Israel’s news media report strange behavior

Haifa — Here in Israel the news media, both printed and electronic, provide an ample supply of news and reports on every aspect of life and events in the country, together with accounts of what is transpiring elsewhere in the world.

Like most other intelligent readers, I seek to comprehend both the content and significance of what I read. Yet I have problems understanding much of it. For example:

I don’t understand Palestinian intentions when they express protest by calling a general strike of all stores and businesses in their areas. Aren’t they simply ruining their own businesses?

I don’t understand why Jews in the diaspora, who are seeking ways to express their support for Israel, don’t make a greater effort to request and purchase Israeli products in their markets. That doesn’t even require making a trip here.

I don’t understand why, in this connection, Israeli exporters of consumer goods don’t advertise more in papers like this, to call their products to the attention of a potentially great market.

I don’t understand why the Knesset does not institute a quorum for attendance, and avoid the disgraceful reports of legislation adopted by less than a dozen voting members out of the total of 120.

I don’t understand how an otherwise reputable newspaper like Ha’aretz can continue to publish anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian articles day after day. It’s a great no-cost service to Palestinian Authority president Yasser Arafat.

I don’t understand why the world made such a big fuss about the Taliban’s destruction of Buddhist statues in Afghanistan but has remained almost silent in the face of the systematic Arab destruction of archeological remains of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem.

So nu, world?

I don’t understand why Israeli citizens pay so little for the water they consume so freely. Upping the cost will surely result in considerable savings of this precious commodity.

I don’t understand why newspapers go out of their way to feature all the negative news but overlook most of the constructive and upbeat activities in this country.

I don’t understand why the U.S. does not spend billions of dollars on research to find an economically feasible substitute for oil, and thereby free the world from reliance on the Arab states as its source of power.

I don’t understand why some of our super-patriots are insisting that Israel launch a full-scale, no-holds-barred war against the Palestinians, when that is precisely what Arafat is seeking to produce almost unanimous world condemnation of Israel.

I don’t understand why there has been almost no reaction to the fact that the governments of Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Finland have financed the production of the Palestinian school textbooks that preach and teach undying hatred of the Jews, thus prolonging the conflict for generations.

I don’t understand why Israel’s government does not hammer at the false and repeated charge that we are “in occupation” when we have as much, and perhaps more, legal right to be in the West Bank as the Palestinians.

I don’t understand how Britain and the BBC have the presumption to pass judgment and make recommendations for the solution of our Middle East problem when they are so remote from solving their own problems of security and terrorism in Northern Ireland.

I don’t understand why, in the same connection, someone has not proposed sending international observers to assure security in Northern Ireland.

I don’t understand why the Christian world has been so strangely silent in the face of the repeated ridiculous claims by the Palestinians that Jerusalem was never Jewish and that the Temple never existed. If that were true, then apparently Jesus, too, was a myth.

I don’t understand, if the demographic problem causes serious concern for the future, why there is not more understanding for the Haredim (ultra-Orthodox), whose extremely large families are assuring a Jewish majority here for many years to come.

I don’t understand what has happened to the United Nations. Has it been hijacked by an underworld consortium? Thus, the United States has been kicked out of the U.N. Human Rights Commission but “respectable” states like Sudan, Libya, and Syria continue as members in good standing.

On the one hand, there is a great deal more that I don’t understand. On the other, and better, hand, many more things in this country do make sense and make life here so interesting and enjoyable.

Former Bostonian Carl Alpert made aliyah in 1952 with his wife and three children. A former editor of the Jewish Advocate, he is a freelance writer and columnist.