Extremist vs. Pragmatists

Sar Shalom

If there is anyone with any degree of competence in illustration, I'd love to see a visualization of what I describe. In the meantime, consider this textual description.

Extremist:
A Palestinian fantasizing about slicing a stereotypical Jew in two with a sword.

Pragmatist:
A Palestinian fantasizing about a UN official approach him to present him with the head of a stereotypical Jew on a silver platter.

From before the birth of the modern State of Israel, the Arab world has dreamed of eliminating it. Until sometime after the Yom Kippur War, the method of doing so was to do so with their own power. Between then and now, they have transitioned in their thinking about the most effective method of accomplishing the original aim of Israel's destruction. Now the issue is how do the Palestinians, or more specifically the Palestinian national movement (PNM), enlist the international community in the cause of destroying Israel or, as I would describe, presenting Israel's head to them on a silver platter?

Contrary to what many supporters of Israel might believe, the answer is not that the international community shares the PNM's belief that the Jews are untermenschen and are thus unworthy of having their own state. If that was the case, the PNM would not have to engage in what it does do in order to enlist their support. Rather, the PNM hopes to enlist international support by convincing the world that Israel is a class A evil matched only by Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa and on account of that merits destruction as those two regimes were destroyed. Their current tactic in doing so is to produce as many Palestinian deaths that can be attributed to Israel as possible and press upon the world media to portray those deaths as Israel's responsibility.

There are two takeaways. One, if an extremists adopts less overtly violent tactics as part of change in strategy while keeping the same objective, he remains an extremist. Two, those who play a part in that strategy must be called out.

Using comparisons to other issues to convey the media's Mid-east bias

Sar Shalom

Previously, I raised the issue of drawing a comparison between Mid-east coverage and media coverage of other issues in order to convey how the media are biased in covering the Middle East. Instead of developing the how-to of drawing such comparisons, I would like to explain why such comparison might convince some people who otherwise could not be convinced.

Imagine that the media have been running a series of articles castigating some entity that you consider to be the devil incarnate. Now you come across someone who defends that entity. You wonder how that person could possibly defend the devil incarnate and in trying to convince this person of that, you cite the media reports castigating that entity. Your interlocutor responds, "the media are biased," what would you think of that retort.

Probably you would think that your interlocutor does not like the message that the media are conveying, and instead of substantively rebutting that message, this interlocutor is attacking the messenger. Often this line of reasoning would be correct, which is why burden of proof of bias falls on the party making the allegation.

Now let's add to your interlocutor's response that she cites someone you consider an upright individual whom you consider to have been savaged by the media. Your interlocutor proceeds to bring parallel after parallel of how ignore relevant facts and accept other facts too readily when they can be easily disproved in order to castigate both the person you consider upright and the entity your interlocutor defends. Would this not induce you question the media coverage that "confirms" your belief that the entity you had in mind is the devil incarnate?

In the case of convincing the left, which, at least in the US, constitutes the vast majority of those unfavorably disposed towards Israel, the issue to draw parallels would have to be one in which the media give outsized deference to right-wing memes. One example is the media's past deference to the notion that excess debt threatens to put the US into the position that Greece is in. Another issue the media's assignment of equal blame to the Democrats and Republicans for the "cycle-of-intransigence" no matter what concessions the Democrats offer only to be spurned by the Republicans. A further example is the media's reduction of Campaign 2000 to "Pinocchio vs. Dumbo" and, as the left would surely describe it, the media's distortion of Al Gore's statements to portray him as a serial exaggerater or liar. My previous post described some of the parallels on those issues, though the point here is to show why we should present those parallels rather than to describe how.

An issue that would cater more to elites, particularly media elites, more than the left in general is that of medical malpractice. It is generally known that in certain American counties, when juries see images of injured people they shut down all thinking and look to find ways to compensate the victims, even if the facts clearly show that all they are victims of is maloccurrence. Such is the case with the images of dead children coming out of Gaza. Anyone know any medical malpractice defense attorneys who could write on this?

One potential difficulty in raising parallels between Middle East coverage and coverage of other issues is that unlike exposing Middle East biases in a vacuum, drawing parallels requires knowing things about issues beyond the Middle East. Potentially, forming alliances with those who are expert on the issues with which we wish to draw parallels and who are sympathetic to Israel, even if they are not expert on the Middle East, could address this challenge.

Hakarat hatov (recognizing goodness) to the NY Times

Sar Shalom

While the NY Times has run many op-eds from those adept at portraying the expression of Jewish dignity as denial of dignity to the Palestinian Arabs. For the most part, the columns that the Times has allowed in defense of Israel have emphasized Israel's efforts to dissociate from Jordan's 1949-conquest, the West Bank in the language the media use, thus feeding the narrative that there is no contest to the notion that Israel's presence in Jordan's 1949-conquest is illegitimate. On Monday, the Times ran a column that breaks this mold.

The column, written by former Yesha Council chairman Dani Dayan, calls for immediately taking steps, without prejudicing the final outcome, to alleviate the plight of the Palestinians, with Dayan's specific action items delivering the most benefit to the Palestinian people for the least cost to Israeli Jews. All too often, pundits decry the Palestinians' suffering and then refuse to countenance doing anything to alleviate that suffering that does not involve Israel recognizing that Jewish rights end at Jordan's 1949-line of conquest, creating a false choice between recognizing Arab rights based on Jordan's conquest or perpetuating Palestinian suffering.

