April 19, 2001
BIAS AND FEAR TILTING COVERAGE OF ISRAEL
By Norman Solomon
www.fair.org/media-beat/
A couple of weeks ago, the New York Times finally printed the name of
a 12-year-old organization called Rabbis for Human Rights. But the
mention had to be bought -- in a full-page ad expressing support for
actions by the group, which is "the only Israeli rabbinic association
that includes Orthodox, Reform, Reconstructionist and Conservative
rabbis."
Days before the advertisement appeared on April 8, the executive
director of Rabbis for Human Rights had been arrested while
participating in nonviolent civil disobedience against Israeli
demolition of houses. "Palestinian homes are being systematically
bulldozed all over the West Bank," said a bulletin from Rabbi Arthur
Waskow, director of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia. "In this case,
there isn't any pretense of 'security interests' or 'military
targets.' The houses destroyed yesterday and today belong to ordinary
Palestinian citizens whose only crime is the wish to have a roof over
their heads."
Groups like Rabbis for Human Rights, and Jewish American activists
like Rabbi Waskow who vocally oppose Israeli policies, get short
shrift in U.S. news outlets. Meanwhile, the reporting on the
Israeli-Palestinian cycle of violence is badly skewed by an endless
cycle of media bias.
Searching the Nexis database of U.S. media coverage during the first
100 days of this year, I found several dozen stories using the phrases
"Israeli retaliation" or "Israel retaliated." During the same period,
how many stories used the phrases "Palestinian retaliation" or
"Palestinians retaliated"? One.
Both sides of the conflict, of course, describe their violence as
retaliatory. But only one side routinely benefits from having its
violent moves depicted that way by major American media. The huge
disparity in the media frame is a measure of the overall slant of news
coverage.
To help maintain pressure for a favorable media tilt, supporters of
Israel have a not-so-secret weapon, brandished most effectively as a
preemptive threat -- the charge of anti-Semitism. Any Americans who
speak out against Israel's extreme disregard for human rights are
liable to be in the line of fire.
Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winner, is a
reminder that victims of tyranny are capable of later aligning
themselves with perpetrators of enormous cruelty. Last month, Wiesel
delivered a speech to a national conference of the American Israel
Public Affairs Committee, one of Washington's most powerful lobbying
groups. Wiesel declared that anyone "who uses their Jewishness as a
context to attack or condemn Israel -- that's something I'm against."
And he denounced criticisms of Israel as "anti-Semitism in Jewish
leftist circles."
Such salvos are warning shots that Joseph McCarthy would have
understood. To quash debate, just smear, smear, smear.
Instead of trying to refute critiques of Israeli policies, it's much
easier to equate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism -- a timeworn
way of preventing or short-circuiting real debate on the merits of the
issues. It is absurd and dangerous to claim that bigotry is at the
root of calls for adherence to basic standards of human rights. But
the ongoing threat of the "anti-Semitic" label helps to prevent U.S.
media coverage from getting out of hand.
Last year, I had an interesting experience with one of Florida's daily
papers, the Palm Beach Post. A reader's letter, published in early
June, charged that a column I'd written "had an anti-Semitic
undertone" because it criticized media spin for Israel. Eleven weeks
later, on Aug. 25, the newspaper printed a second letter from the
same reader, objecting to a column I wrote about Sen. Joseph
Lieberman. This time the letter was more emphatic and sweeping, though
less specific: "I have noticed in some of his previous columns, he is
apt to express anti-Semitic views."
The Palm Beach Post printed my weekly syndicated column 30 times
during 2000 -- for the last time on Aug. 19, six days before
publication of the second letter accusing me of being "anti-Semitic."
After that letter came off the press, my column never again appeared
in the Palm Beach Post. When I inquired, the newspaper's opinion-page
editor told me: "There was no connection."
Whatever the case may be, there's no doubt that journalists generally
understand critical words about Israel to be hazardous to careers.
"Rarely since the Second World War has a people been so vilified as
the Palestinians," comments Robert Fisk, a longtime foreign
correspondent for the London-based daily Independent. "And rarely has
a people been so frequently excused and placated as the Israelis."
Fisk is asking his colleagues to search their consciences: "Our
gutlessness, our refusal to tell the truth, our fear of being
slandered as 'anti-Semites' -- the most loathsome of libels against
any journalist -- means that we are aiding and abetting terrible deeds
in the Middle East."
Anti-Semitism is a reality in the world. Like all forms of religious
and racial bigotry, it should be unequivocally opposed. The
effectiveness of such opposition is undermined by those who cry wolf,
using charges of anti-Semitism as a weapon in a propaganda arsenal to
defend Israel's indefensible crimes against Palestinian people.
