It is truly astonishing how, it often seems, Western media coverage must blame Israel for everything that “goes wrong” in the Middle East, including murderous hostility to Israel.
Sentences often seem carefully formulated to push this claim and exclude any possibility of balance, much less accuracy. And no matter what the subject, it seems, this message must be snuck in.
Consider these two paragraphs in a Washington Post story about the Egyptian government’s cancellation of a Jewish pilgrimage to a site in Egypt:
The government’s move underscores the changing relationship between Israel and post-Hosni Mubarak Egypt. The former president maintained relations with Israel, as laid out in the 1979 Camp David peace treaty, in part by curbing civil liberties with his expansive police force. Since his ouster last winter, anti-Israeli sentiment driven by Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians has risen to the surface, and Israeli-Egyptian tensions have grown.
Relations soured further in the fall after a mid-August cross-border attack from Egypt led to the killing of at least five Egyptian border guards as Israeli troops pursued alleged militants. Many activists called for revisions of the peace treaty and protests outside the Israeli Embassy turned violent when some demonstrators stormed the building.
Let’s list the subtle points made in these few sentences:
1. Egyptian resentment toward Israel and the treaty supposedly emerges from the use of repression to maintain it. So is Israel or peace with Israel responsible for the lack of democracy and free speech in Egypt under Mubarak? In fact, of course, there was a huge amount of criticism of the policy toward Israel and the latter country was continually attacked in the strongest language by both opposition and government circles. Since Mubarak was the dictator he could maintain relations with Israel if he wanted to do so. Hence the statement that he maintained them by repression is just false.
2. In fact, the relationship was called a “cold peace” precisely because the Mubarak government limited it (official boycotts of Israelis; harassment of Egyptian firms that wanted to do business with Israel; continual extremist anti-Israel propaganda in the state-controlled Egyptian media; denial of visas to Egyptians — mainly Christian pilgrims — who wanted to go to Israel, etc.)
2. Why has anti-Israel sentiment in Egypt risen in the last year? Because, we are told, Israel treated the Palestinians so badly. What about the ideological changes in Egypt? If Israel had done nothing, the same result would have happened. And how has Israel treated Palestinians badly in the last year? It has been a relatively quiet year actually.
3. No mention of historic levels of hatred toward Israel and Jews in Egypt, or of the emergence of revolutionary Islamist groups that — including the two leading parties in the election — openly call for Israel’s extinction and use extensive antisemitic rhetoric.
4. Eight Israelis, six of them civilians on a bus, were killed by terrorists operating from Egypt. Those terrorists enjoy wide popular support because of the worldview and politics of most Egyptians. But we are to believe that hatred only rose because Israel accidentally killed Egyptian soldiers during the ensuing battle? The terrorists wore Egyptian army uniforms and were being pursued in the same area. Moreover, Israel even hushed up the deliberate murder of an Israeli soldier inside Israel by Egyptian soldiers in order to try to reduce tensions. Incidentally, the article says “at least” five Egyptian soldiers were killed. I don’t think there is any doubt as to the number but it is hinted that there might have been more. What was a terror attack on Israel is thus turned into an Israeli attack on Egypt by the article?
Israel becomes more and more isolated. My hope and prayer is that the Jews will begin to look up, to where their help comes from.
Kenneth Stern of the American Jewish Committee is preparing a syllabus on the teaching of the sources of antisemitism, which includes the Islamic factor. I have compiled my own outline of the sources, which are many and some of which are not obvious, for instance, the “Hebraic” radical puritans of the 17th century. I wrote it all down here: http://clarespark.com/2010/11/14/the-abcs-of-antisemitism/. And the internal links will give you more ammunition in understanding the irrationality of the hatred.
Dave, right on. None of it matters except Jesus Christ. He in the end is our help and our hope and our reason for being. Soon, Israel will realize that He is and has come once.
“Alleged militants” refers to a gang of terrorists who crossed the border from
Sinai to Israel and shot at an Israeli civilian bus, killing the driver and also
shot at cars, killing 4 civilian Israelis on their way home from vacation in the resort of Eilat. There is nothing “alleged” about them and the word “militant” has neutral connotations. “Terrorists” would be a more appropriate term to use.
