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Bigotry, ‘The New York Times’ and Israel: Andrea Levin, Jerusalem Post, Apr. 8, 2013—The New York Times’ coverage of Israel is increasingly a landscape of half-truths and worse, shaped not by where facts lead but by preconceived storylines. Palestinian actions are cast as reactive to Israel’s, without autonomous motive and essentially without fault, while Israel is the main actor, the party that causes events, the one held accountable and very often the one indicted.
Al-Dura: A Lethal Narrative that Just Won’t Die: Elihu D. Stone, Times of Israel, March 30, 2013 —The French Court of Appeals this week will render its decision in a case pitting state-owned France 2 television and one of its senior news producers, Charles Enderlin, against media critic Philippe Karsenty whom they seek to convict of criminal defamation.
BBC Terminology: Mitigating Terror: Simon Plosker, Honest Reporting, April 30, 2013—This morning [Apr. 30], an Israeli was stabbed to death by a Palestinian terrorist at the Tapuah junction in the West Bank.
A [Muslim’s] Letter to York [Ontario] Regional Police Chief: Salim Mansur, Vlad Tepes Blog, May 2, 2013— I am a Muslim, a tenured professor in a prestigious Canadian university, the University of Western Ontario in London. I am appalled that in this day and age we continue to hear regularly how the liberal democratic tradition of Canada and the West is being systematically shredded by institutions sworn to protect it.
Blaming Israel for a Hamas Murder: Y. Frankel, Honest Reporting, Mar 13, 2013 (video)
Toronto Police Accused of Pressuring Rabbi to Cancel Pamela Geller Speech: Katrina Clarke, National Post, May 3, 2013
A Tale of Two Synagogues: Phil Orenstein, Front Page Magazine, May 3, 2013
The New York Times Erases Islam from Existence: Daniel Greenfield, Front Page Magazine, May 3, 2013
Two TV Stations in US Broadcast Hamas and Hezbollah Incitement: Tzvi Ben-Gedalyahu, Jewish Press, May 3rd, 2013
BIGOTRY, ‘THE NEW YORK TIMES’ AND ISRAEL
Andrea Levin
Jerusalem Post, Apr. 8, 2013
The New York Times’ coverage of Israel is increasingly a landscape of half-truths and worse, shaped not by where facts lead but by preconceived storylines. Palestinian actions are cast as reactive to Israel’s, without autonomous motive and essentially without fault, while Israel is the main actor, the party that causes events, the one held accountable and very often the one indicted.
A comparison of two incidents reported by The Times underscores the pattern and the radically different treatment meted out to the sides in much of the coverage. Both stories involve serious questions about the nature of the cultures of the two societies – Israeli and Palestinian. Both relate to the important and deep issue regarding how hate engenders violence and drives the sides apart and how members of the society respond to bigotry among their own people.
The Times’ presentation of the two reveals layers of bias and underscores the degree to which readers are deceived. In the first case, a page 15 story on March 23 – actually an obituary – recorded the death of Mariam Farhat. Also known as “Mother of Martyrs,” Farhat’s claim to fame was her proclaimed wish that her sons “martyr” themselves killing Jews, women and children included, until all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean is Islamic. Any surviving Jews would be allowed to stay and live under Muslim domination. Three of her sons had fulfilled the maternal wish, with one of them, a teenager of 17, infiltrating a settlement in Gaza in a March 2002 suicide attack, shooting to death five Jewish students and wounding many more before being killed.
Mariam Farhat’s death occasioned an outpouring of praise and mourning from the spectrum of Palestinian leadership; from Hamas, the group with which she had long been associated, but also from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who set up a mourners’ tent for the deceased near the presidential headquarters in Ramallah. Fatah officials praised her, one extolling her as “a glorious Palestinian” and another offering the hope she be granted a place “in Paradise alongside the saints and martyrs.”
