By Barry Rubin
It is truly amazing how anti-Israel forces generate so many false stories every day. At a time when revolutionary Islamists are taking over most Middle Eastern countries and the democracy dream in the region is collapsing, one would think that the main threat and evil force in the region is Israel. After all, we live in a time when Thomas Friedman, court jester for Middle East issues, can openly write antisemitic canards in the New York Times (the Israel lobby bought a standing ovation for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Congress!).
What is even more remarkable is how new anti-Israel themes are generated without any evidence whatsoever.
The new one is the idea that Israel, and its democracy, are in danger (moderate version) due to internal extremism or are (radical version) falling apart altogether. At least two new commercially published books make this claim, as do scores of articles and even a speech by the secretary of state. The New York Times publishes an op-ed saying that gays are persecuted in Israel while, of course, they aren’t but they are reviled and murdered in every other country in the region.
Yet what actual evidence can be accumulated for all of this campaign? The Knesset had a bill to supervise foreign money received by non-government organizations, a law not so dissimilar from those in Western democracies. And? And? What else happened? Well, nothing at all.
Oh yes, a bus driver took it upon himself to tell a woman to sit in the back of a bus because her sitting elsewhere might disturb Haredi men. She took it to court and, of course, won. A man who is a member of a tiny extremist cult in a small town spit at an Orthodox eight-year-old girl, apparently he belongs to some extreme sect or is somewhat disturbed. Even the strictest reading of Jewish law does not justify such an action.
There were huge demonstrations against the actions of this one person or tiny sect. President Shimon Peres publicly called for protests and Jerusalem’s police chief asked rabbis to condemn such behavior. The state and the public is clearly against any violation of democratic norms. Oh, and incidentally this group in Bet Shemesh has something in common with those trying to blow this up into a big issue–they are anti-Zionist. Haredi extremists who are against accepting Israeli norms on the rights of women are also against accepting Israel altogether. So how are they examples of Israeli values and democracy? They aren’t.
In contrast, in Egypt political parties openly advocating the minimization of women’s rights received three-quarters of the Muslim vote. Polls show vast majorities favor death for converts from Islam, amputation punishments, etc.
Yet the doings of individuals–condemned by the overwhelming majority of the community–supposedly prove that Israel is illegitimate or non-democratic. It would be fascinating if Western countries were to be judged by such standards. Serial murderers? Child pornography? Mass killings in schools? Aha! They are terrible, illegitimate, and undemocratic. Wipe them off the map!
As previously noted an op-ed in the New York Times claims Israel–by far the country in the Middle East (and even in the world) that treats gays fairly–Israel’s army medical corps was commanded by an openly gay man when gays couldn’t even serve openly in the U.S. military, for example–is said to be persecuting homosexuals. A Palestinian teenager is said to be imprisoned for just throwing stones when the published indictment shows he was arrested for the possession of weapons and explosives. Israel is accused of being insufficiently enthusiastic and actually critical of the “Arab Spring,” a claim proven correct by events without anyone so admitting that they were wrong and the Israeli assessment was correct.
Trying to make Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a dictator, a New York Times reporter informs us that the government’s refusal to subsidize channel 10 is censorship and that “Mr. Netanyahu has strong influence over other media outlets: the state-owned Channel 1, State Radio and a freely distributed and successful newspaper, Yisrael Hayom, owned by a close American friend, the billionaire Sheldon Adelson.” Everyone in Israel knows that Channel 1 and Kol Israel are left-leaning and have never favored Netanyahu. The same applies to Channel Two, the most popular.
As for Yisrael Hayom, it was started because every other Hebrew-language newspaper– Yediot Aharnot with around 60 percent of the readership; Maariv with more than 30 percent, and Haaretz with around 12 percent (the preferred newspaper of the intelligentsia)–have been critical at best and hostile at most. Let me put it this way, saying that Netanyahu has strong influence over the Israeli media is only a bit more exaggerated than saying that George W. Bush had strong influence over the American media.
A large portion of Western television stories and articles on Israel is designed to give the worst possible impression of the county as dictatorial at home and evil in its foreign policy. We used to think the coverage was slanted but we never dreamed it would reach such levels.
The list is endless. Every day hundreds of stories are invented, distorted, or magnified. Hundreds of reporters and researchers are dedicated to searching out some alleged crime or evil in Israel, magnifying the tiniest incident into an international headlined story. Yet this same army of scribblers and talkers can’t seem to discover the radicalism of the Muslim Brotherhood or the intransigence of the Palestinian Authority.
