Media Bias & Misinformation

The Greatest Story Never Told

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendman
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Stephen Lendman
September 13, 2007

No issue is more sensitive in the US than daring to criticize Israel.
It's the metaphorical "third rail" in American politics, academia and
the major media. Anyone daring to touch it pays dearly as the few who
tried learned. Those in elected office face an onslaught of attacks and
efforts to replace them with more supportive officials. Former five
term Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney felt its sting twice in 2002 and
2006. So did 10 term Congressman Paul Findley (a fierce and courageous
Israeli critic) in 1982 and three term Senator Charles Percy in 1984
whom AIPAC targeted merely for appearing to support anti-Israeli
policy.

DePaul University Professor Norman Finkelstein has long been a target
as well for his courageous writing and outspokenness. Depaul formally
denied him tenure June 8 even though his students call him "truly
outstanding and among the most impressive" of all university political
science professors. It's why his Department of Political Science
endorsed his tenure bid stating his academic record "exceeds our
department's stated standards for scholarly production (and) department
and outside experts we consulted recognize the intellectual merits of
his work."

It didn't help, and on August 26 got worse. The university acknowledged
"Professor Finkelstein is a prolific scholar and an outstanding
teacher." Yet it issued a brief statement canceling his classes and
placing him on administrative leave "with full pay and benefits for the
2007-8 academic year (that) relieves professors from their teaching
responsibilities." For now, Finkelstein's long struggle with the
university ended the first day of classes, September 5. Both sides
agreed to a settlement, and a planned day of protests was curtailed.
But as Chicago Tribune writer Ron Grossman put it in his September 6
column headlined "Finkelstein deal ends DePaul tiff....the underlying
struggle between supporters of Israel and champions (like Finkelstein)
of the Palestinians continues, not just at the North Side campus but
across the academic world."

That struggle is nowhere in sight in the dominant media that includes
major print publications, commercial radio, television and so-called
Public Broadcasting and National Public Radio both of which long ago
abandoned the public trust in service to their corporate and government
paymasters.

In all parts of the major media, no Israeli criticism is tolerated on-
air or in print, and any reporter, news anchor, pundit or on-air guest
forgetting the (unwritten) rules, won't get a second chance. Support
for Israel is ironclad, absolute, and uncompromising on everything
including its worst crimes of war and against humanity. Open debate is
stifled, and anyone daring to dissent or demur is pilloried, ridiculed,
called anti-semetic, even threatened, ostracized, and finally ignored.
In his seminal work on Middle East affairs, "Fateful Triangle," Noam
Chomsky put it this way: "....Israel has been granted a unique immunity
from criticism in mainstream journalism and scholarship...."

Call it the myth of the free press in a nation claiming to have the
freest of all. It's pure fantasy now and in an earlier era, journalist
A.J Liebling said it was only for "those who own(ed) one." Today,
they're giants operating the way Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky
explained in their classic book on the media titled "Manufacturing
Consent." The authors developed their "propaganda model" to show all
news and information passes through a set of "filters." "Raw material"
goes through them, unacceptable parts are suppressed, and "only the
cleansed residue fit to print (and broadcast on-air)" reaches the
public. The New York Times calls it "All The News That's Fit to Print."
By its standard, it means sanitized news only leaving out the most
important parts and what readers want most - the full truth and nothing
else.

The same goes for the rest of the dominant media that serve as
collective national thought control police gatekeepers "filtering"
everything we read, see and hear. They manipulate our minds and
beliefs, program our thoughts, and effectively destroy the free
marketplace of ideas essential to a healthy democracy. In America,
that's nowhere in sight.

The problem is most acute in reporting on Israel. Criticism of the
Jewish state is stifled in an effort to portray it as a model
democracy, the only one in the region, and surrounded by hostile
Palestinians, other Arab/Muslim extremists and whoever else Israel
cites as a threat, real or contrived. The truth is quite opposite but
absent from corporate-controlled media spaces.

How "The Newspaper of Record" Reports on Israel
This article focuses mainly on the media's lead and most influential
voice, The New York Times. It's been around since 1851 when it quietly
debuted saying "....we intend to (publish) every morning (except
Sundays) for an indefinite number of years to come." Today, it's the
pillar of the corporate media and main instrument of fake news making
it the closest thing in the country to an official ministry of
information and propaganda. But here's the Times 1997 Proxy Statement
quote media critic Edward Herman used in his April, 1998 Z Magazine
article titled "All The News Fit to Print (Part I)." Its management
then (and now) claimed The Times to be "an independent newspaper,
entirely fearless, free of ulterior influence and unselfishly devoted
to the public welfare." It leaves one breathless and demands an earlier
used quote - "phew."

