To the JPost: "Our long September 11" - The Terrorist's Intefada

Joshua Moravchik's book review "Our long September 11" on Saul Singer's new book "Confronting Jihad"  appeared on 19 March 2004, exactly on the 60th anniversary of Nazi Germany entering Hungary, capturing government there and starting the Holocaust of the Hungarian Jewry. Had the POST reminded this tragic anniversary, it would make it even clearer how extremely long, if not eternal, our September 11 is. 

The JPOST made once a round of interviews 'The Name of This War' concluding that "you can not win a war you if do not have your name for it". Do we have it now? The review qoutes Singer's book that "Israel's survival, alas, is not a certainty".  I agree, adding that our survival is threatened not only by possible Jihad of conventional war and terror but also by Jihad actually defeating us in a decades long Arab propaganda war of attrition, succeeding among Palestinians and all Arabs, inside Israel and in the whole world. 

Some of the good work of Moravchik's review and of the valuable ideas from the book are undone by a persistent mistake starting in the very first sentence (and  similar mistakes are recurrent in every issue of the Post about the present war against terror). He writes about "events of three-plus years of intefada" and "the calamity known as the 'al-Aqsa Intifada' " and so on. To say "intefada" means giving in to the cunning Arab-Palestinian propaganda lie, as if the ongoing mass murder campaign of Jewish civilians by Palestinian terror gangs is an 'uprising' of the people against an oppressive rule.

On 19 Oct 2001 I responded to your similar mistake: "the IDF demolished the house of a Palestinian activist" you wrote instead of "the house of a terrorist", of a gunman or an accomplice (and then it may be a mild punishment for horrendous crimes, like wiping out whole families).  But such letters did not help much, the mistakes change but basically sustain.  It seems that editors are not aware of the damage this 'politically correct' terminology causes. The pro-Israel 'hasbara' volunteers around the world,  Jews and Christians devoted to the truth about Israel, who write letters to editors to counter mistakes and bias - we face that damage every day.

Hard as it is to cope with sophisticated lies of enemies and misunderstandings of observers, it is much harder when Israelis and Jews attack us, and hardest, almost hopeless to counter when the Palestinian rhetoric is used and spread by benevolent and trustworthy Israelis like you.

So, dear editors, we hasbara volunteers request only that you call a spade a spade and say what you really want to say on Israel's defensive war against terror. Say: "terrorist" and not "activist" or "militant", say not "Hamas took responsibility, but: "Hamas announced proudly that they committed this crime".

Say loud the name of this war, which is not "al-Aqsa Intefada" but "Israel's war against terror", The terrorists' intefada" or "Stopping the Terror Wave"

Respectfully, 

Endre Mozes
Chairman, Take-A-Pen
http://www.takeapen.org/