Guardian Mideast editor Brian Whitaker is outraged by Robert Kilroy-Silks’ article:
Where racism is concerned, therefore, freedom of speech has to be tempered by restraint. But whatever applies to one racial group has to apply to them all. It is no good having one rule for blacks, Jews and the Irish, and another rule – or none at all – for the Arabs.
Jerusalem Post Editor-in-chief Bret Stephens has a response, based on Whitaker’s own utter lack of restraint in demonizing Israel and Israelis:
An archival search of the Guardian’s Web site lists 711 of Whitaker’s articles. I trolled through the first 240. I did not find a single article about suicide bombings against Israelis, except tangentially. Israeli victims of terror – the murdered, the bereaved, the maimed – escape his notice. There is hardly anything about everyday Israeli life beyond the conflict: not a word about our domestic politics, our high-tech industry, our cultural scene. He is astonished to discover that blacks serve in the Israeli army, having been apparently unaware of the existence of Ethiopian Jewry.
All in all, I did not read a single sentence of his that could be seen as remotely sympathetic to Israel or Israelis…His characterization of Israelis is every bit as one-sided and caricatured as Kilroy-Silk’s is of Arabs. Indeed, it is infinitely more so.
