Hamas War

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Bad Comparisan, Newsweek, Hamas/PLO Isn't Mao's China

About twenty years ago when I was my busiest being interviewed by innumerable foreign journalists, I had a talk with the editor of a large American newspaper.  He told me that he tried never to hire Journalism majors.  He said that he preferred those who studied, History, Economics, Science etc. 
"Any intelligent, well-educated person could be taught how to write a newspaper article.  The Journalism Departments don't teach the necessary history, geography etc for their graduates to understand what's happening in the world."


In the title of this post I included Hamas, because it's obvious that they have a lot of support among local Arabs.  They shouldn't be ignored.  As a pragmatist I keep looking at what's really happening and not just hoping, wishing and praying.

There is a track record to contend with.  When Israel gives Land to the Arabs our security is endangered.  We were much safer before all this "peace" stuff started.  My husband and I made aliyah in 1970, three years after the Six Days War.  In those days we could safely travel Arab buses, visit Arab towns and shop in their stores.  We're in Shiloh since 1981 and have seen a terrible deterioration in security.  Arabs were happy that we were here and sometimes got medical care from us.  Things were very different from today.

The Leftists, Israeli and foreign, who come to support the local Arabs encourage them to oppose us.

China is half a world away from the United States and despite the rhetoric, the United States wasn't in danger from Communist China.  At that point, China was extremely poor and technologically primitive.  Now, decades later, the Chinese economy is much healthier than the American one.  Food for thought....
That's how I feel about this Newsweek article which says that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu should do what Richard Nixon did when as U.S. President he visited Red China and established relations with it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I totally agree. Although, it would be good for a History major to take one or two journalism courses to be able to write a good news article.

Batya said...

All students should know how to properly write an article, answer essay questions etc. What do journalism majors study all those years?