Phyllis Chesler takes on TIME Magazine in this column for Arutz Sheva:
According to Vick, Israelis don’t care about peace, peace negotiations, or about the Palestinians because they are simply having too good a time: sunbathing, swimming, café-hopping, profiting from start-up companies, and, according to polls cited by Vick, utterly disconnected from “politics;” indeed Vick suggests that Israelis resemble Californians more than they resemble Egyptians. These are all points which scream: Israel does not fit in; if Israelis were only more impoverished, more indolent, and paradoxically, even more “laid back,” they might be recognizable as indigenous to the region, a true part of the Middle East.
These are Vick’s thoughts, not mine.
[ . . . ]
Here is what Vick utterly fails to comprehend, namely, that the Israelis are not merely tired, disenchanted, living in la-la land a la southern Californians (hence, the Jewish star made of daisies on the cover). The Israelis are actually showing the entire world how to embrace life, even as they live, trembling, in the shadow of death. They are teaching the world how to “love life more than they fear death.”
That, and the fact that Israelis have had to learn to live in a state of constant war and fear since the birth of the nation. They want peace, but they’re not going to put their lives entirely on hold waiting for it to happen.
Of course, TIME’s editors have probably just caught onto the fact that Israel-bashing sells. It’s like the twenty-first century version of “if it bleeds, it leads”. And in these troubled times for the publishing industry, can we really blame them?
Yes. We can.
(Hat tip: Dana)