I wish this was a exaggeration and if someone had written such things 10 or 20 years ago I would have ridiculed it as such. But times have changed indeed. The near-monopoly in the mass media and in academia for a narrow range of opinion (in the “age of diversity”!); the dominance of ideology over professional ethics (in which the New York Times, for example, can run op-eds 90 percent of which are anti-Israel with no shame); and the failure of most Jewish organizations (the Anti-Defamation League has not yet discovered that left-wing antisemitism exists and actually tries to intimidate people from criticizing Obama!); along with other factors have created a bizarre atmosphere of conformity or else.
America and Europe are now divided into two groups, and I don’t mean “left” and “right.” There are those who think that the school and university system along with the mass media function just fine. Nothing has changed from, say, twenty years ago. And those who understand that these institutions have been incorporated into a propaganda apparatus.
There are those who understand that the main threat in the Middle East is revolutionary Islamism, and those who think that the main threat is Israel. There are those who understand that Obama has done more than any previous president to undermine Israel’s security and those who believe he is the great defender of Israel because he keeps saying so.
How does one deal with this mess? The answer is to build and strengthen an alternative elite, an alternative media, and alternative ways of educating people. It is to demand evidence to prove claims that are made and logic in setting forward arguments. In short, what’s needed is to restore academic and journalistic ethics; Enlightenment values; and logic from those who have abandoned these things.
We are not dealing mainly with Israeli sins–though these exist in proportion to those of other countries (and a lot less so than in most) but with anti-Israeli propaganda disguised as news, analysis, and scholarship. This is not a series of regrettable errors but rather a war consciously aimed against Israel and not just Israel.
In one of my recent lectures in the UK, a member of the audience asked: We understand that one of the reasons the European left has allied itself with Islamists is because they both hate the United States. But why do people in the United States do this?
I answered: Same reason. They also hate the United States.
PS: More readers than usual have written me about this story to say that they’ve heard all sorts of wild exaggerations on the “Haredi spitting” story and other such things, including from “liberal” Jewish friends who cite it as a reason not to support Israel. Are you people nuts?
PPS: While some Israeli secularists–particularly in Jerusalem where tensions are high and Haredim are sometimes more aggressive as they dominate new neighborhoods–hate Haredim. I recently spoke to a group of supposedly enlightened (non-Jewish mainly) Americans who clearly loathed Haredim and claimed they were taking over Israel.
I do not regard hatred of Haredim (mistakenly called “ultra-Orthodox” which is a meaningless term in Judaism) as any more acceptable than other such prejudices. And of course the Haredim are quite diverse, too. It’s funny how “liberals” and leftists find acceptable people to hate nowadays (Israelis and Jews being at the top of the ok-to-hate list). Recently while travelling abroad, I had a person regale me with criticism of Israelis as supposedly horrible racists, compared to the speaker’s virtuous Political Correctness, only to hear this same individual go into a racist rant against Asians a few minutes later!
A most timely article. The NPR drum circle was pounding on this theme just this morning.
It’s also worth mentioning that plenty of Haredim condemned the man who spit on that girl, and condemned his faction, the Siccariim, which is a small minority among the Haredim. From what I have read, the Siccarriim have been making everyone’s lives miserable, including the lives of normal Haredim.
As far as the false stories about Israel — if Reuters, the Guardian, NPR and the NYT had been around a few hundred years ago, they would have been running stories accusing the Jews of causing the Black Death by poisoning wells, stealing and desecrating Catholic holy wafers, and murdering Christians to use their blood in baking matzoh. Not much has changed.
Yes, it’s still Jews good, everybody else, bad. At least from what I can gather from your completely bigoted post.
No it does NOT.
What the post says is that those disgusting actions were done by small and extreme portion of the Haredim community.
How you managed to see otherwise is beyond me.
Hi Jeff,
Don’t stop there, how about some facts? The professor has just written an elucidated blog arguing his point by bringing up false accusations, and then demonstrating why they are false. He has brought facts to back up his points. Please do the same, we’d all be happy to hear it.
Otherwise, why bother making such a silly post?
Questioning why someone would present as an accomplished fact that the mass media is anti-Semitic must indeed seem silly to someone with an unflinching agenda. Yeah, “conformity or else.” Go ahead and read the article; I was referring to the post.
