrorists, at least according to an article which recently appeared in her Magazine O.
In the current issue of her magazine, Oprah has a story that truly shows how delusional she is.
It's the story of Yusra Abdu, an 18— year—old Palestinian. "A wonderfully frivolous teenager," "a happy girl with an optimistic smile."
Oh, by the way, Yusra Abdu wanted to be a suicide bomber.
According to the article in Oprah, she was a girl with "velvety skin" who did it all for love. And, of course, because the Jews made her do it.
Indeed, the article's headline is "Love and Terror," and the introductory paragraph refers to Yusra as "one of the youngest casualties of an unending conflict."
Catch that word "casualty?" Yes, according to Oprah, this young woman, who the article says has an "overfull closet of clothes, whose doors are layered with posters of handsome Arab stars," is a casualty. Why? Because she's now serving a 15—month sentence in an Israeli jail. Why? Because she was planning to murder Jews, not that the article would ever use the word murder.
Only in the strange world of the Palestinians, and evidently Oprah, is someone who is setting out to kill innocent people, actually the victim in the whole thing.
That she evidently fell in love with Hani Akad, the top man in the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine in the city of Nablus, as they were planning her mission, makes her all the more the victim, according to Oprah. Oh by the way, Akad, an explosions expert responsible for many suicide bombings and on Israel's most wanted list of terrorists, is referred to by Oprah as a "charismatic young rebel."
And that indeed is the tone of the entire article with every Israeli military operation "bloody" and every Palestinian a victim.
Take this one very representative paragraph. "The Israeli crackdown since 2000 has been overwhelming. Entire cities at times have been sealed off interminably; infrastructure such as electricity grids and roads routinely interrupted or destroyed ... Israel justifies these maneuvers by saying they were necessary to reduce the number of suicide bombings, which spiked in 2002 and have declined dramatically since."
Unbelievable. It doesn't note that the reason they have declined is not because the Palestinians have stopped trying, but because Israel has been forced to take the measures it has. Much worse, however, not once in this whole long article is it mentioned that more than 1,500 Israelis were murdered in almost daily terrorist attacks in the last couple of years. And if you want to talk about young victims of this unending conflict, how about the 10—month—old Israeli girl killed while sitting in her stroller and all the other Israeli victims of suicide bombings, young and old, including pregnant women and children eating ice cream cones.
No, to Oprah, the victims are the suicide bombers, not those who have been killed by them.
Not once does the article raise the question of what kind of society not only breeds but venerates suicide bombing, nor whether suicide bombing can ever be justified as a means of political expression.
And while the article says the Israelis and Palestinians are equally to blame for the failure of the Camp David peace talks in 2000, even though President Clinton has said the failure was all Arafat's, somehow only Israel is to blame for the intifada that followed.