No media source anywhere has more clout than the Times, none
manipulates the public mind more effectively, and where it goes, others
follow. It's most visible supporting all things corporate, foreign wars
of aggression, and everything favoring Israel it views one way. That's
the focus below - how the New York Times plays the lead cheerleading
role for Israel even when its actions are unjustifiable, unconscionable
and criminal.

Freelance journalist Alison Weir founded "If Americans Knew" as an
"independent research and information-dissemination institute (to
provide) every American (what he or she) needs to know about
Israel/Palestine." That includes "inform(ing) and educat(ing) the
American public on issues of major significance that are unreported,
underreported, or misreported in the American media." Below is an
account of her in-depth study of how the New York Times betrays its
readers by distorting its coverage on Israel.

It was in her April 24, 2005 article called "New York Times Distortion
Up Close and Personal." It drew on the findings from her 23-page
report, and 40 pages of supportive data, titled "Off the Charts -
Accuracy in Reporting of Israel/Palestine (by) The New York Times." To
be as objective as possible, the study "count(ed) the deaths reported
on both sides of the (Israeli-Palestinian) conflict, and then compare
(d) these to the actual number....that had occurred." The findings
showed a "startling disparity....depending on the ethnicity of the
victim(s)."

The study covered two periods. The first was from the September 29,
2000 beginning of the Al-Aqsa Mosque (or second) Intifada (ignited by
Ariel Sharon's provocative visit to the Temple Mount Al-Aqsa Mosque
site) through September 28, 2001. The second ran from January 1, 2004
through December 31, 2004. Deaths counted were only those resulting
from Israeli - Palestinian confrontations.

The first study showed the New York Times reported 2.8 times the number
of Israeli deaths to Palestinian ones when, in fact, three times more
Palestinians were killed than Israelis. In the second one, the ratio
increased to 3.6 adding further distortion to the coverage. Reporting
children's deaths was even more skewed, coming in at a ratio of 6.8 for
Israeli children compared to Palestinian ones and then at 7.3 in the
later study. The latter ratio is particularly startling since 22 times
more Palestinian children were killed, in fact, than Israelis in 2004
according to B'Tselem - the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights
in the Occupied Terroritories. The Times simply ignored them.

In all its reporting in both periods, the Times distorted the facts
egregiously. It highlighted Israeli deaths by headlining and repeating
them. In contrast, there was silence on most Palestinian ones. The
impression given was that more Jews died than Arabs or at times the
numbers were equal on both sides. Most often, they weren't even close.

It was startling to learn that Israeli and other human rights groups
documented 82 Palestinian children killed at the Intifada's outset
(most by "gunfire to the head" indicating deliberate targeting) before
a single Israeli child died. The Times willfully ignored this in its
coverage the same way it obsessed last summer over Hamas' capture of a
single Israeli soldier while ignoring around 12,000 Palestinian men,
women and children political detainees held by Israelis illegally. For
the Times, they're non-persons, but everyone in Israel and many outside
it know that soldier's name and still do.

Weir calls this coverage a "highly disturbing pattern of bias." She
presented her findings ("complete with charts, spread-sheets, clear
sourcing, and extensive additional documentation") to the Times' Public
Editor, Daniel Okrent, in a face-to-face meeting, but came away
disappointed. It was because of a 1762-word column Okrent wrote in
response. It ignored or misrepresented the facts, was unconcerned that
most Times reporters covering Israel/Palestine are Jewish, all live
inside Israel, and the paper claimed it's impossible finding
"sufficient numbers of high quality journalists of Muslim or Arab
heritage to work on this issue." It is when you don't look.

Yet, it's worth noting what Weir believes was a "personal confession"
in a single line. Okrent may have slipped up saying: "I don't think any
of us (at the Times) can be objective about our own claimed
objectivity." Confession or not, it led to no change in the Times'
reporting.

Weir updated her report to include Palestinian children's deaths in
2004 and 2005 from documented information on the "Remember These
Children" web site. It uses Israeli and other human rights
organizations' sources with these findings through June, 2007:

-- 118 Israeli children under 18 years years of age killed compared to
973 Palestinian youths, most shot in the head or chest indicating
deliberate targeting by Israeli soldiers. This information never
appears in Times' reports.