Excellent analysis and summation, Barry. An article on the same subject (the demonization of Israel by the media) just appeared (16 Jan.) in Ynet authored by Yoel Meltzer.
What would it take to demonize Egypt? Or is such exaggeration even possible?
Of course it is IMPOSSIBLE for such demonization to be leveled against Egypt. A country with a long history that included enslavement of God’s people? Really. You’d as likely expect Satan’s help exploring genital mutilation of Egyptian women. No wonder Arabs are so interested in Western women. Everybody is intrigued by what they have never seen! But then, the National Organization of Women is no different than the United Nations attempting to crush violent speech against religions by including so many Egyptian Coptic Christians on the panel. It’s all part of a plan to isolate the Jewish state prior to the breakout! All praise be to him that rules.
How much will it take for the ISRAELI GOVERNMENT to begin to take the need for media and public relations seriously enough to invest majorly in dissemination of the pro Israel view, after all the poor misunderstood Egyptian generals are doing it.
The media prints what it wants to and not what any Israeli govt., would like.
That was made clear in 2006 when the NYT reporter Steven Erlanger made apparent at a conference that he refused to go into Lebanon with the IDF as it did not interest him to portray the facts as it would only make him look like an “Uncle Tom” presenting anything positive about Israel.
Yes, the media can print what it wants, but the Israeli government’s public statements in English hold to the same anti-Israel party line as is now saturating the Western press.
I have thought the same thing for some time.
Every supplier of a product or a service spends millions on advertising to promote that product or service.
Israel provides both a service, an island of sanity in an otherwise completely dysfunctional part of the world, and many products of scientific, technological, and medical value to the rest of the world, while the Islamic world with its “Islamic Universities” which turn out “Islamic scholars” (an oxymoron I think), provide virtually nothing of value to the rest of the world.
I have often wondered why Israel doesn’t have an ongoing advertising campaign in European, American and other Western media to set the record straight and combat the barrage of misinformation by the Western media. I think it could be a valuable weapon in the battle for public opinion and it is being completely ignored.
If Israel ran a campaign trying brand itself as a positive force in the world, the Left would unleash a well-financed diatribe against Israel that would dwarf its efforts. Animus toward Israel is so dark and thick as to preclude upbeat news of any sort. It is not Israel to which the Left is so opposed. Rather, the press supports the Marxist absolute truth that the Jews (or anyone) do not need a place of their own. Israel, as a successful national entity, is a phenomenon that must be destroyed, no matter how wondrous, useful, pleasant, or safe, because it suggests, nay proves, that Internationalism is NOT the only savior of the world. Israel proves that all differences between people need not be eradicated to save the planet. This version of the truth, the Left reasons, cannot be allowed to stand.
I have just returned from Israel and met with the filmmaker who created Obsession and Iranium, Raphael Shore. He is now launching a film called Inside Israel which portrays an insiders’ view of Israeli society. The person featured is an Israeli, professor Tal, a former lecturer on happiness at Harvard, one of Harvard’s most popular courses who retuns to live in Israel. It is scheduled to be screened widely around Israel Independence Day 2012.
http://www.israelinsidethemovie.com/
Thank you very much for informing about this film.
Your three rules are well put. Ironically, they always seemed to me to be a form of reverse racism. We can’t criticize non-Western people because there is an implied assumption that we don’t expect them to behave in the same way or conform to the same standards we hold for Western people. The implication is that they’re just not up to the job.
You are on to something. The best explication of this was given by Bret Stephens at a talk for CIJR (canadian Institute for Jewish Research) in Montreal. 2010.
Defining Deviance Down for Israel and Defining Deviance up for Iran
http://youtu.be/rCinAC-b5S4
Yes, it’s the failure of the media. Failure to properly inform.
The failure of their universities to teach the young journalists the necessity to be “objective.” The failure of the universities to even teach them what IS “objective” or even how to discern the truth.
I don’t know if it was always like this, but it seems that in the past, strong voices were heard on all sides of opinion — along with the facts. But maybe I’m incorrect. In any case, it’s terrible now. The entire world is being fed lie after lie after lie — by the very ones who are supposed to protect them from the lies. A collosal betrayal of humanity.
