[Reformatted] Burning down the olympics

[Eric Cordian]

Peter Trei writes:

> >      "I want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry about 
> >       American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America,
> >       and the Americans know it."
> >                                            --Ariel Sharon
> >                                              October 3, 2001

> I don't recall hearing about this remark on the news at 
> the time, and I suspect I would have. A Google search 
> turns up a number of cites, but they are all on white 
> supremacist or anti-Isreal sites. The original source is
> the Islamic Association for Palestine site:

I got 256 hits on Google.  The original source is apparently Israel Radio
in Hebrew, Col Yisrael, commenting on Sharon's remarks, although of course
it has received wide coverage in the Arab press and on white supremicist
sites.

I see not a single denial.

> Regardless of what Sharon may or may not believe, I
> don't think he could have said this without the major 
> media jumping all over it, in the way that Bush 
> recently got pinged for referring to the people
> of Pakistan as 'Pakis' (a racial slur in Britain).

I don't know.  Accusations of antisemitism in the US are extremely vicious
and business destroying, and mainstream newspapers will generally not
print anything which might cause them to be so labeled. "Pakis" and other
maligned groups do not generally enjoy this special dispensation.

As Gore Vidal is fond of saying, there is considerably more freedom to
criticize Israel in Israel, than there is to criticize Israel in the
United States.

> Of course, one could take the self-fullfiling viewpoint 
> that the fact that this quote only appears in extreme 
> fringe publications is simply proof of total Jewish control 
> of the major media. I prefer to apply Occam's Razor.

I'm kind of torn here.  I certainly don't wish to adopt the position that
nothing is credible that doesn't get mainstream media coverage.  But you
are right that it's a bit suspicious.

When the false story was planted that CNN had used archived footage to
simulate Palestinians celebrating the WTC flattening, the denials were
swift, even though the story had only appeared on the Internet.

I see no denials of this even more widely reported story, and I find that
suspicious too.

Newspapers regularly refuse even well-written op-ed pieces which point out
Israel's warts.

One recalls the recent firings of Managing Editor Jean Ryan and City
Editor Dale Seth from the Oneida Daily Dispatch for daring to place the
word "Jewish" preceeding the word "terrorist" in an editorial about
Israel's formation, one of American Journalism's many unwritten taboos
about coverage of Israel.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say that Sharon's remarks were
probably quoted accurately, based on a preponderance of the evidence,
even though, as you point out, they were not repeated in the New York
Times, or even in the Oneida Daily Dispatch.

-- 
Eric Michael Cordian 0+
O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division
"Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"