Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Israel's religious kooks

Israel's religious kooks either receive good press or they receive no coverage whatsoever.  I was wondering when the New York Times will decide to cover the war going on in Israel between the racist religious kooks and the secular racist kooks (both sides agree on occupation and racism and the need for more war crimes).  The mother of the eight-year old is veiled (she wears the hijab, in other words) but the New York Times don't show that in the picture.  If she was a Muslim woman, they would have forgotten about the original story and and would have focused on the veiled woman.  And then the NYT makes an effort to belittle the significance of religious fanaticism:  "Certainly, Israel’s coalition politics have allowed the ultra-Orthodox parties to wield disproportionate power beyond the roughly 10 percent of the population they currently represent." 10%?  That is a small number?  Wahhabis among Arabs are probably around 1%.