Though there are many who are screaming about and against the lies, disinformation, hiding of information — it’s not enough for the general public, who, after all, are busy spending most of their time trying to earn a living. They need their info condensed and readily available.
By the time, if ever, the difference between lies and truth are known — it will be too late. (And in that case, the truth will never be known — except and unless at some far distant point in the future, as the remnants of this civilization are “dug” up.)
It’s vitally important to keep fighting, keep struggling for truth to become known — even though each year — it — the chances for that fight for the truth to be disseminated — seems to get harder and more distant.
I agree with everything you say, except … that newspaper “bias” is caused by the leftist philosophy of journalist. That is a myth that is perpetuated by the right, and is as nefarious as the myths about Israel that you rightly condemn.
I worked in a newspaper, and I know how stories are slanted, but not because the journalists are leftist but because they don’t have or want to take the time to truly report a story, and because they don’t want to report anything too different from what all the other journalists are reporting, and because in the Palestinian territories they must adhere to the party line or be in danger of their lives.
And don’t forget that almost all newspapers are now owned — and heavily influenced — but their billionaire owners, who are anything but leftist.
Still, you’d think newspapers and outlets like CNN would cover what are in effect multi-faceted Hitlers without an army that can conquer what they’d like to conquer. Reflecting the bigotry and hatred of the Muslim Brotherhood, a party that will have control of almost half of Egypt’s parliament is news. It should be news that the Muslim Brotherhood plays politics because they have no other choice, not because of any love of a concept like The Bill of Rights. CNN prefers to see Islamophobia where there is none and ignore the underlying causes of having disdain for Muslims and their ideology which is more political than mystic like other religions.
This…is a crockpot of tripe, to be frank.
Barry is precisely correct. There can be little doubt that leftists have made the savaging of Israel and America through slander, distortion, fabrications, staged events, photoshopped pictures…targets of a propaganda campaign.
This utter nonsense that it is based upon some unspoken, non-conspiratorial, wave of innocence and myopia has long since lost its phony patina of credibility.
And, the typical asshat trick of throwing out some stale class warfare rhetoric about “billionaire owners who are not leftist” can be relegated to the toxic waste pit that is the modern mass media machine.
The NYTimes, Newsweek and the whole host of traitorous leftist rags have long ago lost their virginal cloaks and their ability to pass off the fraud of “little Mary Jumprope”…”we just want to be fair” disingenuous cover.
Green helmet guy, the AP photoshopping of stringers, the Reuters intentional misleading and distortion of facts, the daily slanders of the BBC, …these are not innocent jouralists “following their friends”…these are staged narratives that are intentionally and knowingly false, slanderous and distorted.
They ALL come from the left, they have the exact same political DNA and the exact same methodologies and the exact same pathology as the attacks politically here in America.
So, let’s stop peddling this excrement that “billionaire owners” are “not leftist” and that this is all simply explained away by some simple-minded pap about “unwitting young journalists”.
It is instead a conspiracy to distort and slander. Purely and simply stated…a propaganda assault on Israel and America by the left for the purposes designed by the left. Only a fool believes otherwise. Or a co-conspirator.
I agree with everything you say, except … that newspaper “bias” is caused by the leftist philosophy of journalist.
Well then, leftist organizations worldwide are unanimous in excoriating Israel’s politics and national defense, and are supporting the poor dear Palestinian Arabs as their victims. Is it merely a coincidence that MSM articles follow that trend, or just ‘a myth that is perpetuated by the right’? Sounds like a unanimous chorus to me.
http://trololololololololololo.com/
“basically, zionism wiped palestine off the map”
No, Zionism reclaimed land that was stolen by Muslim Imperialists and Colonialists centuries ago. Bit by bit we’re driving the Muslim invader off of Judeo-Christian lands that they never had any right to.
Yesterday Toledo, Today Jerusalem, Tomorrow Constantinople.
Choke on it…renegade.
“all zionists know is death and destruction, they have no other ideas.”
A classic example of projection. Thanks for your contribution.