Instead, The Times "marginalizes Palestinian women and Palestinian
rights" according to a November 17, 2006 Electronic Intifada (EI)
report. Its authors (Patrick O'Connor and Rachel Roberts) state: "The
New York Times pays little attention to human rights in
Israel/Palestine, downplays....violence against Palestinian women and
generally silences (their) voices."

Since the second Intifada began, B'Tselem, Amnesty International (AI)
and Human Rights Watch (HRW) published 76 reports documenting Israeli
abuses of Palestinian rights and four others on Palestinian violations
against Israelis or other Palestinians. The Times, however, wrote only
four articles on them all - two on Israeli abuses and two others on
what Palestinians did suggesting both sides shared equal guilt.

Three other Times articles on the conflict focused on a Human Rights
Watch report criticizing Palestinian suicide bombings, another HRW one
on Israeli actions in Jenin in 2002, and a B'Tselem report on the
Israeli Defense Forces' (IDF) exoneration of soldiers for killing a
Palestinian child. The Times also published one article criticizing
Israel's 2006 war on Lebanon and one other one critical of Hezbollah
during that conflict. It's the Times' idea of fairness and balance,
that distorts facts, ignores truth, and in every instance betrays its
readers.

EI's writers refer to thousands of New York Times articles on
Israel/Palestine since the second Intifada began September 29, 2000.
Yet in them all, it "quoted, cited or paraphrased just 4187 words....
from human rights organizations in 62 articles, snippets (only)
averaging just 69 words per article." In the same articles, far more
space was given to Israeli government denials even when clear evidence
proved them false.

Other research shows The New York Times op ed page marginalizes
Palestinian voices and completely shuts out its women who are portrayed
as passive, docile and at the mercy of men. Readers aren't told they
"balance their dual commitment to the national (and feminist) struggle
(s)" by courageously leading the fight against domestic and Israeli
violence in the Occupied Territories. The Times also ignores Amnesty
International's emphasis on the occupation's harmful effects on women
in detention centers and from "military checkpoints, blockades and
curfews" even though they cause sick and pregnant women to die for lack
of aid.

It's part of the same pattern of selective disclosure and distortion so
readers don't know what's happening and are led to believe victims are
the victimizers. Facts are ignored, international law is unmentioned
and reporting "contributes to the dangerous pattern of Western
disparagement of Muslim society," made easy post-9/11.

EI sums up its article stating "If the Times cared about human rights
in Israel/Palestine, (balanced reporting, and) valued independent third
party perspectives, (it) would have published more than 6256 (total)
words....of major human rights organizations (reports) in its thousands
of articles" for the past seven years. Instead, the impression given is
Israeli crimes are marginal, sporadic, inconsequential, acts of self-
defense and not crimes at all. This type reporting sets the (low)
standard for the rest of the dominant media and highlights why few
Americans question their government's full and unconditional support
for Israeli policy.

The Times willfully ignores the following type information B'Tselem
posts and updates on its website (www.btselem.org. From September 29,
2000 through August 31, 2007, it documented 4274 Palestinians killed by
Israeli security forces or civilians including 857 children. That
compares to 1024 Israelis killed by Palestinians including 119
children.

Throughout this period, The Times low-keyed Israeli violence in its
coverage but featured dozens of articles on Palestinian suicide
bombings and other acts of self-defense it portrays as "terrorism"
against innocent Israelis. Left out is what B'Tselem, Palestinian
Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), AI, HRW, ICRC and other human rights
organizations report:

-- willful violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention's protections of
civilians in times of war and under occupation by a foreign power.

-- excessive use of force and abuse;

-- policy of collective punishment and economic strangulation;

-- growing numbers of expanding illegal settlements;

-- home demolitions;

-- random IDF invasions, air and ground attacks;

-- many dozens of extrajudicial assassinations;

-- administrative detentions without charge and routine use of torture
of thousands of Palestinians including young children treated like
adults;

-- land expropriation;

-- crop destruction;

-- policies of closure, separation, checkpoints, ghettoization and
curfews;

-- denial of the most basic human rights and civil liberties; and

-- an overall Kafkaesque "matrix of control" designed to extinguish
Palestinians' will to resist.

The Times willful distortion and indifference to Palestinian suffering
highlights its coverage. Like others in the dominant media, it displays
no sense of fairness, accuracy or balance in portraying Palestinians as
militants, gunmen and terrorists - never as oppressed human beings
under occupation struggling for freedom in their own land. In sharp
contrast, Israelis are seen as surrounded, beleaguered, and innocent
victims acting in self-defense. It's sheer fantasy, the facts on the
ground prove it, but Times readers aren't given them.

They're also not told how Israel discriminates against Palestinian Arab
Israeli citizens. Patrick O'Connor explained in his March 30, 2006
Electronic Intifada article titled "The New York Times Covers Up
Discrimination against Palestinian Citizens of Israel." He noted the
rise to prominence of Israeli Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of
Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman and his extremist Yisrael Beiteinu
party. It advocates "transferring a number of Palestinian towns in
Israel to Palestinian Authority (PA) control," thereby revoking the
legalized status of hundreds of thousands of its own citizens. They're
already second class ones and are treated unequally under Israel's
Basic Law that affords rights and benefits to Jews only.

O'Connor notes the Times plays "a leading role collaborat(ing) with
this strategy." It characterizes all Palestinians as militants, gunmen
and terrorists while suppressing their "experiences under....occupation
(victimized by) Israeli state terrorism, and (the) systemic Israeli
discrimination against Palestinian (citizens) living in Israel...."

An instance of Times distortion was from a March 21, 2006 article by
Dina Kraft. In it, Israel dismissively refers to "Israeli Arabs" and so
does Kraft. They're not called Palestinian Israeli citizens "to divide
and rule, and to cover up the familial, historical and cultural
relationship between Palestinians" inside Israel to those in the
Territories and diaspora. The Times goes along without challenge, never
questioning if a self-declared Jewish state can be democratic without
ensuring equal rights to its non-Jewish minority. Ignored as well is
Yisrael Beiteinu's outlandish proposal to revoke citizenship rights for
Arabs inside Israel because they're not Jews.

O'Connor stresses how the Times, Kraft and the major US media
collaboratively perpetuate the myth that Israel is "a liberal,
democratic state inexplicably beset by Arab/Muslim terrorism." In so
doing, they suppress the historical record that Israel ethnically
cleansed 800,000 Palestinians, killed many thousands of others, and
destroyed 531 villages and 11 urban neighborhoods in cities like Tel-
Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem in its 1948 "War of Independence." They also
deny that Palestinians everywhere have close historical, family and
cultural ties, yet Israel discriminates against them all unfairly.

In her report, Weir noted what all people of conscience believe: that
"readers of The New York Times (and all Americans) are entitled to full
and accurate reporting on all issues, including the topic of
Israel/Palestine." In her study period, the Times covered it in "well
over 1000 stories," so it's deeply troubling how much critical
information was omitted.

A 9/11/07 Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) Action Alert provides
more evidence of NYT cover-up and distortion. It's titled "Whose Human
Rights Matter? NYT on Hezbollah and Israeli attacks on civilians." FAIR
cites two recently released Human Rights Watch (HRW)investigations of
Israel's war against Lebanon in which The New York Times highlighted
"unlawful attacks against Israel" while giving short shrift to
"unlawful attacks committed by Israel." This is de rigueur at The Times
so the FAIR report is no surprise.

It noted the NYT ran its own 800 word story supportive of Israel on
8/31/07 titled "Rights Group Accuses Hezbollah of Indiscriminate
Attacks on Civilians in Israel War" accompanied by a photo of "Israeli
civilians at risk from Hezbollah rockets." In sharp contrast, it
settled for a 139 word AP report on Israeli unlawful attacks under its
own headline titled "Israel Criticized Over Lebanon Deaths" with no
photo. Even worse, The Times report on Israeli infractions omitted key
information about the claim that Hezbollah used Lebanese people as
human shields. HRW found no supportive evidence, and its executive
director, Kenneth Roth, said the Israeli government's assertion was
false.

The Times also failed to reflect the dramatic disparity in civilian
deaths on each side. HRW estimated Israel killed about 900 Lebanese
civilians out of a total 1200 death toll in the country while Hezbollah
killed 43 Israeli civilians plus about 80 IDF personnel. FAIR's
conclusion: The Times values Israeli lives far more than Lebanese ones.
No surprise.

FAIR raised an additional point as well from its 12/6/06 Action Alert.
It refuted a Times report as false that Israeli attacks on civilians
were legitimate "since Hezbollah fired from civilian areas, itself a
war crime, which made those areas legitimate targets." Again, standard
practice at The Times that values fake news above truth, accuracy,
fairness and balance.

