Karl Vick on Palestinian Support for Bin Laden
Time Magazine‘s discussion of Palestinian support for Osama bin Laden comes as a bit of a surprise, being that it was penned by Karl Vick.
Vick, the magazine’s bureau chief in Jerusalem, is generally inclined to highlight Israeli shortcomings, real and imagined, while avoiding critical stories about Palestinians. (His recent report on the slaying of the Fogels, for example, was dedicated mostly to bashing Israel.)
But in this piece, he noted the high percentage of Palestinians expressing support for the late al Qaida leader and mentioned Hamas’s fundamentalism.
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Vick was more true to form, though, when granting Palestinian critics of Israel the last word. In the closing of his article, they insinuate that so many Palestinians support bin Laden because he made Americans “feel what we’re feeling” and “suffer what we’re suffering.”
Although he rarely shies away from analysis and editorializing, in this case the Time correspondent didn’t bother to point out what is obvious to so many Israelis — namely that it is they, not the Palestinians, who share with Americans the burden of having men, women and children intentionally targeted by Islamist terrorists. In other words, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah’s Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade murder Israelis the same way al Qaida murders Americans.
Maybe that’s the real reason that Hamas and Fatah’s military wing sympathize with Bin Laden. Maybe that’s why the 34 percent of Palestinians who express support for Bin Laden is a nearly equivalent proportion to the 32 percent who expressed support for the slaying of the Fogel family.
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