“Yes, it’s still Jews good, everybody else, bad.” – this sentence has absolutely nothing to do with the post you were responding to and IMO exposes your own ingenuity and perhaps your own agenda. The post is talking about the coverage of Israel, not of Jews. 40-45% of the world Jewery live in Israel. The post never implied all Jews, or all Israelis, are good – it actually mentions some Israelis who aren’t. And the post certainly doesn’t imply that everyone else is bad. The fact you chose to misrepresent it like that says more about you than about the post.
Here’s a quote:
“…accusing the Jews of causing the Black Death by poisoning wells, stealing and desecrating Catholic holy wafers, and murdering Christians to use their blood in baking matzoh.”
Can you read or do you just ignore what you read? He’s making a case that people who are not Jews are endemic bigots while Jews themselves are immune to such considerations.
Jews good, rest of the world, bad. Wake up. It was a bigoted post that said “Jews” not “Israel.” Plus it said non-Jews are as bad as their ancestors.
Ultimately, the left and radical Islam want the same thing-one world government. The left wants to be ruled by the UN and radical Islam wants a caliphate. Standing in the way of these wet dreams is the concept of the nation state. So, by taking down the most controversial of nation states (Israel), both groups can assault the Great Satan, after which all nations would fall into place. Thats why the left wants open borders with Mexico, which is to deny legitimacy to the US. All the assaults on Israel are just practice for assaults on the US, which illegally acquired the Louisiana Purchase, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Utah etc
Actually Herb, I think it is much less sinister than that–the Left has been taken over by ideologically driving fools who have no respect for reality, and think that academic credentials are a substitute for experience. They have developed wild theories that run counter to what is demonstrably true, and are eager to test them–hence the term radicals. Because that’s how they’ll get elected and begin their career as politicians. And that’s the only way they’ll make a living, because they are devoid of productive skills like thinking and hard work. Career politicians in the making. Let George Soros finance their lives, just don’t vote for them.
True. That summarizes the whole issue.
Barry,
Unfortunately, no media seems to be more guilty of this slamming of Israel than Israel’s own media. I regularly read the English language sites of Ynet, Haaretz and JPost, and all of them are just as alarmist as any of the European & American Jew-hating outlets.
Yes, and I include your other employer. Sad that JPost has fallen this far. Makes me wonder how long Caroline will stay there.
Eric, When I first traveled to Israel many years ago I noticed something interesting in the papers. They were predicting something awful for Israel in the following week. The next week came and instead of the predicted disaster were a new series of disaster predictions. The week after that I stopped paying attention to disaster predictions. I did however nickname the Jerusalem Post the daily gevalt.
As for the hate propaganda directed against Israel the following observations can be made
1) it’s not new; the volume of hate directed against Israel seemed to start with the winding down of the Viet-Nam war and the OPEC price rises. It seems the lefties needed something else to give their lives meaning having successfully destroyed freedom in SE Asia and humiliated the US. Remember the Sharon libel trait, the books Double Vision by Zeev Chafets exposing anti-Israel media bias, a New Republic article doing the same about the Lebanon war.
2) It’s predictable. The stories condemning Israel’s next attacks into GAZA and Lebanon and the resulting Nazi-like genocide of innocent Palestinians are already written and filed at the NYT, BBC, Guardian, Rueters and a couple others. They just have to fill in the dates and go to press.
3) it’s all due to the fact the the press in Israel really does not want to work or risk their lives reporting the real stories in the Arab world. In Israel one can file a report on the great Haredi crisis, or Israel’s decline into primitive barbarism and possibly cannibalism at 11:00 AM, have a decent lunch at 12:00. Hit the beaches at 2:00. The bars at 5:00, supper at 7:00 and the brothels at 8:00. As long as they can report anything from Israel they’re safe, regardless of whether there is anything to report. Ask me if I would lie to save my life, get paid for it and have a permanent vacation at the same time.
4) Until Israel wises up and starts supplying booze and hookers to journalists like the Arabs do negative press is to be expected.
5) Judging from the unending bad press Israel is receiving and the fact is Israel more popular than ever before indicates the American public can smell a rat. Also as Eric Hoffer noted, Americans are bad at hating.
To sum up, if I were an Israeli I would not worry, if I were a western journalist reporting from Israel I would worry about exposure.
