In today's Dallas Morning News, a column attributed to Ray Hanania, a Palestinian Arab-American, has these wonderful insights into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"Zionism...declares that Israel must be exclusively Jewish." There is nothing in Zionism that declares that Israel must be exclusively Jewish - just that it has a majority of Jews and that it remains place of refuge for Jews all over the world. There's no way to guarantee that unless there actually is a majority of Jews in the country. From the Encyclopedia Britannica entry for Zionism - "Jewish nationalist movement that has had as its goal the creation and support of a Jewish national state in Palestine , the ancient homeland of the Jews." It is hard to define whether Jewish here refers to the people or the religion, but there is nothing mentioned about exclusivity. Plenty of Muslims and Christians live in Israel proper - about 20% of the population.

"Israelis won't condemn their government's murderous ways until Palestinians condemn their own". - I was about to argue that there are plenty of Israeli peace activists and organizations that condemn the Sharon government - everything from Peace Now which gathers tens of thousands for it's demonstrations, to those helping the International Solidarity Movement, to the two dozen or so air force pilots who recently vowed not to fly missions in the territories as it was against their conscience. The problem is that THIS IS NOT WHAT RAY HANANIA WROTE!

The Dallas Morning News edited Mr. Hanania's column which I didn't think newspapers could do. I can't even link to what was printed in the newspaper because there is no link for some reason to this column on their website.

What he actually wrote was the following:

"Israel's fanatic government continues to exploit this void in leadership by conducting its own acts of outrage and horror. But until Palestinians can dim the glow of the suicide bomber, they will never be able to stir the fundamental sense of fairness and desire for compromise that I believe is in the hearts of the majority of Israelis.

They won't condemn their government's murderous ways until Palestinians condemn their own."

The whole first paragraph was not published in the newspaper! While I still don't agree with certain things in the column, here he seems to be addressing the fact that the MAJORITY OF ISRAELIS back Sharon with which I would agree. Without this paragraph, he appears to claim that no Israelis speak out against Sharon which is untrue. Also, how the Dallas Morning news can remove the line about the hearts of the majority of Israelis is beyond me. It changes the whole tone of the article from moderate to hard-line.

Honestly, I'm going to write an e-mail to Mr. Hanania to tell him how he has been misrepresented to the Dallas community.