Can We Trust the Reporting of News Agencies Vis-à-Vis the Arab-Israel Conflict?

Guest Post by Chris Goff

{This is a guest post by author and journalist Chris Goff.  Goff has a new thriller coming out in about a week, or so, entitled Dark Waters that takes place in Israel and is, as they say, a true "page turner."  I read the book and intend to write about it as well this coming weekend.  It's a fun ride and I definitely recommend it.  I think that it will make Dershowitz jealous. - Michael L.}

The short answer? No. But understanding why requires taking a closer look at how the media works.

When I visited Israel in 2001, the circumstances were stressful. We were there getting alternative medical therapy for our eleven year-old daughter, who at the time was extremely sick. Originally there for six weeks, we ended up staying two months. Our time there served as the catalyst for my international thriller, DARK WATERS. As my daughter began to get stronger, we explored Tel Aviv, then moved outside to visit Haifa, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Masada, Tiberias and the Dead Sea. Venturing out took a lot of resolve. In 2001, Israel experienced over 40 suicide bombings, including a car bombing in Tiberias involving a vehicle we had parked close to when visiting the marketplace that morning. It was the first time I had ever been afraid to leave the house, go to the movies, eat at a restaurant or ride a city bus.

It was December 6, 2001, after I was home, that I encountered my first experience of unreliable reporting on the Arab-Israel conflict. A Palestinian suicide bomber had blown himself up outside the Dolphinarium discotheque in Tel Aviv killing twenty-five people. My daughter and I used to sit on the sea wall in front of the disco, listening to the music and watching the sea lap at the beach. It was a place filled with young people out to enjoy the night, to make friends, to dance. The news reporter spoke of how it was thought that the suicide bomber had chosen his target based on the number of Israeli soldiers known to frequent the disco. As though that somehow justified the violence? He then supported his claim by extrapolating that since all Israeli citizens were required to serve in the IDF that everyone in the discotheque could be viewed as an Israeli soldier or soon-to-be soldier. A bit of stretch. The majority of those killed that night were young teenage girls well under the age of eighteen.

Forty years ago, in my first class at the University of Colorado, we learned the basic tenets of ethical journalism: truth and accuracy; independence; fairness and impartiality; humanity; and accountability.  A sizable order! And while they still teach the same principles today, they tend to serve more as guidelines than rules. I would also venture to say most journalists feel they follow the tenets. Reporters still fact-check. But often they only present one version of the truth, and therein lies the problem.

The lines get a little blurry when it comes to the last four tenets. It's no secret that most of us perceive there is media bias. The best breakdown I've found detailing this phenomenon comes from a Student News Daily blog article  that lays out the various types. There's bias by omission, where the reporter leaves one side out of the equation; bias by selection of sources, where the sources cited support one particular view over another; bias by story selection, where the reporter highlights additional news stories coinciding with his agenda; bias by placement, which lends weight to a the story by where it appears; bias by labeling, where certain sources are tagged or labeled, with other sources are never identified; and bias by spin, when a reporter slants the tone of the piece by making subjective comments. "Creative nonfiction," where a reporter uses story form to impart facts in a colorful, thought-provoking manner, lends itself especially well to bias. A story also tends to end with a moral, providing a natural pathway for reporters to place their own personal spin on the telling.

News reporting is big business these days. The competition is keen and reporters have had to adjust to the times. With the onset of the internet and social media, more papers are going under, while more and more consumers pull their news from specialty sources and blogs and information is quickly disseminated around the globe. As consumers, we have been conditioned to receive our news in sound bites, and reporters are expected to deliver information in smaller, more consumable pieces. Tasked with entertaining their audience, reporters turn to sensationalism to grab attention, exploiting even the less exciting news bites for some type of intrinsic value. And, as in all good business, the news venue caters to the consumer. If feedback says the audience likes a particular-type of story or a particular slant, the reporter does his best to deliver.

On April 3, 2002, we watched on the news as Palestinians took refuge inside the Church of Nativity and the IDF rolled their tank into Manger Square and pointed its cannon at the Door of Humility, where inside 200 monks provided refuge and care to 120 Palestinians. At least, that's the way it was presented. There was no initial mention that the Palestinians were suspected militants fleeing arrest, or that they were suspected of having ties to the terrorist organizations sponsoring the rash of suicide bombings plaguing Israel, or that the IDF operation itself was in response to a bombing during Passover Seder that killed 23 mostly elderly vacationers. Instead, with graphic, emotionally-ladened photographs, the reporter painted a picture that tugged at the heartstrings of millions of Americans and brought us back clambering for more.

In her book, STONEWALLED, Sharyl Attkisson, an ex-CBS reporter, raised the idea that a general cultural change has occurred within journalism whereby reporters too often go along with the powers that be, whether they're corporate, political or other special interests.  A good example of this is the media's handling of Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee's reference to the Holocaust when he cited his opposition to the Iran Deal. Regardless of whether or not he crossed the line in invoking a reference to the Holocaust, it didn't take any time for the news media to pull the focus away from his opposition to the brokered deal. As if choreographed, the media immediately compared his remark to those of Donald Trump's, spinning the story to be about the myriad contenders for the Republican nomination rather than allowing Huckabee's remark to fuel the debate on the important, controversial issue of whether or not the Iran Deal is in the best interests of our country and the world.

And if journalists are swayed by outside interest, I'm sure the same can be said for individuals. Just like Pavlov's dogs, if we are constantly presented with information biased toward a specific point of view, we will likely begin to accept that perspective. For those of us living in the United States, that means we are more apt to be exposed to left-leaning perspectives. An American Trends Panel Survey conducted in 2014 and published in the Washington Post  showed that the majority of survey responders leaned to the left of center and that news stations (CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, NPR and the BBC) and newspapers (New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post and USA Today) leaned even slightly further left than the average responder.

So where does Israel fit in all of this?

Currently the left-leaning media leans away from Israel, and the same might be said for the rest of the world. Writer Zack Beauchamp stated in a recent Vox article that the latest BBC World Service poll showed that "most countries have a pretty dim view of Israel's influence on the world."  After doing some digging, I discovered that the poll covered the years from 2012 to 2014 and was composed of answers from 24, 542 people across twenty-two countries.  With the world's population currently exceeding seven billion, it appears likely there's a margin for error. Yet, the BBC poll is presented as definitive proof that support for Israel is dwindling.

Is it any wonder, then, that nearly every article I found on the 2012 Gaza-Israel Conflict from major news media sources began with statements similar to this one from an ABC News via World News report published July 31, 2014?  The ABC News report first cites heavy shelling by Israel Defense Forces that "left much of Gaza City damaged." Factual, but could be construed as leading readers to empathize with the citizens of Gaza. The next paragraph opens with, "The conflict broke out on July 8, when Israel launched 'Operation Protective Edge' in response to Hamas launching rockets toward Israel." Again, while the sentence acknowledges that Hamas launched rockets first, the order and tone of the presentation left me—and I would imagine most readers—with the initial impression—that Israel started the conflict. The next sentence states, "Since the conflict began, 1,423 Gazans have died and 8,265 have been injured while 59 Israelis have died, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry and IDF, respectively." Again, while I'm sure these are accurate numbers, the manner of presentation leads the reader toward the conclusion that Israel is a mighty force pummeling a weak and defenseless victim.

So is there a fix?

Israel faces a tough challenge. Few Americans can understand the vulnerability Israel feels surrounded by so many Arab countries that have pledged to eradicate its people. Fewer still understand the intricacies that exist in the relationships between the multiple factions of Jews, Christians and the Israeli-Arabs residing there. I didn't, until I spent two months living in Tel Aviv. Then, you have to take into account the media images we see on our televisions, and in our newspapers and magazines. We're shown photographs of cute Palestinian children standing atop bombed out rubble, pictures of IDF soldiers guarding a wall that separates families, or pictures of Israeli settlers holding fast to land they've been ordered by their own government to vacate—because those photos are sensational and evoke emotional response. Applying individual biases, many Americans see a young boy in need of help, or are reminded of the Berlin Wall, or of our own problems struggling to sort out U.S. immigration policy.

The way I see it, Israel has limited choices. First, it can simply wait for the pendulum to swing in the opposite direction. It's bound to happen at some point as the issues we're faced with in the Middle East continue to escalate. Second, Israel can work to improve its image. In social studies classes across America, kids are being taught about "presentism," defined as "an attitude toward the past dominated by present-day attitudes and experiences."  To illustrate, children are shown a picture of a soldier with a gun near the heads of a young boy and his mother, evoking negative feelings toward the soldier. Pan out and show the whole picture, and we see the soldier is actually standing guard over the boy, his mother and a group of villagers as other soldiers pass out food and water. Somehow Israel needs to work with the media panning out on the photographs, putting a new spin on its image and showing more of the positives—perhaps by highlighting areas where Israelis, both Jews and Arabs, live together and thrive.

Notes:

  http://ethicaljournalismnetwork.org/en/contents/5-principles-of-journalism

  http://www.studentnewsdaily.com/types-of-media-bias/

  http://dailycaller.com/2014/11/28/sharyl-attkisson-mainstream-media-too-swayed-by-propaganda-video/

  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/10/21/lets-rank-the-media-from-liberal-to-conservative-based-on-their-audiences/

  http://www.vox.com/2014/7/29/5948255/israel-world-opinion

  http://www.bbc.com/news/27685494

  http://abcnews.go.com/International/israel-gaza-conflict/story?id=24552237

  http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/presentism

Chris Goff is the author of DARK WATERS (September 15, 2015; Crooked Lane Books), an international thriller set amid the Israel-Palestine conflict. A former journalist, she is also the author of the critically acclaimed ecologically-themed Bird Watchers mysteries, and has served as board member for the Mystery Writers of America. For more: www.christinegoff.com

Toxicity

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at the Elder of Ziyon.}

Anyone who knows the least little bit about the Arab-Israel war, as portrayed in the general media, knows that it is done so in a manner that is toxic to Jews.

The question is, given the number of violent national conflicts all around the world, why must this one be so utterly acrimonious among people who, as they say, do not have a dog in the fight?  All around the world, with the possible exception of parts of the Asian Pacific Rim, people seem to care very deeply about Jewish behavior toward Palestinian-Arabs while not caring at all about the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Syrians, including many Palestinian-Arabs residing there.

And do I really need to reference the death toll in recent years in the Congo?  That number is in the millions, but nobody outside of the region cares a whit.

Please understand that I do not hold myself innocent in the question of the miserableness, toxicity, and the just plain stupidity of the conversation around the Arab-Israel conflict.  The question is, why is it that conversation so toxic?

The answer, in part, is postcolonial theory.

The people who are driving the conversation are anti-Jewish / anti-Israel ideologues of the sort that shake their fists for BDS.  They honestly view Israel as a white, western, racist, colonialist, European outpost in the Middle East... or some combination of this highly dubious rhetorical gibberish.  This is due, at least in part, to significant twentieth-century thinkers like Michelle Foucault and Edward Said.

Foucault and Said

Foucault suggested that scholarly narratives were not so much about “truth” but about the maintenance of hegemonic systems of power through constructing necessary epistemologies and ontologies, or ways of thinking and being.  Said, following Foucault, claimed that western “Orientalist” scholarship, and thus western views on the Arab world, were about the maintenance of western power over the "occupied" Middle East.

This particular way of viewing knowledge - as little more than part of the prevailing system of imperial control - dovetails with the postcolonial view that divides the world into Occupiers and the Occupied or white, western oppressors and their victims.  The historical source of this relationship allegedly derives from the old racist, European imperial adventures and, we are told, continues to this day with the United States representing the foremost oppressor on the world stage.  It is this that Barack Obama thinks that it is his job to undue.  Israel is viewed as an instrument of this imperialism, as well as a current example of an "apartheid state" that must be shunned and opposed.

The Jewish State must therefore be struggled against not merely for this or that policy toward the Palestinian-Arabs, but because in its essence, it is viewed as a racist, colonialist enterprise similar to, say, the British in India or the French in Indo-China.  The problem with Britain in India was not this or that royal policy toward the indigenous population but its very presence controlling other people's lives and land.  The problem was imperialism, period, and not merely any particular imperial policy.

Israel, of course, does not actually fit the postcolonial model for the obvious reason that people cannot illegitimately, or illegally, "colonize" their own land.  In order to make it fit anti-Israel ideologues twist Jewish history in order to cram it into the model.  They maliciously misinterpret Israeli behavior in order to suggest that this behavior is not a reaction to real events like, say, Qassam rockets, but is rather an expression of the ugly, essential nature of the Jews in the Middle East, if not Jews more generally.

