(Washington Times) Joel Mowbray - The two-day Palestine Solidarity Movement conference at Georgetown University received substantial advance press coverage for the organizing group's ties to terrorism. While the bulk of the 200 or so mostly college students in attendance were idealists searching for their own Vietnam, the organizers were knowing manipulators crafting a narrative designed to satisfy that quest. The storyline was quite clear: Israel is evil, and Palestinians are pure. Israel is labeled the new South Africa, which is directly tied to the conference's primary theme: the movement to divest from Israel. Largely ignored were the recent Hamas victory and the campaign of suicide bombings perpetrated by brainwashed Palestinian youths. To perpetuate the story line of Israel as aggressor and Palestinians as victims, the PSM conference constructed an alternate reality, weaving together half-truths and outright fiction to justify "solidarity" with a society that condones and supports the intentional mass murder of innocent civilians. Most of these young do-gooders do not support terrorism, but they also don't despise it anywhere near as much as genuinely peaceloving people should. All the talk about 1948 - the year the Jewish state was founded - belies the common perception that Palestinian activists simply want a state side-by-side with Israel. The PSM conference organizers don't just want Israel out of the West Bank and Gaza; they want Israel out of Israel.
2006-02-24 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive