Respect your readers

Letters

Editor: Your readers will be interested to know that many complaints were made about John Pilger's film Palestine is Still the Issue when it first was broadcast on British television. There also were many messages of appreciation. The regulatory body for British television, the Independent Television Commission (ITC), investigated the complaints that were made. After investigation, the ITC rejected the complaints, concluding that Pilger "provided persuasive evidence of the care and thoroughness with which it [the film] was researched."

It would have been a service to your readers for your reporter to have investigated this decision, before asking a far, far less credible partisan of the Israel Action Committee for her judgment on the quality of the documentary.

As the editorial voice of the JWB has commented before, pro-Israeli government spokespeople increasingly lack credibility in the wider public. Your reporter reconfirms this by commenting that Ariel Sharon's official spokesperson, whom Pilger interviews at length in his documentary, appears "idiotic."

However, there were other Jewish Israelis who also were interviewed at length in the documentary, people who manifested dignity, honesty, moral integrity and therefore conveyed credibility. Why did your reporter decide not to mention this? There was the father whose young daughter was murdered by a suicide bomber. He shares his pain and his intelligence, explaining why he considers that the Israeli occupation contributes to suicide bombings. There was the religious soldier who explains why he refuses to serve in the occupation and how the canard of anti-Semitism is used manipulatively by defenders of Israeli state policies. There was the renowned historian of the 1948 events who calls for economic sanctions against Israel until it ends its occupation.

Why treat your readers as children who need to be protected from the ideas and feelings of Jewish Israelis who challenge their government's policies?

I write, not because I expect great accuracy in your reporting of activities organized by the Canada-Palestine Support Network (CanPalNet), but because I thought you just might consider treating Jewish Israelis with a little more honesty and your readers with greater respect. The latter might wish to see Palestine is Still the Issue for themselves, quite separate from CanPalNet, so they could know and think about what wasn't reported in your paper.

Mordecai Briemberg
Vancouver

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