Normalizing occupation, NYT runs whimsical story on time zones

There’s a lot going on in Israel and Palestine. One Israeli minister has declared a “crisis” between the U.S. and Israel over Israeli colonization of the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, the U.S. State Department is all but encouraging European countries to take action against illegal Israeli settlements, and Abe Foxman, a leader of the Israel lobby, has dared to voice criticism of the Netanyahu government in a story describing Netanyahu as “chickenshit.”

And what do I find in my New York Times? A long article titled, “For Israelis and Palestinians, Another Divide to Contend With: Time.” It seems there’s a time difference between the West Bank and Israel, because Palestine has gone to daylight savings time, and Israel hasn’t. The story goes on for 16 paragraphs.

The website timeanddate.com shows that over the past 15 years, Israelis and Palestinians have changed clocks simultaneously seven times (always when springing forward) and have thrice spent at least a month an hour apart (30 days last fall, 32 in 2010 and 34 in 2008). Gaza and the West Bank have also twice been unsynchronized.

In Europe, what is called “summer time” runs from the first Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October. In the United States, daylight saving time has since 2007 started on the second Sunday in March and ended on the first Sunday in November.

So the Times likes statistics? Tell us how many Palestinians are locked up without trial, how many of them are children, how many new housing units are being built in East Jerusalem, how many Bedouins were moved off their land this summer.

The central political reality of Israel/Palestine is the Occupation. Once that occupation ends, then whimsical, trivial stories about time differences would be perfectly justified. But by ignoring that reality this article is an unconscious effort to make injustice seem normal.