Weir hoped a public airing of her findings on The Times would lead to
better reporting at the "paper of record." It never did and just got
worse following Hamas' dramatic democratic January, 2006 electoral
victory. Afterwards, all outside aid was cut off, Hamas was
marginalized and politically isolated, and Israeli repression got
stepped up in an effort to crush the fledging government by making the
Territories "scream."

It came to a head June 14 following weeks of US-Israeli orchestrated
violence. Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas declared a
"state of emergency" and illegally dismissed Hamas prime minister
Ismail Haniyeh and his national unity government. He appointed his own
US-Israeli vetted replacements days later with The New York Times in
the lead supporting the new quisling coup d'etat government. Noted
journalist and documentary filmmaker John Pilger explains the first
casualty of war is good journalism. It's as true for reporting on
Israel, especially on the pages of "the newspaper of record" that sets
the low standard others then follow.

That standard excludes discussion of the powerful Israeli lobby with
AIPAC just one part of it. Noted figures like John Mearsheimer of the
University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of the Harvard Kennedy School of
Government are persona non grata for their heroic work documenting its
powerful influence on US policy toward Israel and the Middle East.
Noted scholar and activist James Petras makes the same compelling case
in his revealing 2006 must-read book titled "The Power of Israel in the
United States." The record of "the newspaper of record" includes none
of their findings and conclusions proving when it comes to truth in
reporting, it's absent from its pages. It's especially pronounced in
its coverage of Israel/Palestine.

More Evidence of Corporate Media Distortion on Israel-Palestine
When it comes to shoddy reporting, most notably on Israel/Palestine,
there's plenty of blame to go around. It's found on major US broadcast
and cable channels, most all corporate-owned publications here and
abroad, the BBC, CBC, Deutche Welle, other European broadcasters, and
what passes for so-called public radio and broadcasting in the US. An
exception is Pacifica Radio, the original and only real public radio in
the US. Its provides excellent coverage, especially on KPFA's daily
Flashpoints Radio with the best of it anywhere on-air from its co-
hosts, contributors and top quality guests.

The opposite is true for so-called National Public Radio's (NPR), but
its public broadcast (PBS)counterpart shares equal guilt. Many people
naively turn to NPR as an acceptable alternative to corporate media
disinformation without realizing it's as corrupted by capital interests
and big government as all the others. Its president, Kevin Klose, is
the former head of US propaganda that includes Voice of America (VOA),
Radio Liberty, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Worldnet Television
and the anti-Castro Radio/TV Marti. He's ideal for the same role at
National Public Radio, and it's why he got the job.

NPR never met a US war of aggression it didn't love, and it's
especially attentive to the interests of its corporate paymasters like
McDonald's (with $225 million of it), Allstate, Merck, Archer Daniels
Midland, and the worst of all worker rights' abusers, Wal-Mart, that
NPR welcomes anyway. In its space, there never is heard a discouraging
word on any of these or most other major US corporate giants.

Then, there's the issue of fair and balanced reporting on
Israel/Palestine that's absent from NPR programs all the time. The
media watchdog group FAIR exposed it in its study of NPR's coverage of
Israeli/Palestinian violence in the first six months of 2001. Over
virtually any period, Palestinian deaths way outnumber Israeli ones.
Yet NPR in the period studied reported 62 Israeli deaths compared to 51
Palestinian ones at a time 77 Israelis and 148 Palestinians were
killed. It meant "there was an 81% likelihood an Israeli death would be
reported on NPR, but only a 34% likelihood" a Palestinian one would be.

The findings were similar each way FAIR examined the data. They showed
one-sided pro-Israel reporting the way it is throughout the dominant
media. The result (then and now) is NPR betrays the public trust. It
suppresses real news in favor of the fake kind it prefers. It violates
its claim to be "an internationally acclaimed producer of noncommercial
news, talk and entertainment programming" and its mission statement
pledge "to create a more informed public - one challenged and
invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciations of events,
ideas and cultures (through) programming that meets the highest
standards of public service in journalism and cultural expression."
It's pure nonsense. On all counts, NPR fails badly.

