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July 1, 2005
Getting the story all wrong
Newspaper columnist says it's a question of ignorance, fear and
bias.
MATT BELLAN JEWISH POST AND NEWS
In September 2000, the Boston Globe ran a front-page picture
of an Israeli policeman in Jerusalem, standing beside a young man
with blood streaming down his face. The caption said, "An Israeli
policeman yesterday and a Palestinian injured on the second day
of clashes at a contested Jerusalem site."
The New York Times ran the same picture with a caption saying
"An Israeli policeman and a Palestinian on the Temple Mount."
In fact, the injured young man was Tuvia Grossman, a young American
Jew then studying at a Jerusalem yeshivah – and the incident
wasn't at the Temple Mount. A gas station in the background gave
that away.
A group of Arabs had dragged Grossman and some schoolmates from
a taxi they hired to take them to the Western Wall for prayers;
Grossman miraculously escaped and found protection from an Israeli
policeman.
How did two of the biggest dailies in the United States get that
story so wrong?
Jeff Jacoby, an op-ed columnist for the Boston Globe, offered
answers to those and other questions about errors in the international
media's Middle East coverage for several hundred people at Winnipeg's
Shaarey Zedek Synagogue June 8.
"I imagine if you're like me, you open the newspaper every
day or turn on the TV, wondering if there's going to be news about
Israel or the Middle East," he told the crowd at his lecture,
which the Asper Foundation Lecture Series presented with the Winnipeg
Zionist Initiative. "Very often, you're chagrined or frustrated
or outraged by the way Israel is portrayed."
Holding up news photos as examples of major media errors in reporting
about Israel in the past few years, the law school graduate and
political commentator provided several explanations for the inaccuracy.
First, reporters assigned to cover the Middle East and their editors
often have similar assumptions about the Arab-Israeli conflict.
"Why was it taken for granted everywhere that it was obvious
what that picture had to be about?" Jacoby said of the picture
of the bloodied Grossman, described in the media as a Palestinian.
"Editors have a default position – Israeli violence and
brutality against Arab victims."
Jacoby pointed out that the average person would never dream of
going to a novice dentist for a root canal or an inexperienced mechanic
for a major car repair. But editors frequently assign correspondents
to the Middle East with relatively little background knowledge about
the history of the conflict, or the tools to get relevant information.
Last February, for example, CNN covered the suicide bombing of a
Tel-Aviv nightclub, the first major terrorist attack since Palestinian
Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon signed a ceasefire agreement.
CNN reported that Abbas came out "very strongly" against
the attack and quoted him as saying that, "We will not hesitate
for a minute in capturing those responsible and bringing them to
justice."
Palestinian dailies – all under tight PA control, also ran
the story of the bombing prominently. But their front-page coverage
featured a picture of the bomber, described in Arabic as the "executor
of the Tel-Aviv operation – the shaheed [martyr]."
"To say someone is a shaheed is to say you admire what he did,"
Jacoby said. "That was the message going to the Palestinian
population and the Arab world."
The media also fail to report the big picture, said Jacoby. The
major cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict isn't Israeli settlements
or occupation – Arabs waged violence against Israel before
the Six Day War and the settlements. The real cause is Arab rejection
of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.
Another problem is editors professing to be scrupulously objective,
and morally equating Palestinian terrorists and Israeli victims.
As an example, Jacoby held up an April 2002 Newsweek cover
with two pictures. The first was of a young Israeli woman, victim
of a suicide bombing at a Jerusalem market. The second was of the
young Palestinian woman who murdered her.
"The title says, 'Suicide mission: a human bomb and her victim,'
" Jacoby observed. "One was the guilty killer, the other,
the innocent sacrifice. But when you see this layout, is there any
indication who is bad and who is innocent?"
The implicit suggestion of this layout, and a similar one inside
the magazine, is that you're supposed to "suspend judgment,"
said Jacoby.
"That also reflects the world media's habit of depicting Palestinian
terrorism as a 'tit-for-tat' response to Israeli round-ups or assassinations
of terrorists and deploring, equally, both kinds of violence. That's
like comparing a woman pushed in front of a bus to a woman pulled
from in front of a bus."
The most important thing concerned Jews can do in response to this
coverage, said Jacoby, is to be fully aware of what's going on in
the Middle East.
"Get information so you're not tongue-tied when you're at an
event," he said, "and a Palestinian makes outrageous claims
against Israel."
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