” There are those who understand that Obama has done more than any previous president to undermine Israel’s security and those who believe he is the great defender of Israel because he keeps saying so.”
I agree. Letting the lunatics take over the asylum and then giving the neighbors a few extra clubs to defend themselves is not exactly the sign of strategic brilliance.
Why would an American President be a “great defender” of any country in this world but America? Sure, in times of troubles one sticks by ones friends but if the times of troubles never ends it’s time to ask one’s friends to tone it down a notch or be your own “great defender.” Obama is the President of the United States, not the world. Every frickin’ revolution and oppression and danger in the world today asking where’s America and I’m saying, “We’re right here. We don’t live there. Gotta go now I have a job and wife and kids to support.”
It’s the American President Obama himself who says he’s Israel’s great defender. Ask him, why dontcha?
I am just reading the Kahneman book, Think Fast and Slow. It is worth considering his thoughts in the light of the illogical and distorted thoughts of the day about Israel.
“We used to think the coverage was slanted but we never dreamed it would reach such levels.”
Who are “we”? I for one expected and expect anything from the media, up to fabricating stories about non-existent death camps (it won’t be the first time). I’ve noticed a long time ago that there’s an ever escalating campaign against Israel, and I came to the conclusion its purpose is to bring Israel’s demise. However, they couldn’t just go to the public and tell them Israel should be destroyed. The Western public was not yet ripe for it. What they had to do is gradually prepare Westerners until they view Israel as a Nazi-like state and Israelis as non-human monsters. When they’ll reach that point (most likely by fabricating genocide stories) the Western public will see the destruction of Israel and the genocide of Israelis as a positive turn of events, as ridding the world of a disease akin to cancer. The next generations, however, will not see it like that. If the Islamist-leftist axis is successful in this project the next Western generations will be ashamed of this complicity. Let’s hope they won’t be successful.
Some of you commenters say things that are so crazy that I fear for your sanity. If you really believe the things you just wrote, you’re as crazy as the people you fantasize about.
I wish you were right. Unfortunately you aren’t. The far-left is interested in Israel’s demise, nothing less. Read, for instance, what Khaled Abu Toameh (a moderate Muslim-Arab interested in a two-state solution) wrote after speaking in several American campuses:
http://www.hudson-ny.org/424/on-campus-the-pro-palestinians-real-agenda
Some quotes:
“During a recent visit to several university campuses in the U.S., I discovered that there is more sympathy for Hamas there than there is in Ramallah.
“Listening to some students and professors on these campuses, for a moment I thought I was sitting opposite a Hamas spokesman or a would-be-suicide bomber.
“I was told, for instance, that Israel has no right to exist, that Israel’s “apartheid system” is worse than the one that existed in South Africa and that Operation Cast Lead was launched only because Hamas was beginning to show signs that it was interested in making peace and not because of the rockets that the Islamic movement was launching at Israeli communities.”
…
“I never imagined that I would need police protection while speaking at a university in the U.S. I have been on many Palestinian campuses in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and I cannot recall one case where I felt intimidated or where someone shouted abuse at me.
“What is happening on the U.S. campuses is not about supporting the Palestinians as much as it is about promoting hatred for the Jewish state. It is not really about ending the “occupation” as much as it is about ending the existence of Israel.”
…
“Over the past 15 years, much has been written and said about the fact that Palestinian school textbooks don’t promote peace and coexistence and that the Palestinian media often publishes anti-Israel material.
“While this may be true, there is no ignoring the fact that the anti-Israel campaign on U.S. campuses is not less dangerous. What is happening on these campuses is not in the frame of freedom of speech. Instead, it is the freedom to disseminate hatred and violence.”
He says the radicals are a minority, but this is a vocal and strong minority that sets the trends, while speakers who support Israel or even don’t oppose it enough for their taste are shouted down, sometimes threatened, shunned and generally have difficulties making their voice heard. And from the academia it diffuses to the media and culture in general. I’ve been following the international media for years and seen how this phenomenon grew, with bolder and bolder lies and expressions. And I do believe the media is capable of absolutely anything, I completely lost faith in it, not just about Israel.
The new stage we entered now is no longer limited to only Israel itself, but is slandering in the mainstream mass media also its Jewish supporters, with Jewish journos like Tom Friedman and Joe Lieberman trying to discredit American expressions of support by claiming that the pro-Israel lobby bought a very large number of American congressmen, or claiming that Israel through its supprters sent the American army to war in Iraq.
