An editorial in today's New York Times and an accompanying op-ed piece about the Arab-Israeli negotiations focus on Arab "refugees." The Times editorial declares "there are roughly four million such refugees living in camps in Gaza and the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and across the Arab world." This figure is laughably inflated with the children and grandchildren of the original "refugees," most of whom fled of their own accord and at the urging of Arab leaders who were launching a war aimed at destroying Israel. A 1948 report of the U.N. Mediator on Palestine put the number of Arab refugees at 472,000.
But neither the Times editorial nor the op-ed piece mentions the other refugees -- Jews who fled from Arab lands where they were oppressed. These Jews left behind valuable property. The book "Myths and Facts" estimates there were 820,000 such Jewish refugees from Arab lands. Mysteriously, the Times editorial calls for "an international compensation and resettlement package" for the Arab "refugees" -- but it makes not even a single reference to compensation for Jewish refugees.
The op-ed piece goes even further, referring to Israel's capital, Jerusalem, as an "Arab city" and demanding an "Israeli apology for the harm done to the Palestinians in 1948." Again, this is laughable. One can only hope that the reason the Times published it was to illustrate the unreasonableness of the Arab claims. Apology? They want an apology? The armies of Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq invaded Israel in 1948 in what the secretary-general of the Arab League at the time, Azzam Pasha, announced would be "a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian Massacres and the Crusades," and now the Arabs want an apology? Unbelievable.
Recent Years: An article in today's New York Times about the League of Women Voters reports, "In recent years, as women became a larger percentage of the voting population, the national and state offices of the League of Women Voters stepped up their political profiles." What is the Times talking about? Women are about half the population, voting or otherwise, and they have had the absolute right to vote in America since the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was adopted in 1920. If there has indeed been a recent increase in women as a percentage of the voting population, it is probably a more interesting story than are the goings on at the local chapter of the League of Women Voters.
Willing to Compromise: A photo cutline that runs in today's New York Times along with the long article on President Clinton's record says, "After Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994, their leadership, including Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Senator Trent Lott and Representative Dick Armey, found that President Clinton was willing to compromise." Mr. Hastert was only part of the Republican leadership that gained control in 1994 by an extremely expansive definition of the word leadership; he only became speaker of the House in January of 1999. And the Republicans who took over in 1994 hardly found Mr. Clinton "willing to compromise." Mr. Clinton was so unwilling to compromise that he forced a shutdown of the entire government.
Lost in L.A.: The national section of today's New York Times has a photo and brief item about a fire in Thousand Oaks, Calif. "West of Los Angeles, firefighters were at work early in Thousand Oaks, where a desert wind with gusts up to 20 miles an hour drove a 600-acre wildfire within 100 feet of luxury homes," the Times reports. While, in some technical sense, Thousand Oaks may be situated to the west of parts of Los Angeles, it would be extremely rare for anyone who lives there to think or speak of it that way. West of Los Angeles is Santa Monica; Thousand Oaks is north of Los Angeles.