The Lame Stream EneMedia is fundamentally Antisemitic it goes with its left wing moonbat sympathies and its Islamophilia.
If the Mohammedans laid down their arms there would be peace if the Jews laid down their arms there would be no more Jews. That in a nutshell is the truth about Islam.
Dead Right,
Thats why they will never make “peace”…It could happen tomorrow, but it would PROVE that 14 centuries of following the madman from the desert was a waste of time.
WAY too humilliating to admit failure now, they’ve been in it too long.
They’d rather cut off their face to spite their nose.
Bollos please tell us how the Mohammedan ARAB Invaders got to be in the Holy Land in the first place. Or do you subscribe to the same denial of a ‘Right of Conquest ‘ for the Jews that you and the left wing moonbats so willingly support for the ARABS.
Specifically, tell us why so many “Palestinian” families have surnames suggesting that they came from other lands: Al-Masri (The Egyptian), A-Suri (The Syrian), Al-Turki (The Turk), to name a few.
that a good majority of americans exposed to the endless barrage of anti-israel propaganda have not succumbed to it.
Look it’s really quite simple. Go spend 6 months living in Israel, then spend 6 months living in any other Muslim state in the middle east (you can reverse the order if you think it’ll make a difference). Which is a better place to live? If the Arabs had any smarts they’d be copying Israel rather than trying to destroy it.
The people who gain from today’s situation in the Middle East are the current Muslim elite — imams, princes, and just plain thugs — who know in their bones that they are history as soon as their subjects and co-religionists decide to wake up, join the modern world and start living like Israelis.
“Go spend 6 months living in Israel, then spend 6 months living in any other Muslim state in the middle east (you can reverse the order if you think it’ll make a difference)”
Note: If you have an Israel entry stamp in your passport, no Arab country will let you in. Go with the latter.
The Post uses the word ‘government’ as if they’ve been established for some time now. The Post’s use of the phrase– ‘The government’s move’– is a stretch. What government? How quickly the msm falls in behind the gangsters maneuvering for control. The Post’s casual use of the word ‘government’ is to do what? To legitimize any positions or unlawful events that have occurred in this out of control State.
Stay tuned, there’s more to come in Egypt.
Not for nothing has Gov. Palin labelled the MSM, the LSM (lame stream media, or left stream media – take your pick). The media in general do not report the news, but rather their own views, and sometimes their own facts (which have no relationship to reality). What is mind-boggling about the attitude of the Leftist media is that they are supporting a totalitarian political ideology that would destroy the Leftists and their institutions (homosexuality, feminism, bikinis, and so forth) after having finished with the Jews.
I have sometimes commented that the WashCompost and the NYT having been attempting an excellent imitation of Der Sturmer: They are anti-capitalist, anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-Second Amendment, anti-religious and anti-Christian.
Simple answer Barry. If you criticize Israel and the Jews a few conservative and libertarian bloggers will write bad stuff about you. If you do the same thing with Muslims they may just saw off your head (on television) The media folks figured this out long ago.
Islam punishes apostasy more than any other religion.Obama won’t ask his Muslim friends to speak out for religious freedom but Christians are being removed from a third of the world.Courage would have been if Obama in Cairo had spoken out against violence to Muslims who convert.Who will speak for the Arab who accepts Christ? Not us, we are even letting our Iraqi interpreters be exterminated.
Bollos – Were you a member of the Brown Shirts or the Black Shirts? Truly hateful, and Mr. Rubin, I recommend that you remove Bollos’ comments from this site at your first opportunity.
Bollos’ comment has been removed, and he’s been given a time out.
Thank you Ed!!
Let’s wake up, we are only talking to ourselves, the anti Israel crowd has never listened to us. If they had we wouldn’t be in this situation.
As long as Israel does not challenge the biased racist reports that serve as middle east news there will be no changing the perceptions.
Pass a law against hate speech and incitement and enforce it starting with haaretz. Deport reporters who break the law.
Hate speech in not free speech and with the Jewish history and present what it is, no one has more right to enforce such a law.
Here’s the narrative in a nutshell:
Jewish civilians blown up in a terror assault: “the price of peace” “regrettable cycle of violence”
Arab feels oppressed: a crime against humanity.