MEMRI reports that 4,000 attended her funeral, where she was covered in the Hamas flag with an assault weapon laid across her body. Times coverage was antiseptic and respectful, passing no judgement on Farhat and referring to her as “a Palestinian lawmaker” who was lauded at her funeral by Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. The reporter noted without comment Farhat’s expressed wish to have had 100 sons like the one who killed the Jewish students. A line at the close of the piece related that “she was popular among young women in Hamas.”
Nothing in the Times’ rendition suggested a need for Palestinian soul-searching about extolling a woman who filled her children with hatred and incited them to murder and suicide. Times editors and reporters, evidently, shrugged off the significance of a culture that makes of Farhat an admired icon – instead of a pariah.
In fact, the Times also saw no news value in the Palestinian Authority’s enlisting in 2011, as a symbol of its push for UN recognition of Palestinian statehood, another mother of sons dedicated to violence against Israel. The heroine then, Latifa Abu Hmeid, who opposes a two-state agreement, is the mother of a son killed in a terrorist attack on Israel and of seven others imprisoned in Israeli jails. This mother too was held up as a model for Palestinians – a model representing violence and irredentism, not accommodation and compromise. The Times ignored that story completely.
The tacit assumption in Times reporting – that Palestinian society shouldn’t be expected to adhere to a moral code that rejects mothers indoctrinating children in murderous hatred and terrorism – could be seen as anti-Arab bias, as implying Palestinians lack the capability to live up to the norms of behaviour expected of others. But the tenor of Times coverage makes clear that the bias is against Israel, that the newspaper chooses to construe Palestinians as driven to immoral acts because of Israeli presence in the territories or checkpoints or any of the myriad allegations levelled against Israelis.
Then too, reporting honestly on Mariam Farhat might be seen as risky, an affront to people who could make life difficult for Times staff in the area. Yet, the Times’ silence not only fails to address forthrightly the societal corruption represented by Farhat, coverage of which could potentially bring change, it also gives no opportunity and voice to those, perhaps many, Palestinians who might feel very differently and be emboldened by the newspaper’s coverage to refrain from applauding the radical views of Farhat.
The Times, in effect, betrays voices of moderation opposed to the irredentist regimes in Gaza and Ramallah; it does so by echoing those regimes’ messages that Israel is the problem and by choosing not to investigate and report honestly and fully on Palestinian responsibility.
Ironically, Farhat was interviewed by an Egyptian television anchor several years ago who candidly challenged her actions, saying they seem to any normal mother to be unnatural. The anchor pressed her about the killing of women and children and said Farhat was viewed by many in the Arab world, as well as in the West, as a terrorist. These were rational, obvious questions and they served the viewers well, but they have never been raised by the Times.
Far different was the dramatic Times response to an earlier event in August 2012, when stories by Jodi Rudoren and Isabel Kershner relayed how Jewish teenagers brutally beat an Arab teenager in Jerusalem. The Times played the incident big, with two front-page, above-the-fold stories a week apart, totalling more than 2,500 words.
Immediately, the story turned to sweeping questions about the morality of Israelis and to questions of “soul-searching” and the “poisoned political environment” affecting the “moral compass” of Jewish youth in Israel. Numerous commentators were cited expanding on the alleged “evil” of the Jewish perpetrators, of the attack reflecting a “national fundamentalism” echoing “neo-nazis, Taliban and KKK”. The second, follow-up front-page story focused on Israeli society as one riven with “myriad internal conflicts involving identity and pluralism.” A Knesset member was cited denouncing the attack and terming the incident a type of problem that “could endanger Israeli democracy.”
Unquestionably, the story was a major topic in Israel, entailing anguished internal debate, and the Times’ decision to cover it was reasonable. But the front-page prominence, presenting it repeatedly as, in effect, one of the most important events in the world, and the angle pursued in the coverage are an altogether different matter.
