Roger Cohen's "Modern Folly, Ancient Wisdom"

After a comment that I recently submitted in response to a Maureen Dowd op-ed was not posted by the NYT's "moderators" (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.com/2010/06/new-york-times-removes-anti-semitic.html and http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.com/2010/06/maureen-dowds-their-dangerous-swagger.html), I was told by a senior editor of the Times that although he would have posted this comment, it "reads to me more like an insult than anything else," and further stated:

"By the way, I deeply resent your casual use of the word censored. If we do not post a comment we are not committing censorship. A newspaper chooses every day what to print and what not to print. It is not censorship by any definition I have ever seen. We do not pretend or intend to publish every comment we get on any article we get on every article we publish.

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But I return to my earlier point, which is that we have never said that we were giving our readers unrestricted access to our website. Quite the contrary."

My response in relevant part:

"Obviously, if the policy of the Times is to pick and choose freely according to the whim of your 'moderators', I agree: this is not censorship. If you state that comments will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive, yet your 'moderators' do not abide by this policy and are prone - at least from what I have seen - to reject dissenting opinion, I believe this is indeed a form of censorship, but I have no problem calling this 'rejection'."

"Censorship" or "rejection"? Honestly, I couldn't care less. However, whereas the senior editor "resented" my use of the word "censor", I am deeply offended by the ongoing posting of anti-Semitic comments, purportedly "moderated", in response to New York Times editorials, op-eds and articles (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.com/2010/06/if-you-were-revolted-by-helen-thomas.html ).

Moreover, I am distressed by that fact that the Times editorial pages have completely ignored the recent outburst of anti-Semitism from Helen Thomas. Although the pundits of the Times are quick to jump on anything of this kind directly at other minorities, for whatever reason there has been a deafening silence from the Times concerning Thomas.

In an op-ed in today's online Times entitled "Modern Folly, Ancient Wisdom" (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/opinion/11iht-edcohen.html?hp), Roger Cohen takes the position that the real threat Israel faces today is not destruction but de-legitimization. My comment in response to Cohen's op-ed, if the Times "moderators" deign to post it:

Cohen writes, "Several factors have nudged the country rightward: religious-settler extremism; obliviousness to the Palestinian plight now concealed behind walls; Russian-imported strands of Arab-baiting intolerance." Absent from Cohen's list are suicide bombings that have claimed the lives of some 1,000 Israeli civilians; more than 10,000 mortar rockets, missiles and mortar shells fired at civilian targets by Hamas in recent years; and some 40,000 missiles, including highly accurate M-600s, sent to Hezbollah by Iran and Syria subsequent to 2006 and aimed at Israel's cities.

Cohen further states, "What Israel in turn must realize — before it is too late — is that the real threat it faces today is not one of destruction but of de-legitimization." Here, Cohen again ignores the missile threat from Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and Iran, posing an existential threat to Israel greater than that which existed in 1967 or 1973, and the calls for Israel's elimination by Iran and its proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas.

Will Israel ever be "legitimate" in the eyes of the world, even within the 1967 borders, as offered by Israeli prime ministers Barak and Olmert? Probably not. As recently observed by Burak Bekdil in an article entitled "Why is Palestine ‘a second Cyprus’ for Turks?" in the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet, Turks did not protest the deaths of 300,000 Muslims in Darfur and did not care when Chinese police were using disproportionate force against their ethnic kin, the Uighurs. Mr. Burak further asked: "How many Turks protested when there was civil war in Algeria? How many volunteered for humanitarian aid missions for Sudan? Why were the protests too thin during the Serbian atrocities against Muslim Bosnians? What makes nine Gaza martyrs more sacred than all the other martyrs?" He concluded: "Subconsciously (and sadly) the Muslim-Turkish thinking tolerates it if Muslims kill Muslims; does not tolerate it but does not turn the world upside down when Christians kill Muslims; pragmatically ignores it when too-powerful Christians kill Muslims; but is programmed to turn the world upside down when Jews kill Muslims."

In the U.S., Helen Thomas recently declared that Israel's Jews should go "home" to Germany and Poland. (She did not suggest that they go "home" to Morocco, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Yemen, from where a majority of Israel's Jews were forcefully evicted without their belongings.) But notwithstanding the headlines generated by this outburst of blind hatred, why was this not also addressed by Cohen's op-ed of today's date? Why has it been studiously ignored by Friedman, Krugman, Rich and Brooks? If the reemergence of anti-Semitism throughout the world cannot be forthrightly addressed on the editorial page of The New York Times, I have doubts whether Israel in whatever shape or form can ever realize "legitimization" in the eyes of a hateful world.