Topic: WorldNetDaily
Good news: At long last, WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein finally mentions right-wing extremist Jew Baruch Goldstein's massacre of 29 Arabs inside Hebron's Tomb of the Patriarchs. Bad news: He does it in an article where that history isn't relevant to the story.
In fact, in an Aug. 23 WND article regurgitating the pro-Israeli, anti-Arab group CAMERA's attack on the CNN miniseries "God's Warriors" -- a look at religious extremism of all stripes that CAMERA has declared "one of the most grossly distorted programs" ever aired on mainstream American television -- Klein complained that it was even brought up at all, and then explains it away as an isolated incident:
Tuesday's segment started off comparing "Jewish terrorists" to that of Muslims, specifically focusing on the few instances of violence or attempted violence by religiously motivated Jews against Muslims. It told the story of Baruch Goldstein, an American-born Israeli physician who killed 29 Arabs in the West Bank city of Hebron in 1994. Goldstein's actions were widely condemned by Israelis and worldwide Jewry. The organization he was a part of was outlawed in Israel.
What Klein doesn't note is that the organization Goldstein was a part of -- the Kach/Kahane Chai movement -- is something Klein has previously tried to whitewash and counts as its former members some of Klein's favorite interview subjects.
As we've detailed, Klein has positively written about former Kach/Kahane Chai members who have been active in the Jewish settlement movement in the West Bank and Gaza -- specifically, those who oppose abandoning settlements in those areas. In an August 2004 article, for instance, Klein goes out of his way to depict former Kahane members -- who at that point were reportedly planning to blow up the Temple Mount and assassinate then-prime minister Ariel Sharon in retaliation for the his plan to close Jewish settlements in Gaza -- as nonviolent and having a "leisurely chat" with Israeli officials, further citing the Goldstein massacre as an anomaly, that Jewish terrorism "is considered extremely rare," and quoting an anonymous settler as responding, "But just because of this, settlers don't deserve these labels."
Where Klein should have mentioned the Goldstein massacre, of course, is in his articles on removal of right-wing Jewish extremists who attempted to move into a marketplace in Hebron (and were then forcibly removed by Israeli troops). As we've detailed, the main reason the marketplace was closed was because of the Goldstein massacre; further, the father of one of the squatters was a landowner who played a role in bombing Arab officials in the West Bank in the 1980s. Apparently, Klein doesn't think that's "terrorism."