To frame this incident as representing rot at the core of Israeli society, while casting the Palestinian leadership’s lionizing of mothers who wean their children on hatred and terror as unremarkable, as implicitly unimpeachable, underscores the bias that poisons the newspaper’s coverage of Israel and the Palestinians.
The author is executive director and President of CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.
AL-DURA: A LETHAL NARRATIVE THAT JUST WON’T DIE
Elihu D. Stone
Times of Israel, March 30, 2013
The French Court of Appeals this week will render its decision in a case pitting state-owned France 2 television and one of its senior news producers, Charles Enderlin, against media critic Philippe Karsenty whom they seek to convict of criminal defamation. The legal action, winding its way through the French legal system for eight years, involves an event that still reverberates mightily today.
On September 30, 2000, at the start of the second Intifada, France 2 broadcast approximately one minute’s edited footage of an episode filmed by its Palestinian stringer Talal Abu Rahma at Netzarim Junction in Gaza. Abu Rahma was the only one of the scores of cameramen filming at Netzarim that day to record the incident, which he claims occurred over the space of a full hour. Charles Enderlin, France 2′s Jerusalem correspondent – who did not witness the scene – broadcast the footage informing his viewers that 12-year-old Mohammed al-Dura and his father, Jamal were “the target of fire from the Israeli position” as they took cover behind a barrel near a wall at the Junction. In later interviews, Abu Rahma accused the Israeli soldiers of murdering Mohammed “in cold blood,” firing “hundreds of bullets” while the boy bled to death of a stomach wound.
The “lethal narrative” that Israeli troops wantonly killed Mohammed became a clarion call for Jihadists and other foes attacking Israel, Jews and Western democracies. Bin Laden featured images of al-Dura prominently in his recruiting videos; Pakistani jihadis beheaded Daniel Pearl [a Jewish journalist] on camera invoking the image of Mohammed al-Dura.
From the moment of broadcast, the scene raised troubling questions for Enderlin’s account, and many more surfaced during the years that followed: Why, although Abu Rahma and Enderlin alleged the Israelis hit Mohammed and his father a dozen times with bullets that tore through their bodies, does no blood whatsoever appear on the wall, the barrel, or the ground near the alleged victims? Why do the people around Abu Rahma shout the “the child is dead! The child is dead!” before he even shows signs of being hit. Why, two “takes” after Enderlin has declared him dead does the boy peek out from under his arm at the camera, showing no sign of a stomach injury? And why did Enderlin cut that final scene from his broadcast? Why did news photographers find red ‘blood’ the day after the incident on the ground near the barrel, under the father’s position, but not where the son allegedly bled to death of a stomach wound? Why did 45 minutes of continuous, targeted fire leave no more than 11 bullet holes in the wall by the al-Duras? Why – despite Abu Rahma’s varying claims to have collected or filmed bullets at the scene and Jamal’s alleged surgeries in Gaza and Jordan to have bullets removed – has not a single bullet or fragment ever been produced, in response to Israel’s repeated requests for such evidence?
The Al-Dura incident and the questions surrounding it raise matters extending far beyond the events of that day and the geographic boundaries of the Middle East. At issue are the bedrock rights and responsibilities of the media as it reports on events, especially in cases where it assigns motive and blame.
Too often, in the court of public opinion, the press simultaneously holds itself as judge and jury and advocate. The rules of evidence prevailing in the court of public opinion are far less defined than those in a court of law. Precisely for that reason, the press has a heightened responsibility to police itself, when determining what images and messages it injects into the public sphere it is meant to accurately inform….
Yet, on more than one occasion, members of the media have defended their choice of images purveyed, chosen precisely due to their emotional, rather than their probative, content. Patrick B. Pexton, Ombudsman of the Washington Post, in an opinion piece published November 23, 2012 entitled “Photo of dead baby in Gaza holds part of the ‘truth’ ” recalled Mary Anne Golon, the Post’s director of photography, explaining to him that the purpose of any front-page photo, regardless of subject, is to move the reader, whether through its beauty, sentiment or drama.” Apparently, the fact that the journalist mistakenly blamed Israel for the child’s death did not impede the search for emotional impact.
