A Great Paper is Unpleasant to Read: Haaretz

“There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.”
Hannah Arendt

Recent Gleanings from Haaretz
From “Palestinian television still glorifies terror attacks against Israel” by Avi Issacharoff
At certain moments, while watching a scene from a program broadcast by Palestinian television on October 25 of last year, it is difficult to believe that this is the official television channel of the Palestinian Authority and the PLO, and not that of Hamas or the Islamic Jihad…
… the wonders of the master terrorist Abbas a-Said, who is jailed in Israel and was sentenced to 35 life sentences. “We are outside the home of the warrior hero, the commander, the lion of the prison, Abbas a-Said.”
Apparently, this example is not atypical on official Palestinian TV, even in the age of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ rule. Nan Jacques Zilberdik, an analyst at Palestinian Media Watch, explains that on Palestinian TV “there is no message of peace with Israel.”
… “There’s no education toward peace,” said Zilberdik in a conversation with Haaretz.
“The new Palestinian generation, who watches Palestinian television, does not hear that Tel Aviv or Ashkelon are Israeli cities. It hears about occupied cities that must be liberated. There is no discourse on compromise or concessions. In the Israeli media, on the other hand, one does see such discourse.”
… “the Jews are our enemies, right?” Suffice it to say that she refers to Israeli soldiers with much harsher words – “animals.” And in October 2010, the station takes pains to interview several Jordanian experts on the Middle East who explain that “the Jews are hated everywhere they have been due to their love of money.””… we found in the Palestinian Authority’s Zayzafuna magazine, a story about a young girl who meets four characters – the fourth is Adolf Hitler. He explains to her what is the killing of Jews and what needs to be done, but there isn’t even a comment on behalf of the editorial staff on who is Hitler and what he is responsible for.
“Today there is no incitement to killing Jews, but they do praise those who carry out terror attacks.”

From “Enemies, a hate story” by Gideon Levy
It is impossible to ignore what is happening to us: Palestinian children die in an accident, and many Israelis are happy about it – and are no longer even ashamed of it…
The Internet roiled – not with the usual anonymous comments, the last refuge of boors and perverts. This time they revealed their names and their Facebook photos, spewing forth nauseating, hate-permeated racism that seemed to exceed anything seen here previously.
“Relax, these are Palestinian children,” Benny Dazanashvili wrote on Twitter. To which Tal Biton responded, “It seems these are Palestinians … God willing.” Itai Viltzig offered up a prayer: “I hope every day there is a bus like this.” Dozens, if not hundreds, of Internet surfers said a prayer of thanks – for the terrible death by fire of young children on a school field trip – and the responses were featured on the web pages of the prime minister and the Israel Police and the Walla! web portal.
“They’ll want money, because money is more important to them than the children who were killed,” one person wrote. Others commented, “Can we send another truck?” and “I’d have sent a double semi-trailer to obliterate all those shits.”

From “Israel can rely only on America and (sigh) the countries of Western Europe” by Chemi Shalev
The New York Times reported this week that Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has bestowed a prestigious Pushkin Medal on Ali Ukla Ursan, a Syrian poet who has praised the 9/11 terrorist attacks and depicted Jews as “Nazi racists”.

From “Hitler’s little mustache” by Adar Primor
Zagreb, October 1999, the Croatian presidential palace. In an attempt to eradicate his country’s leprous image, Franjo Tudjman called a rare press conference at which he intended to present “a different Croatia” – democratic and pluralistic. Everything was carefully prepared. The marble floor tiles gleamed, the lawns were a manicured bright green and even the weather cooperated…
“You were quoted in the past as saying, ‘Thank God, my wife is neither a Serb nor a Jew,'” I addressed him “Moreover, in the English version of your book you corrected passages casting doubt on the extent of the Holocaust, but not in the versions of the book in other languages.” …. blurring between hangmen and their victims will not lead to real reconciliation. Stalinism, with all its terrible crimes, did not develop a racial theory and did not engage in the systematic slaughter of peoples.

“The difficulties which I meet with in order to realize my existence are precisely what awaken and mobilize my activities, my capacities.”
Ortega y Gasset
Most people would rather die than think; many do. 
Bertrand Russell