As a teenager, I remember looking forward to the arrival of TIME Magazine into the house every week.  I was a rather typical teenager and was not necessarily aware of everything that was happening around me, but TIME was a way that I could read about some of the current events and the history behind them.  I was too naive back then to know if TIME had a bias (during the 1960’s), but either things have changed or I have become more aware.

The cover story on the September 13th issue of TIME Magazine is titled, “Why Israel Does Not Care About Peace.”  Scott Johnson at Power Line posted an article yesterday about this cover story.  According to Power LIne:

“(Karl) Vick (who wrote the article at TIME) argues that the Jews are so obsessed with making money that they don’t much care what happens in the future: “You see, Vick has discovered that the rather worldly Israelis, after stealing their land from Arabs, don’t much care for the hard negotiations that the Obama administration is now engaged in (‘big elemental thoughts’), not when it is a matter of — yes, making money[.]””

My initial reaction to that kind of thinking would be to say that Israel is not the one raining rockets down on innocent civilian populations, but Bret Stephens in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (not linked–it is subscriber content) has a better reply:

“Nearly every Israeli has a child, sibling, boyfriend or parent in the army. Nearly every Israeli has been to the funeral of a fallen soldier, or a friend killed in a terrorist attack. Most Israeli homes and businesses come equipped with safe rooms or bomb shelters; every Israeli owns a gas mask. The whole country exists under the encroaching shadows of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and the prospect of a nuclear Iran. How many Americans, to say nothing of Europeans, can say the same about their own lives?

“Yet when it comes to scoring cheap shots against the Jewish state, Time is not the sort of magazine to allow the obvious to disturb a prejudiced hypothesis. Can the magazine point to equally pointed cover stories about internal Palestinian affairs and what, perchance, they mean for the peace process? I checked: It last did so in April 2002 with a largely sympathetic portrait of Yasser Arafat “All Boxed In” by an invading Israeli army.”

I am really sorry to see TIME Magazine go down the path of anti-Semitism.  I have fond memories of the magazine from my youth.