Speaking his mind, delivering his opinion

Disagreeing with the thesis of an op-ed piece he read on the Long Island Rail Road 30 years ago spurred Hewlett native Alan B. Katz to start writing his own opinion pieces.

Katz, a Farmingdale-based real estate and general litigation attorney, has collected those letters and essays into a book, “For the Record: Israel and the Palestinians, What the Media Aren’t Telling You” (Devora Publishing, 2008).

His basic premise is that the media is biased against Israel and demonizes the country through its coverage. The book was originally published as “Fighting Back: Letters from the Diaspora.”

“It’s bias towards Israel because the Israelis get blamed for both the conflict and a failure to resolve the conflict,” Katz said prior to addressing approximately 25 Bristal residents in the facility’s Cinema Room on Jan. 31.

Since the Six-day War in 1967, Katz believes that Israel has stopped being an underdog and noted how the American public loves to place to their bets on an underdog. And despite being attacked six years later in the Yom Kippur War and than attacked twice from Lebanon, Israel lost its underdog appeal due to what he calls “a vastly superior military.”

“You have an awful lot of anti-Zionism prejudice out there,” Katz said. “I am not saying that everything that happens to Israel that’s bad is the result of anti-Semitism. That’s not the case, but it plays a role.”

To help cure this perceived bias, Katz suggests education and an understanding of what type of people Israelis really are. He noted that the media appears to play the Israelis off of the Palestinians by showing Israelis relaxing on the beach, but Palestinians are shown in refugee camps, living in squalor and poverty.

This polar opposite imagery is what creates the perception of good and bad in the Middle East, Katz said. “The refugee problem is blamed on Israelis, but the fact of the matter is the refugees are there because the Arab countries, particularly the Palestinian leaders, do not want them in their countries, and it serves their political goals to show a repressed people and then be able to blame the Israelis.”