It took New York Times guest columnist Tareq Baconi more than 1,200 words and countless digressions to say what could have been distilled into a sentence: Tareq Baconi thinks Israelis deserve to be murdered by Palestinian terrorists.
Baconi, who serves as president of the board of al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, recently penned an op-ed for the so-called “newspaper of record” in which he discussed the recent counterterrorism raid in Jenin and what the military operation supposedly “tells us about Israel now.” Spoiler alert: nothing.
In the piece, Baconi does little to disguise his approval of Palestinian terrorists attacking innocent and unarmed Israelis, as in the third paragraph when he summarizes the events that preceded the operation in the West Bank terror capital:
At a Fourth of July event in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the Israeli Army had attacked ‘the most legitimate target on the planet — people who would annihilate our country.’ He was referring to months of armed resistance against Israeli settlers by young men in the Jenin refugee camp.”
So, what did these “months of armed resistance against Israeli settlers” look like? According to Baconi, such resistance takes the form of Raad Khazem, a 28-year-old from Jenin, traveling to one of Tel Aviv’s busiest streets and murdering three Israelis when he opened fire in a crowded bar.
Aside from Baconi’s obvious unalloyed support for Palestinian terrorism, the piece is also replete with distortions and outright lies that serve to further the narrative that Israel’s raid in Jenin was part of a nefarious ulterior plan to prevent the Palestinians from ever achieving statehood.
For example, he claims that following the suicide bombings and knife attacks that characterized the Second Intifada, “Israel intensified practical measures to expand its occupation and undermine the two-state solution while maintaining the diplomatic pretense of engaging with peace efforts.”
Of course, this could not be further from the truth considering the numerous comprehensive peace deals that have been offered since 2005 — all of which were rejected by the Palestinian leadership.
This guest essay in @nytopinion by @TareqBaconi, punishes readers with so many lies it’s practically gaslighting. 🧵
The potential peace deals from 2005, 2006, 2013 & so on say otherwise. pic.twitter.com/lIqtd4JMZ4
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) July 10, 2023
Baconi also appears to suggest that Israel is somehow “occupying” the Gaza Strip, describing the disengagement of the coastal enclave, which included the dismantling of numerous Jewish communities in 2005, as Israel merely “unilaterally reconfigur[ing] its occupation of the Gaza Strip.”
Let us be clear, Israel has no presence in the Strip, and Baconi’s further assertion that Israel’s “hermetic blockade” on the territory includes “food restriction policies” is simply not true — Israeli security forces search all vehicles entering Gaza for terrorist munitions which delay the entry of goods. As a result, the entry of perishable food has to be limited to prevent it from rotting.
Concerning Gaza, Baconi summarizes the actions of its genocidal Islamist rulers Hamas as having a “history of resistance against Israeli occupation,” which is a rather warped way of describing a proscribed terrorist group whose history is better summed up as firing barrages of rockets toward Israeli towns and cities.
Baconi also misrepresents the nature of Israeli counterterrorism operations to suggest they are part of a larger plan to “periodically weaken Palestinian resistance and manage a restive population chafing against Israeli control” using tactics like the deliberate destruction of water and electricity supplies “as a form of collective punishment.”
First, Israel targets terrorists — combatants from Islamic Jihad and Hamas — who comprised all the casualties of the Jenin raid. Israel does not seek to hurt innocent Palestinian civilians.
Second, the claim that the IDF deliberately damaged crucial utilities is pure fiction. Unfortunately, water and electricity supplies were affected when the military swept roads for IEDs that were planted by Palestinian terrorists in civilian areas.
The most galling aspect of the piece, however, is Baconi’s comparison of Palestinians to Ukrainians, who are currently defending their country against an invasion by Russian forces. Of course, the two are incomparable for the primary reason that Ukrainians did not fire rockets at Russia, launch suicide attacks on civilians in Moscow, or enter a St Petersburg restaurant and start firing bullets at the patrons inside.
While the piece has been filed in the opinion section, NYT editors might want to consider placing it in the “fiction review” next time because Baconi’s writing is straight-up fantasy.
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Photo credit: RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP via Getty Images
