The Dishonesty of Fareed Zakaria

Fareed Zakaria

CNN's smooth-talking Fareed Zakaria buffaloes a lot of people because he comes across as a moderate person. He is subtle, indeed, but consider the below two points.

In the Washington Post op-ed below, Zakaria tries to make the point that Israel is all-mighty because of its powerful and sophisticated military. Because of that military advantage, Zakaria makes the following point:

"Peace between the Palestinians and Israelis will come only when Israel decides that it wants to make peace."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fareed-zakaria-israel-dominates-the-middle-east/2012/11/21/d310dc7c-3428-11e2-bfd5-e202b6d7b501_story.html


As to the above quote, Zakaria skirts around the point that Israel is a tiny plot of land surrounded on three sides by a sea of hostile Islamic nations. Israel only needs to lose one war to cease to exist. Why would they not want a lasting peace? Could it be because they understand the true designs of their adversaries?

Zakaria also, perhaps unwittingly, makes this statement:

"As for terrorism, the other asymmetrical strategy against Israel: Despite Wednesday’s attack on a bus in Tel Aviv, Israel is largely protected from terrorists because of the wall it built in 2003."

Ah yes, the much-maligned "Apartheid Wall", which draws so much condemnation on US college campuses, such as UC Irvine. That wall has (almost) stopped suicide bombing attacks in Israel. It keeps nobody locked in any prison, as did the Berlin Wall, but it does keep out a lot of bad guys bent on murdering innocent men, women and children. I bet Zakaria wishes he had that statement back. In addition, the wall would be of little use against an Iranian nuclear weapon, which Zakaria conveniently fails to explain. In fact, he does not even mention Iran.

Point number Two: Yesterday, I caught part of Zakaria's CNN show on immigration in different parts of the world. Just as I was tuning in, he was describing the problems that Europe is having with immigration. That point is spot on, but, of course, he blames it all on racist Europeans who don't want others coming into their country. Of course, he focused on the Muslim population and mentioned the racist assaults taking place upon them in European cities. He also focused on the recent statements by European leaders, Sarkozy of France, Cameron of the UK and Merkel of Germany that "multi-culturalism has failed", interspersed with images of people like Marine Le Pen of France. Of course, there was scant mention of folks like Mohammed Merah, who went on a killing spree in Toulouse not so far back as to be forgotten by Zakaria.

Also not mentioned by Zakaria was the problem of millions of hostile immigrants in Europe who had no intention of assimilating, had no regard for European values, wanted to install Islamic sharia law, had imported a new form of Jew-hatred into Europe, as well as a violent crime wave such as Europe and heretofore not known for decades if not centuries. He then segued onto Canada, which he described as a huge success story. At that point, I had heard enough and switched the channel to some other show that made more sense-like "Man vs Food" or "Swamp People".

What Zakaria would not acknowledge, at least in the European segment, which I watched, was that people who immigrate legally, respect the values, laws and traditions of their new country and assimilate, will be widely accepted no matter their religion or where they come from. There should be no excuses, however, for those who choose the opposite route. 

Fareed Zakaria, in many ways, is much more insidious than fire-breathing radicals who make no effort to conceal their intentions. A soft spoken voice and soothing words often conceal the fact that the man is being disingenuous.