All the looniest libels and conspiracy theories that were once only reiterated by Mulsim propagandists and the Western fringe – neo-Nazis and communist absorbers of Soviet propaganda – are gradually mainstreamed.
I’ll let you know when I and hundreds of millions in the West want to eradicate Israel like a cancer because we have been led like zombies by moronic students and teachers in colleges.
I notice you yourself and other posters are immune to such considerations. Maybe you’d like to pass off this secret to the West. Is it simply a natural superiority? Sheer intellect?
Here’s a website dedicated to media coverage of Israel and the Mid East:
http://honestreporting.com/
“It is to demand evidence to prove claims that are made and logic in setting forward arguments.”
If that is so then saying:
“Every day hundreds of stories are invented, distorted, or magnified. Hundreds of reporters and researchers are dedicated to searching out some alleged crime or evil in Israel, magnifying the tiniest incident into an international headlined story.”
…which is wildly improbable and of course unsourced due to wild numbers, is a problem for me.
I don’t disagree with the general thrust of your story but it seems as exaggerated in many respects as the stories it rails against.
http://www.camera.org covers middle east news reporting in America only
check archives going back for 10 or more years ago, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg
PJM has dropped me from daily emails. No matter how many times I check the subscribe button, or send emails, I am still not getting the daily issue, since you changed formats.
They’re sending me three different things, and two of one of the digests. I don’t know why I’m receiving this wealth of information, and you’re not.
Everybody look on the bright side. WWII and the destruction of European Jewry brought civilization, democracy and peace to Europe. Maybe the eradication of Israel will do the same for the Middle East.
:S
I’m glad you are here. It is not often that we have one of Obama’s foreign policy advisers here to share his insights.
It is no exaggeration to say that hundreds of reporters are based in Jerusalem. Every press outlet bases their Mideast reporters in Jerusalem. So much safer than Damascus or Cairo. Most of them oozing PC sympathy for the Palestinians, always with a fill-in-the-blanks story of Israeli oppression ready to send to the presses. Nothing a reporter likes better than a story that is sure to be printed.
Good point. Right now there is not much going on in Israel. Rockets from Gaza are now just a symptom of climate change. So anytime someone burps it is a story.
Just another blood libel. Take the segregated bus story. Heard a report on NPR yeatserday which made it sound as if all buses on Israel were gender segragated as a result of Likud political control. What a load of garbage.
In fact there are a few in some Haredi neighborhoods where passengers have tried to enforce this. The supreme court has already ruled against it. The fight to ensure that there will be no such segregation is being led by a female Likud MP who is riding around on buses to prove her point.
Some lunatic spits at a little girl. He has been charged with a crime and the whole country is incensed including leading rabbis. That incident would not even have made the police blotter in my local newspaper here.
Some salafi nobody ever heard of says something about banning bikinis or alcohol and it’s trumpeted as Islam 101. Get used to your own propaganda or start re-thinking things.
You might as well get used to it, the Western and Israeli Liberal media will smear Israel at every opportunity and all the complaining in the world will change nothing. Facts about Israel mean nothing, but prejudices, bigotry, outright lies, and half truths, for the Western and Israeli Liberal media, that is all that matters.
What is most telling and most important for me is how little impact on Americans and Israelis that this Liberal media assault has had.
Certainly the Liberal media attacks on Israel have never been quite so cowardly and despicable as they are now, but even then, almost no one really pays attention to them. Only those who are already fully convinced of Israel’s culpability and whose anti Israel opinion will never change take the anti Israel Liberal media seriously.
“PS: More readers than usual have written me about this story to say that they’ve heard all sorts of wild exaggerations on the “Haredi spitting” story and other such things, including from “liberal” Jewish friends who cite it as a reason not to support Israel. Are you people nuts?”
Um. Yes.
Sorry.
I have much respect for you Barry Rubin you have a way with words. I just wanted to add this: Even if you (Jews) have things against Israel Policy or Netanyahu Policy you should not join in with Israel’s enemies, Israel is straggling with Anti Semitism world wide, Distortion of the truth, de legitimization, Media Roster anti Israel, and you do not help Israel. Some of you say that you need to save Israel from itself, (Trash). The Problem is with the Extreme Left Radicals Writers who are getting paid by George Soros to write anti Israel Blogs.