For all the positive notes conveyed in Dayan's column, one column does not negate a pattern of one-sided coverage of the other side of the armistice line. However, we should appreciate the opportunities we do get to present our view.

Comparing Mideast Coverage to Media Coverage of Other Matters

Sar Shalom

It is well known that the media get many key facts wrong when portraying the Middle East, whether accepting false claims presented by the Palestinians, omitting crucial context, or qualify verifiable Israeli claims as being Israeli claims. However, one problem with raising these issues is that doing so would come across to an uninformed audience as though we're responding to a message we don't like by attacking the messenger. With that in mind, I would like to compare the media's misrepresentation of the Middle East to the media's coverage of another topic, a portrayal of the media that would resonate with most liberals.

Paul Krugman's most recent column deals with a comparison between the United States and Europe in job creation. According to Krugman, American free-market ideology holds that America's lower taxes and less generous welfare state should lead to greater job creation than in European countries like France. Yet, the employment ratio of prime working-age adults is higher in France than it is in the US, and has been since the Bush administration. This discrepancy between what the theory predicts and the empirical facts is dealt with by ignoring the empirical facts. This recent article is the latest of a recurring theme raised by Krugman in which misfortune is blamed on economic policies that the press doesn't like, with earlier examples being how fiscal profligacy are responsible for the economic crisis in Southern Europe.

Another writer, Thomas Mann, wrote recently on the causes of political dysfunction in this country. Among Mann's notable lines is, "most mainstream journalists and political reformers refuse to even acknowledge or take seriously the case for asymmetric polarization. It makes us uncomfortable because some people will characterize the idea as partisan, even if it accurately captures reality." In other words, even-handedness has a higher priority than accurately portraying the story, and one side is exploiting the media's fixation on even-handedness to the hilt.

Krugman carried this further with an earlier blog post responding to queries about why he doesn't write about any reasonable Republicans. There are two points to note from this post. One is that describing a Republican as reasonable just to describe some Republican as reasonable is a form of bias. Along this line, Krugman regularly writes against the media's fawning treatment of Paul Ryan because they see the slightest indication of reasonableness and declare that they have found their reasonable Republican. The other is that the few Republicans who actually are reasonable, Krugman cites the examples of Bruce Bartlett and David Frum, were excommunicated from the Republican establishment because of their reasonableness.

So what ties all these together? Essentially, in each of these cases, the media settle on a frame before gaining an understanding of the facts of the issue. Subsequently, every claim that conforms with the frame is accepted as accurate, no need to verify, while any claim contradicting the frame, no matter how verifiable, has to be qualified as coming from so and so contrarian. Thus, in the Eurocrisis it is clear that the southern European economies are depressed. The media view this through the lens that they know, just know, that the southern European depression is the result of a morality play playing itself out where the desserts of yesterday's profligacy are today's economic misery. Thus every pundit claiming that it is the result of running deficits, including in Spain which was running a surplus until the crisis hit, is accepted uncritically, while anyone suggesting an alternative is dismissed, even when this alternative is in agreement with the IMF. Likewise no one would dispute that the Palestinians have less than ideal living conditions, even if the scale of Palestinian misery is up for debate. The media look at these conditions and know, just know, that those conditions arise from Israel's brutal occupation of the Palestinian people. Thus, whenever the Palestinians present any information conforming to that frame, such as the Al Durah killing, it is accepted uncritically. However, whenever anyone presents anything contradicting the frame, such as ballistics testing showing that Israel could not have killed Al Durah, it is dismissed without showing one flaw in the forensic work as "of course Israel would reach that conclusion," as 60 Minutes characterized that study.

One frequent term in the media's description of the Middle East conflict is the "cycle of violence." The use of this term implies that Arab violence and Israeli violence are equivalent, in the same manner that Mann laments that the media treat Republican extremism and Democratic extremism as equivalent. Similarly, Krugman's lament of the media's frenzy to declare some Republican as a moderate is analogous to their frenzy to declare some Palestinian leader as a moderate, hence everyone declaring Abbas as a "man of peace." As with Republicans who challenge conservative orthodoxy, any Palestinian who goes against the Arab narrative will be ostracized the way Prof. Daoudi was expelled from his union for leading a trip to Auschwitz. In domestic politics, calling out the lack of candor from a "reasonable" Republican is often dismissed. Similarly, the media dismiss suggestions, and all supporting facts, that Abbas is less than serious about peaceful coexistence.

In addressing the issue of media bias, it would help to build a frame of reference that the audience will understand. Since the right is less moved by the sympathetic portrayals that the media present of Palestinians, the audience we will need to convince is mostly on the left. Accordingly, the audience whose frame we need to adopt is the left's. Along these lines, pointing out the mendacity of the right on economic issues is red meat to the left, as is pointing out the media's inability to recognize it because they know, just know, that every pathology is found in equal measure on both sides. The media do the same thing in portraying the "cycle of violence" in the Middle East and other distortions relating to Israel. The fallacies that lead to one distortion are the same fallacies that lead to the other. It is time that we highlight that fact.