Israel is either a white, western, outpost of imperialism or it is not.  Postcolonial theory claims that it is and postcolonial theory is the ghost that hovers behind the conversation, that gives the anti-Israel people their intellectual validation. But how can the movement for Jewish self-determination and self-defense be "imperialist" when we know that the vast majority, virtually the entirety, of European Jews who made aliyah did so to escape late 19th century Russian pogroms and, later, that minor bit of nastiness in early-mid twentieth-century Germany?

Thus, on its face, the origins of the Jewish state are not imperialist and in order to make it so an inversion is necessary. The Jews who fled Russian pogroms and, later, the Holocaust, must be viewed as the oppressors.  The Jewish immigrants did not arrive at the behest of any European power. They did not ride with any army of conquest, nor were they the functionaries of any foreign government seeking domination.  They came to the Land of Israel as an oppressed people hoping to build a community for themselves and their children on the land where Jews have lived for well over three thousand years.

The actual history therefore undermines post-colonial theory in regards Israel and renders it useless.

The only way to make it work is to start with the presumptions of the theory and then twist the history to conform to, and thus confirm, the theory.  But scholarship doesn't work that way.  The irony is that post-colonial theory has Marxist roots, but Marx did not consider himself an “idealist,” one who starts with an ideology hovering over the material facts, but just the opposite.  Marx thought of himself as a corrective to the German idealist tradition by starting with the material facts of history and drawing his conclusions from those facts, not the other way around, as the current post-colonialists do.

Furthermore, since Israel and Zionism are considered in their very nature corrupt, anything that Israel does is viewed as evidence of that corruption.  Let’s take the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, for example.  Israel was there with an absolutely amazing medical team that saved G-d knows how many lives, yet there are plenty of people who insist that this was nothing but a cheap PR stunt to take attention away from the Gaza strip.

In this way, it doesn't matter what Israel does because it is already condemned in its essence as an evil, racist, imperialist, regime and its behavior, whatever that behavior might be, is conducted not from actual circumstances, but as an expression of its corrupt essence.

And this is ultimately what makes the conversation around the Arab-Israel conflict so vitriolic. The ideology, by necessity, turns the vast majority of world Jewry into the enemy.

So, of course, discussion around the Arab-Israel conflict is toxic.

The prevailing anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, postcolonial ideology rattles the Jewish cage.

So, what would anyone expect?

What to look for from the presidential candidates

Sar Shalom

As supporters of Israel, we want to know what sorts of policies the next president will adopt regarding the Middle East. However, questions to the candidates about what approach they would take if elected invariably fail to yield answers that are useful to make such an assessment. Instead, the candidates tend to make anodyne responses to such questions such as, "We have to support Israel" or "We have to support peace." Such answers provide no indication of what how that candidate would evaluate an Israeli response to a Hamas rocket campaign if elected.

There is, however, something which would give a clue to such issues. Instead of asking the candidates what their perceptions of the issue are, ask them who they turn to in order to understand the issues. For instance, someone whose understanding of human rights comes from Paul Berman will likely have a different take on whether or not Israel's response to Hamas rockets is disproportionate than someone whose understanding comes from Ken Roth. Someone whose understanding of Middle East history comes from Bernard Lewis will have a different view of the boundary between Jewish and Arab rights than someone whose understanding comes from Rashid Khalidi. Someone whose ideas of Jewish and Arab interests come from Alan Dershowitz and Khaled Abu Toameh would have a different view of what the obstacles are to a peace agreement than someone whose views come from Jeremy Ben-Ami and Hanan Ashrawi.

The reality is that once someone decides which set of figures would provide the best understanding, the decision has been made as to the frame in which to understand the issue. Once the frame has been decided, the policy to adopt, should one gain the power to implement it, has been decided as well. Is there anyone asking the candidates who fills their understanding of the region?

Oh, for G-d's sake!

Michael L.

I cannot seem to get away from this Matisyahu tune.



Think of it as an open thread.

