Ny Times Provides Platform To Preach Third Intifada

By Author: Ronn Torossian
Total Articles: 13
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Imagine a mainstream newspaper running an op-ed which encouraged a violent uprising against the government of Australia. Or against Mexico. Well, there always has to be a first time, right? An op-ed effectively endorsing a violent uprising against the state of Israel ran this week in The New York Times.

The op-ed by Nathan Thrall of the International Crisis Group carried the headline, “The Third Intifadah is Inevitable.” He painted Israel-PLO relations as bleak – charging that poor Israel has lost its chance with Abbas, Palestinians have lost hope of ever getting a state, and thus armed confrontation (a third intifada) is inevitable.

Thrall neglects to mention that the Second Intifada brought with it the cold blooded killing of over 1000 Israelis, and claims that Israel is to blame for the coming violence, as Israelis “have come to believe they can eat their cake and have it, too.” Last month Thrall warned that if Israel continues to oppose Palestinian Authority unity with the terrorist group Hamas, it might face Al Qaeda instead of Hamas.

In a previous article ...
... Thrall refers to Hamas as “moderate”, claiming that if Israel doesn’t negotiate with Hamas, something worse could come along:

There [in the Gaza Strip], several years of isolation have led not to the weakening of Hamas but to the strengthening of even more uncompromising enemies of the Jewish state. On Monday, Hamas self-defeatingly sought to bolster its flagging Islamist credentials by mourning the death of Osama bin Laden and praising him as an Arab holy warrior — just days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ominously warned that ‘Israel would not recognize any government in the world that included members from Al Qaeda.’ In reality, the likelihood of such a government is slight, but if Israel continues to oppose Palestinian reconciliation, Mr. Netanyahu’s nightmare may become less of a fantasy. Repeating the mistakes of the past will only strengthen Hamas’s Salafi jihadi challengers, who proliferated the last time Palestinians were penalized for their votes and could one day pose an even greater threat to Israel.”

In the New York Times, Thrall informed is that among PA Arabs, “A substantial number would welcome the prospect of an escalation…They believe that rocks, Molotov cocktails and mass protests pushed Israel to sign the Oslo Accords in 1993; that deadly strikes against Israeli troops in Lebanon led Israel to withdraw in 2000; that the bloodshed of the second intifada pressured George W. Bush to declare his support for Palestinian statehood and prodded the international community to produce the Arab Peace Initiative, the Geneva Initiative, and the Road Map for Middle East Peace.”

In the past, it’s been reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to the The New York Times as one of the greatest enemies of Israel, (although he later denied this.)

Nathan Thrall’s piece in the NY Times ferments, encourages and supports violence against the state of Israel, and appallingly, the New York Times provided him with a venue to do so.

Ronn Torossian is the CEO of 5WPR, a leading PR firm and an active Jewish philanthropist who formerly served as President of Betar, the movement of Ze’ev Jabotinsky.