In the case of al Dura, France 2 failed to investigate basic questions of fact and causation before, during and after its passing on of poisonous images and allegations to the public relying on France 2 – and still remains in exclusive possession of materials crucial to properly answer those questions. Perhaps France 2 rushed because it did not want to be scooped by others filming the scene, but that hardly excuses its subsequent failure to investigate properly.
The utter refusal by France 2′s journalists and editors to examine evidence that contradicted their basic assumptions remains deeply disturbing. Enderlin not only conflated absence of proof with proof of absence, but justified wilful blindness to certain facts as grounds to dismiss their very possibility. Even more disturbing, France 2 doubled down when confronted with its error, trying to legally straitjacket Karsenty for having the temerity to call out the al-Dura hoax for what it is. If the French court, for either political or technical reasons, sides with state-owned France 2 against a bold and correct critic, they strike a blow not only against press responsibility, but the very fabric of the civil society they ought to play such a key role in preserving. Such an abject failure on the part of both the media and the courts to correct this penchant for mainstreaming the enemy’s lethal narratives makes the world a much more dangerous place.
Elihu D Stone practiced law in Boston, Massachusetts and is currently a member of the Israeli Bar; He is involved in the Al Durah Project, an initiative dedicated to understanding and countering the dilemmas and vulnerabilities that face democratic cultures in this age of aggressive asymmetric and cognitive warfare.
BBC TERMINOLOGY: MITIGATING TERROR
Simon Plosker
Honest Reporting, April 30, 2013
This morning [Apr. 30], an Israeli was stabbed to death by a Palestinian terrorist at the Tapuah junction in the West Bank. As reported by The Times of Israel:
The attacker stabbed the Israeli, grabbed his weapon, and according to some accounts shot him at close range. He then fired at nearby border police, who returned fire and succeeded in subduing him. The victim, who was said to be about 30 years old, was declared dead at the scene after MDA paramedics’ resuscitation efforts failed. The attacker was evacuated to Beilinson hospital in Petah Tikva in moderate condition.
Now look at how the BBC reports on the attack:
ISRAELI SETTLER KILLED IN WEST BANK
The opening paragraph: “An Israeli settler has been killed by a Palestinian at a bus stop in the northern West Bank, police say.”
Notice how the Israeli victim is described as a “settler” in both the headline and the article. If the BBC is prepared to use politicized terminology to describe an Israeli civilian then presumably, shouldn’t it also describe the Palestinian in similar terms for consistency?
While the BBC should refer to the Palestinian as a terrorist, it is noteworthy that the attacker is not even referred to as a “militant” or “activist.” He is simply a Palestinian. Yet, by referring to the Israeli as a “settler,” the BBC is already acknowledging that the Palestinian must have been motivated to carry out the attack for nationalist rather than criminal reasons. Evidently, murdering someone for nationalistic reasons is not an act of terrorism, extremism or militancy.
The BBC’s indifference to Israeli victims of terror who happen to live in the West Bank reached its nadir in March 2011 when a mother, father and three of their children, including a three-month old baby, were stabbed to death by Palestinian terrorists in the West Bank settlement of Itamar. Looks like nothing has changed at the BBC then. Contrast the above with another piece of breaking news covered by the BBC at exactly the same time:
GAZA CITY: ISRAELI AIR STRIKE KILLS PALESTINIAN MILITANT
The report states: “A Palestinian militant has been killed in an Israeli air strike on Gaza City. Officials from Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, said the victim was Haytham al-Misshal, a member of a Salafist jihadist group.” So while the BBC is prepared to acknowledge that membership of a jihadist group is sufficient to be referred to as a “militant,” the act of actually murdering an Israeli in a politically motivated attack is not.
