WHAT ARAFAT WOULD DESTROY :

'Good neighbors' til the very end (David Bedein, March 31, 2002, Jewish World Review)

In January, and without warning, Moscow's Channel One filmed the Arab villages near us, expecting to hear stories about the "Israeli occupation" and tensions between the small Arab village and the 16 expanding Israeli Jewish settlements of Efrat and the Etzion Bloc. The Russian TV crew heard the opposite message --- only praise for the Jews there, and seething anger against Arafat and the "PLO occupation" of their fellow Palestinian Arab brethren in the Bethlehem region.

Family after family in these Arab villages told Russian TV that they were receiving the best medical treatment possible from their Jewish friends in Efrat, while their families in Bethlehem had to bribe officials just to get the basics of treatment from the PA. They also spoke with pride about the school we had built for them.

I remember a few years ago, one of the networks went and talked to Arabs in the Golan Heights and they were uniformly fearful of being returned to Syrian control. They preferred Israeli "occupation". Posted by Orrin Judd at April 1, 2002 8:55 AM