The story of the American rejection of the four Gazan Arabs who wish to eneter the United States for Fulbrights -- like the story about the original rejection of the seven Gazan Arab recipients of Fulbrights -- that was previously splashed all over the front page of The Times -- has not, as predicted in the piece, been buried. What has been buried is not the story but one of the most important elements in the story: that is, the reason, the obvious reason, why these particular four are of such concern to Israel, which has repeatedly shown itself altogether too understanding and sympathetic to Gazan Arabs, and "West Bank" Arabs, who even if they may differ as to timing and tactics (the difference between the Slow Jihad of Fatah and the Fast Jihad of Hamas), do not differ one whit on the ultimate goal: the disappearance of the Infidel nation-state of Israel, which they regard as a permanent offense to Islam.
There will be no hint of what it might be, what it could possibly be, this "new evidence" that Israel presented to the Americans, but clearly if the Israelis did so, they feel strongly about this. And why should the United States not honor these well-founded worries of a loyal, and permanently imperilled, ally. And what about the fields of study of these particular four -- has anyone chosen to note that they are not intending to study the history of art, or Elizabethan literature, but subjects where the knowledge acquired can be dangerous to Israel.
What would we think if, say, the Germans awarded fellowships in nuclear science to members of Al Qaeda? What would the British think if the same Germans awarded, oh, von Humboldt Fellowships to those who, in Pakistan, were allied with those responsible for the bombings in London? Would Americans, would British people, think that Germany was showing remarkable and indeed, intolerable indifference to, not merely our sensibilities, but to our safety?
And in all the front-page stories that The Times has devoted to a handful of Fulbright winners, One Big Thing has been missing, has not been mentioned at all. Do you know what that is? It is that in 2003, in Gaza, Gazan Arabs murdered three American officials who had come to Gaza providing security for others who had come to vet candidates, among the Gazan Arabs, for Fulbright fellowships. The story was not only in The Times, but was written by John Burns, one of its most important reporters. Those who have been writing about the "Fulbright Deniers" ever since surely know all about that previous Times story which can be googled by putting in the words "Gaza" "Fulbright" and "killings." The killers are known. They have never been picked up, much less punished, for the murder of those Americans. Given that, there are many Americans who not only think no Fulbrights should be awarded, now, to any Gazan or "West Bank" Arabs, but to any Arabs and Muslims who support, directly or indirectly, those murders, and who also stand in the way of the punishing of the murderers. And the State Department, and Condoleezza Rice, whose departure one waits for as impatiently as one waits for the departure of Olmert, seems to have forgotten those murders, seems not to know how the American government should be reacting to the failure to pick up the murderers and to charge, and then to punish them.
She disgusts, of course. But so, perhaps even more, does The Times which has devoted so much attention, and lavished so much sympathy, and expressed such anguish, about those it enjoys calling "Fulbright scholars" but who bear a distinct resemblance, in their beliefs and attitudes and fields of study, and what they might do with the knowledge they acquire, once they return to the Middle East (or, come to think of it, what they might do in the Western world), of such people as A. Q. Khan, and the Iraqi Sunni women who studied in England, the ones known as "Dr. Anthrax" and "Dr. Germs," or like Ms. Siddiqui, once a student at Brandeis and MIT, who took the scientific training she had so generously and innocently been given, and returned to Pakistan, and then went on to Afghanistan where, just the other day, she attempted to murder some American soldiers as they approached her.
Write to The Times. Ask why the reporters and editors, despite all the attention they have given the story, have continued to forget to mention those Americans who had come to interview applicants for those Fulbright fellowships in Gaza, and were murdered.