You shouldn’t delete the guy.
It should just be pointed out that the Muslims have no right to retain control over Jewish and Christian lands that Muslims took by naked force.
It’s not their land, it’s our land.
And no amount of lying by anti-Zionist loons is going to change the facts.
Thank you Barry. You are sooo right on the money!
Start reading Arutz Sheva then you tell me. The Israeli Left is out in front with Israel baiting.
Secondly all the charges against Israel are the same ones used to attack the West: any stick to beat a dog.
During WWI and WWII the locals were on the losing side, the Jews the winning and they fought in the area. In Europe, Germans were chased out of Czecho, Poland and everywhere else they had caused trouble. You don’t have to coddle killers, though Israel has chosen to do so.
Israel’s problem is its ideology, Marxist based which is hostile to Israel and the West. Again, read the press then you tell me.
“Strictly speaking, it is incorrect to call an ancient Israelite a ‘Jew’ or to call a contemporary Jew an ‘Israelite’ or a ‘Hebrew.’” First Sentence of the First Chapter (entitled “Identity Crisis”) of the 1980 “Jewish Almanac.” Read it for yourself at http://www.missiontoisrael.org/id-crisis-pics.php. The Jewish Almanac’s confession that today’s Jews are not genetic Israelites is also confirmed in all four major Jewish Encyclopedias.
Your slightly veiled racist attack on the Jewish People is objectively wrong. There have been numerous genetic tests of Cohanim (Jewish Priests) which show decisively that modern day Cohanim are all descended from a common ancestor that lived about 3300 years ago, exactly the time of Aaron, the brother of Moshe.
Excuse, all’s I did was share a quote from the 1980 Jewish Almanac. If you have a beef its with the Jews who wrote it and all of their four major encyclopedias.
There were lots of common ancestors contemporary with Aaron. How do you know it was Aaron; did someone discover his bones and dna him?
In the US, the Left has a home. It is the Democrat Party. The party’s veneer is a bunch of photogenic people who love Israel (AKA Elected Officials), as they do all people of all faiths and families and women and children and puppies and polar bears and unicorns and rainbows and anything that makes one smile, but the academic over educated wing of the party, which controls policy in the government, education, and the media is basically pro Jihad and hates Israel. This should be apparent to anyone who observes America with a critical eye.
The main source of support for the Israel in the US comes from the GOP and the various Right Wing blogs and pundits. This also should be apparent to anyone with a critical eye.
What baffles me is that despite being generally well educated and politically aware, most US Jews seem oblivious to the above and continue to reflexively vote Democrat. It seems, when talking to my Jewish friends, they believe and behave as if the opposite is true. Why is this? What will it take to get them to see reality as it is?
Thanks to this wealth of great knowledge that I gleam from this #1 website…PJM…and all you that love the Nation of Israel””And to the Jewish people that put up with me…I surely do not want to offend any of you with my zeal for my Savior, The lord Jesus Christ….And please do not write me off as a trawler, trying to convert Jewish to Christ….friends I Heard a Rabbi from NYC speaking on how this great nation was founded and all the Great people that loved G-d, and he was speaking from a Jewish Temple ,I think,…and he spoke so well about this being a nation that was founded on the G-g of the Bible., and there is only one G-d…None other….we see Him being portrayed as a man, in Isaiah chapter 9, and also in Isaiah 53, as the suffering and dying Man that died to redeem mankind…Please read both chapters, and tell me that I am wrong…When I hear a good Jewish Teacher speaking the words that this Rabbi spoke, it tells me that we are not all as doomed as msm tells us that we are…And as for me and my family, we will serve the YHWH that the scriptures speak of…Jewish friends we will not see this Satan from Iran sending Nuclear Weapons into Israel….will not happen,, Have faith in His promises, G-d swore by Himself, because there was none Greater to swear by…That He has a lot of plans for Israel in these latter days, and that Israel would be a stumbling stone to many nations….So we can trust those words of promise….May He bless us all….Jimi Belton
http://cheapflights.yourinformationhighway.com
I’ve recently started a web site, the information you provide on this site has helped me tremendously. Thanks for all of your time & work.