The Electronic Intifada web site showed how badly. It was in a February
19, 2002 article titled "Special Report: NPR's Linda Gradstein (its
Israel correspondent) Takes Cash Payments from Pro-Israel Groups." Ali
Abunimah and Nigel Parry (its co-founders) discovered Gradstein
violated professional journalistic and NPR ethics and policy by
accepting cash honoraria from pro-Israeli organizations in the past and
currently to the date of the article.

Gradstein is notorious for her pro-Israeli bias and being paid for it
makes it worse. Hillel is one of her paymasters, and in one instance
openly acknowledged it considered Gradstein an Israeli propagandist.
Other Israeli groups apparently do as well as Gradstein openly violated
NPR's stated (but uninforced) policy not to accept these fees. Instead,
she regularly takes them and likely still does.

The EI writers concluded "for some reason or other, Gradstein is
effectively exempt from NPR's own regulations. These revelations only
broaden existing concerns about the integrity of NPR's Middle East
reporting and honesty of Linda Gradstein....the sad truth is that Linda
Gradstein rarely meets (the minimum) standard(s)" of journalistic
ethics and integrity. This is common practice at NPR and at the rest of
the major media as well.

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA)
The dominant US media have loads of firepower and freely unleash it
supporting Israel. They need no backup help but get it anyway from
CAMERA, a powerful Boston-based pro-Israeli media lobby group. The
organization was founded by Charles Jacobs in 1982 and claims to be
"non-partisan....regard(ing)....American or Israeli political issues
(and takes no position) regard(ing)....ultimate solutions to the Arab-
Israeli conflict." It calls itself "a media-monitoring, research and
membership organization devoted to promoting accurate and balanced
coverage of Israel and the Middle East."

It claims "Inaccurate and distorted accounts of events in Israel and
the Middle East are....found everywhere from college radio stations to
network television, from community newspapers to national magazines (to
the) Internet." They're also in "fashion magazines, architectural
publications, encyclopedias....travel guides, and even dictionaries."
They're "inaccurate (and) skewed (and) may fuel anti-Israel and anti-
Jewish prejudice."

CAMERA's on guard to fight back with plenty of dues-paying members to
do it - 55,000 well-heeled ones plus "thousands of active letter
writers." They monitor all media and its journalists everywhere for one
purpose - to resolutely support Israel and combat all criticism it
calls "anti-Israel bias." CAMERA tolerates none, not even modest in
tone on issues too minor to matter. They do to CAMERA that views
everything in black and white terms with no gray allowed.

Muslims are bad because they're Muslims and not Jews. Jews, on the
other hand, are good because they're Jewish. This for CAMERA is fair
and balanced meaning support Israel, right or wrong, and you are. Dare
criticize, you're not, and be targeted full force with all CAMERA's
hard-hitting tools - mass letter-writing, articles, op-eds, monographs,
special reports, full-page ads in major publications, the CAMERA Media
Report critiquing "bias and error," CAMERA on Campus doing the same
thing, CAMERA Fellows training students in pro-Israeli thinking, and
focused attacks on "media bias" and journalists anywhere even mildly
critical of Israel.

CAMERA is effective because it's unrelenting, focused and well-funded.
It "systematically monitors, documents, reviews and archives (all)
Middle East coverage." Its staffers "contact reporters, editors,
producers and publishers" demanding "distorted or inaccurate coverage"
be retracted and replaced by "factual information to refute errors."
For CAMERA, it means support Israel without compromise or be hounded
until you do.

Two Examples of Truth in Reporting Banned in the Dominant Media - First
from Bethlehem
Pacifica's KPFA Flashpoints Radio co-host Nora Barrows Friedman has
become the electronic media's most courageous voice on
Israel/Palestine. An example was her disturbing story from Bethlehem
August 21 for Inter Press Service that was unreported in the dominant
media. It's a dramatic example of sanitizing ugly parts of a story to
prettify Israeli actions or simply ignoring it as in this case.

Friedman reported the Israeli military has been cutting and destroying
apricot and walnut trees for months to make way for its scheme in the
village of Artas, southeast of Bethlehem. It's a concrete tunnel (along
with the apartheid separation wall) for raw Israeli settlement sewage
(excrement and waste). It's to be dumped on Palestinian land even
though its toxicity will endanger the health and welfare of its
residents. It will destroy crops and poison the land rendering it
useless for agriculture.

