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July 15, 2005 In his July 15th article, "Israel Is The Eye Of The Storm In The Middle East," Thomas Keyes made some good points. For one thing, it's quite obvious that Jewish intellectuals have enormous influence in affecting American opinions, right or wrong. NBC was started by David Sarnoff and run by him with an iron hand, for many decades. William Paley, in spite of his Gentile-sounding name, was Jewish, and he started and ran CBS for decades. The majority of movie moguls in Hollywood have been Jewish, even including the present leadership of Disney. The New York Times was started and run by Jews for many decades, and their editorials are carefully read by the leadership of many other organizations. All of these mass media have tended to present a steep liberal slant to what we all listen to and read. However, in spite of these amazing facts, we are exposed to many other inputs, and the U.S. is not an extremely liberal-leaning country, especially in recent years. Our citizens seem to be able to see right through the pink haze. As one example, our Government has generally helped Israel, but we never did send troops when Israel was attacked directly by the Muslim countries. It's hard to believe that Israel is the main factor in our present actions in Iraq, when one considers the price of oil, and the danger of a nut like Hussein being able to use the huge Iraqi oil reserves to eventually buy powerful weapons. Regardless of their present petroluem outputs, the Arab countries have a great effect on the worldwide price of oil. We are obviously extremely dependent on oil, even to transport food to our cities. One can't dispute the fact that Israel is a thorn in the side of the Arabs. But Israel did offer citizenship to the Palestinians when it first became a state. Looking at the fairness of it all, those Muslims who accepted are now much more prosperous than the Palestinian "refugees" (who should be called "refusees"), and now the acceptors even include a few legislators in Israel. Muslim extremist leaders somehow convinced most Palestinians to reject this offer, just like they now convince a few crazies to become suicide bombers --- it's all insane. It's hatred built up unfairly. I also find it hard to believe that, in European Russia, so many Jews with German names did not migrate from Germany at some point. I don't claim to have made any anthropological facial measurments, but the many such people I have known look more like German Jews to me, than they look like people from the steppes, or Uzbeks, or Khazaks, Khazars, etc. (I have known many Gentiles from Eastern Russia also, who look quite different --- a little bit like Asians or Turks.) Probably one big factor in the Iraq situation, which neither Thomas Keyes nor I mentioned, is democracy. The last thing that influential Muslims want, either religious leaders or political leaders, is the spread of honest voting in the Middle East. Israel could be thought of as the germ of that, but it is really the U.S. that is spreading it, not Israel at all. We are the most important enemy of the extremist leaders, not Israel. ------------ About the author: Dan Shanefield is a retired engineering prof, who worked at Bell Labs and then at Rutgers University. He wrote the book "Industrial Electronics for Engineers, Chemists, and Technicians". Visit his website or email Dan Shanefield: shanefield@ieee.org Tell a friend about this site! ------------ |
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