Times reports a horror: Israel hits Palestinians with … parking tickets

The Arab journalist whom the New York Times has hired to report on Israel has come up with the most “terrifying” example yet of Israeli oppression: The issuing of parking tickets to Palestinians. 

The reporter, Diaa Hadid, who describes herself as “an Australian of Lebanese and Egyptian descent,” previously served as public relations officer for the pro-Palestinian group Ittijah. Its director, Amir Makhloul, is in an Israeli prison for espionage on behalf of Hezbollah terrorists.

Hadid’s resume also includes a stint as a columnist for the anti-Israel website ElectronicIntifada.net. With that kind of track record, you might have expected that her articles for the Times would exhibit a pro-Palestinian bias, and she has indeed lived up to those expectations. 

But one would hope that her editors in New York would exercise a little more discretion before rushing her dispatches from Jerusalem into print. Last week’s blast from Hadid is a good example of what I mean.

In her Dec. 17 report, Hadid played the usual moral-equivalence game with the casualty statistics: “Since the uprising began in October, Palestinians have killed 18 Israelis and an American citizen. More than 115 Palestinians have been killed in the same period.” 

Get it? Six times as many Palestinians “have been killed” as Israelis. This, of course, makes the Israelis the bad guys and the Palestinians the innocent victims. Anybody who knows the casualty figures for Americans and Germans in World War Two will instantly understand that body counts tell you nothing about right and wrong.

Hadid later mentions that of those 115 dead Palestinians, “60 have been shot dead while attacking Israelis.” What about the other 55? Her implication is that 55 innocent, defenseless Palestinian civilians were murdered by Israelis.