A [MUSLIM’S] LETTER TO
YORK REGIONAL POLICE CHIEF ERIC JOLLIFFE
Salim Mansur
Vlad Tepes Blog, May 2, 2013
Dear Sir,
I am writing this letter to you on hearing [that] pressure [has been] applied to Rabbi Mendel Kaplan of the Chabad Flamingo Synagogue in Thornhill [Ontario] to cancel an event with Ms. Pamela Geller.
I am a Muslim, a tenured professor in a prestigious Canadian university, the University of Western Ontario in London. I am appalled that in this day and age we continue to hear regularly how the liberal democratic tradition of Canada and the West is being systematically shredded by institutions sworn to protect it. Free speech is the most fundamental right of a free society; constrain it, strip it, shred it, and then let us not be surprised our society will be turned into a society such as one from where I fled as a young man to find freedom in the West, and I remain ever grateful that Canada took me in and gave me the opportunity to pursue my own dreams.
I pray you consider any decision you make that ends up taking another step in undermining the tradition of free speech that made the West, and Canada as a part of it, the most flourishing, open, and free culture in the entire history of mankind. Each one of us are responsible that this tradition is preserved, protected, and passed on to the unborn generations what we inherited.
I submit your intentions might very well be of some merit as a guardian of law and order. But those pushing for preventing Ms. Pamela Geller from speaking by putting pressure on Rabbi Mendel to deny the use of his synagogue for holding her event are people I know very well. These are people, Muslims as I am, who come from cultures that have no respect for individual rights and freedoms enshrined in our constitution, and while making home here in Canada have no respect for the culture of this country. They need to learn the culture of a free society, of a society that is open to debates and discussions however painful this might be to someone else's sensibilities. But if you concede to their demands, all that you would be doing is indulging them, heeding their wishes and threats, and slowly, intentionally or not, bending Canada's tradition in the direction of the ruined cultures of these people which they have brought with them and want to push into our society.
I hope you will think hard and think clearly given your responsibility and defend the tradition of liberal democracy based on rule of law, individual freedom and free speech. I might just remind you that it was in defending this tradition that time and time again your compatriots went across oceans to distant places and were prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice so that freedom there might take root by defeating the forces of tyranny. It often takes immense courage to do what is right, whether to refuse going to the back of a bus in a segregated society or protecting the right of someone to speak, especially when one disagrees with what might be spoken. I pray God gives you the courage to do what is right in this instance.
Salim Mansur, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Western Ontario
Blaming Israel for a Hamas Murder: Y. Frankel, Honest Reporting, Mar 13, 2013 (video) —Yet again the reflexive anti-Israel attitude of the foreign media has led to false accusations against Israel. That the media is unwilling to correct the error or to hold Hamas publicly responsible is not only a slap in the face for Israel but also to the readers and viewers who are entitled to proper standards of accuracy from the media.
Toronto Police Deny Pressuring Rabbi to Cancel Speech by Pamela Geller: Katrina Clarke, National Post, May 3, 2013—Jewish activists say a Toronto-area rabbi has been pressured by an area police force to change plans to host a controversial anti-Islamist speaker, prompting accusations the force is squelching free speech.
A Tale of Two Synagogues: Phil Orenstein, Front Page Magazine, May 3, 2013—This is the story of the glorious miracles that happen when freedom-loving people stand up, refuse to be intimidated and fight back.
The New York Times Erases Islam from Existence: Daniel Greenfield, Front Page Magazine, May 3, 2013—The media coverage of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has one theme and one tack. Like 30 of the 31 men on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list, they were terrorists who just happened to be Muslim.
Two TV Stations in US Broadcast Hamas and Hezbollah Incitement: Tzvi Ben-Gedalyahu, Jewish Press, May 3rd, 2013—Two television stations, one in New Jersey and one in California, are broadcasting programs from the outlawed Hezbollah and Hamas terrorist organizations, encouraging American children to grow up into suicide bombers.
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