1.

As readers of this blog will be well aware, Juan Miguel Muñoz, is a man of constant sorrow. He’s the Jerusalem correspondent of El País and over the last couple of years it has fallen to him to report on the daily outrages against the conscience of humanity committed by Israel.

However, in this piece in today’s edition of Spain’s most popular serious newspaper he seems a bit more cheerful. The world, as he sees it, is finally waking up to the reality of the many evils that allowing the Jews to govern themselves has brought upon the world. His analysis, however, doesn’t resist serious consideration.

2.

Muñoz  cites the brother of  Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi - the Jordanian who recently killed eight CIA agents in Afghanistan - as saying that the latter had been radicalized, at least in part, by seeing the sufferings of Gazan civilians during Operation Cast  Lead. Or, as Muñoz doesn’t quite say, “Rein in the Jews or their doings will so enrage certain Muslims that they will slaughter your own people.” Of course he gives no consideration to why it might be that dead Muslims killed by Israel have this effect on certain of their coreligionists while dead Muslims killed by other nations produce no similar effect. To give just one example, how many foreign Muslims have been so angered by the death sof thousands of Kurds - in  all respects as Muslim as the Palestinians of Gaza - at the hands of the Turkish state over recent decades as to blow themselves up inside a Turkish embassy?

3.

Speaking of Turkey, Muñoz says that it,

[the] only Muslim country with a military cooperation agreement with the Zionist state,  decided to suspend the participation of the Israeli army in joint maneuvers.

This gets quite close to the truth without actually arriving there. What happened is that Turkey suspended all international participation in the annual “Anatolian Eagle” air force exercise when it learned that that no NATO air force would participate if the Israelis were excluded. Being clear on this  point would have rather spoiled the general thrust of the article which portrays Israel as increasingly friendless in the world.

In any case the Turkish government seems to be recovering from its hypocritical post-Gaza tantrum as it has just agreed to buy ten Heron UAVs from Israel.

4.

Muñoz repeatedly refers to Israel as “the Zionist state”. I suppose we may now expect to see El País refer to the country where it’s published as “the Castilian state”, Ireland as the “Celtic-Catholic entity” and Argentina as the “Italo-Hispano settler regime.”

5.

I could go on and provide further examples of the bad faith, prejudice and half truths with which the article is peppered but I have a better idea. I’d like to make a plea to El Páis to move Muñoz, to send him somewhere a lot less challenging to report from than Jerusalem, to release him from the clutches of the Zionist state. The man is burnt out, he can’t think straight. All that he’s got is a loathing for Jewish self-government. So send him somewhere peaceful, quiet, prosperous and without too many arrogant Jews. It would be doing him,  the newspaper and its readers a big favor.

And by the way, this isn’t an attempt to silence Muñoz.  In order to do that I’d have to first seek permission from the local Elders and given that this is January in Buenos Aires they’re all chilling in Punta del Este with their cell phones switched off.