Artas villagers have been "active and defiant....over the last year
after unofficial information" about the plan leaked out. It's still
ongoing, nonetheless, as Israeli bulldozers continue uprooting crops
and orchards in preparation for construction to follow. Non-violent
protesters (on their own land) "have been shot at, beaten" arrested and
imprisoned for defying expropriation of their property. Israel
frequently does this throughout the Occupied Territories for the parts
it wants. In this case, it's for land to dump raw untreated toxic
sewage waste on from its settlements.

It's part of an overall ethnic cleansing scheme to dispossess
Palestinians from their lands, one parcel, one village at a time, every
devious way Israelis can invent to do it. This time, villagers are
fighting back in the Israeli Supreme Court. But based on its past
rulings, they have little hope for justice and no hope the major media
will help stop the abuse by exposing it in its coverage.

A Second Example: Hamas' "Goals for All of Palestine"
Mousa Abu Marzook, Hamas political bureau deputy, prepared an eloquent
op-ed piece July 10 titled "Hamas' stand" that got rare space in the
latimes.com but none in the New York Times, NPR or elsewhere in the
dominant media. In it, he explained Hamas' July rescue of BBC
journalist Alan Johnson wasn't done "as some obsequious boon to Western
powers. It was....part of our effort to secure Gaza from (all)
lawlessness.... and violence....where journalists, foreigners and
guests of the Palestinian people will be treated with dignity."

He stressed Hamas never supported attacks on Westerners. Instead, its
struggle "always....focused on the occupier and our legal resistance to
it....supported by the Fourth Geneva Convention." Despite that right of
any occupied people, Israel and Washington falsely accuse its leaders
of ideologies "they know full well we do not follow, such as the agenda
of Al Queda and its adherents."

Marzook "deplore(d) the current prognosticating over "Fatah-land (in
the West Bank) versus "Hamastan (in Gaza). In the end, there can be
only one Palestinian state," and its people have every legal right to
demand and expect one. He continued saying its "militant stance" is
reasonable in "our fight against the occupation and the right of
Palestinians to have dignity, justice and self-rule." It's guaranteed
all peoples everywhere under the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human
Rights.

Marzook raised the litmus test issue of Palestinians having to concede
Israel's "putative right to exist as a necessary precondition to
discussing grievances, and to renounce" its 1988 charter position "born
of the intolerable conditions under occupation more than 20 years ago."
A state "may have a right to exist," he stated, "but not....at the
expense of other states (or more importantly) at the expense of
millions of human individuals and their rights to justice."

Marzook justifiably asked "Why should anyone concede Israel's right to
exist, when it....never....acknowledged (its) foundational crimes of
murder, ethnic cleansing (and seizure of) our towns and villages, our
farms and orchards, and made us a nation of refugees? Why should any
Palestinian recognize (this) monstrous crime....?" How can Israel
"declare itself explicitly to be a state for the Jews (alone)....in a
land where millions of occupants are Arabs, Muslims and Christians."

Marzook continued denouncing Israeli hypocrisy referring back to the
writings of its Zionist founders. In them, they made "repeated calls
for the destruction of Palestine's non-Jewish inhabitants" saying: "We
must expel the Arabs and take their places." Israeli policy today
"advocat(es) for the expulsion of Arab citizens from Israel and the
rest of Palestine, envisioning a single Jewish state from the Jordan
(River) to the sea." The international community voices "no clamor....
for Israel to repudiate these words as a necessary precondition for any
discourse whatsoever. The double standard, as always, is" for
Palestinians alone.

Marzook has no trouble "recognizing" Israel's right to exist. "Israel
does exist," he says, "as any Rafah boy in a hospital bed, with IDF
shrapnel in his torso, can tell you." He referred to a distracting
"dance of mutual rejection (while) many are dying (or live) as
prisoners....in refugee camps" and Israeli prisons unjustly.

Marzook speaks for all Palestinians saying he "look(s) forward to the
day when Israel can say to me, and millions of other Palestinians:
'Here, here is your family's house by the sea (we took from you in
1948), here are your lemon trees, the olive grove your father tended:
Come home and be whole again.' Then we can speak of a future together"
and can have one in peace but never under occupation.

Try finding that commentary in the New York Times or on NPR. Somehow,
it slipped into the latimes.com and maybe in error. Pilger is right.
The first casualty of war is good journalism. It applies as well to
reporting on Israel/Palestine and most other major world and national
issues. Real news and information fall victim to the fake kind in the
dominant media. Thankfully, people are catching on, viable alternatives
abound in print and online, and web sites like this one provide it.

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