The Houseboat Summit

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at the Elder of Ziyon.}

{Correction:  Dr. Landes informs me that the meeting actually took place in Jerusalem, not Boston.  Next year in Jerusalem!}

In 1967, shortly after the Gathering of the Tribes - or the first Human Be-In - in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, Zen and counterculture philosopher Alan Watts held a "hippie summit" on his houseboat in Sausalito, just north of the city.

They called it the "Houseboat Summit."  The idea was to push momentum coming out of the "tribal" gathering in the park and plan for the future.  In attendance were Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, and Gary Snyder, along with some small percentage of the Bay Area's counterculture kids at the time.

The summit actually resulted in the splitting of what historian Terry Anderson referred to as The Movement between the political-types from places like Berkeley versus the hippie-types from places like Haight-Ashbury in SF.  It was Leary who did the most to split the movement by suggesting that the political-types were, essentially, young men with "geriatric minds."  Leary did not want politics, which he basically considered to represent outmoded and counterproductive thinking.  What he wanted was to transcend politics entirely with massive doses of lysergic acid diethylamide # 25 and then float away into the nether reaches of his own mind.

It was Ginsberg, far more than Leary, who was dedicated to strengthening the counterculture / anti-war coalition, which was the whole point of the Gathering of the Tribes to begin with.  Leary, in his arrogance and stupidity, even suggested that by the turn of the century we would see deer grazing in Times Square, Manhattan, as people left the cities and joined whatever strange, hybrid, sex-and-drug-fueled kibbutzim that the guy had in his head.

I am put to mind of Alan Watts and his "houseboat summit" due to the fact that the East Coast - Boston, specifically - recently saw its own little pro-Israel / pro-Jewish "summit" at the home of professor Richard Landes of Boston University.

Ted Belman of Israpundit fame writes about it here.

There were about ten people in attendance of whom I am familiar with four.  Belman, Landes, Melanie Phillips, and our friend Vic Rosenthal of both Abu Yehuda and the Elder of Ziyon.  My guess is that two of the four would recognize my name... maybe three.

I was very pleased to read about this meeting and I would have loved to have been there myself.

Each of these four individuals have something important to say.

Dr. Richard Landes

Landes is a professional historian with Boston University who specializes in religious history and who has a recent book out from Oxford University Press entitled, Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience.  He is also championing the case of philosophy professor Andrew Pessin who has been harassed at Connecticut College for daring to say mean things about Hamas.  I cannot imagine why any Jew would compare Hamas to a vicious caged dog when they are better compared to vicious caged rats.  The dog is man's best friend, after all.  Hamas is nobody's best friends and screams from the hillsides for the genocide of the Jews.

Aside from his academic work, Landes is best know for maintaining the important pro-Israel Augean Stables blog.  In my opinion, the most important significance of Augean Stables is Landes' work on "Pallywood" and what he sometimes calls "lethal journalism."  Landes played a significant role in examining the Al Durah Affair in which the IDF was accused of killing children, thereby essentially justifying violence against Jews anywhere in the world.  The analyses of Landes, and others concerned with the Al Durah case have demonstrated that this kid was not killed by the IDF, but Arab-Palestinian fighters.  Nonetheless, it fueled the Second Intifada resulting in thousands of dead.

Ted Belman

There is much to be said about the excellent work that Belman is doing over at Israpundit, but the powerful and concise message that sits on the top of his page is exceedingly worthy of discussion.  It reads quite simply, "THERE IS NO DIPLOMATIC SOLUTION."

Belman is probably correct and it took me quite a number of years - all through the Oslo process - to come to something approaching that conclusion.  Well-meaning, left-leaning, liberal Jews want a two-state solution, as did I.  Unfortunately, the two-state solution is absolutely dependent upon Arab agreement.  For at least 80 solid years the Arab peoples have told us very clearly that they will not accept a Jewish state on any part of historically Jewish land for any reason whatsoever.

There must come a point when we accept the fact that "no means no."  Belman got there a few years before I did.

Melanie Phillips

I have to tell you, I love Melanie Phillips not only because I agree with her on Israel - if not global warming - but I admire her audacity.  I like Phillips for much the same reason that I appreciate Caroline Glick.  The woman has guts and calls it like she sees it.  In books like Londonistan, Phillips rings the alarm bell ("alarum bell?") about the consequences of massive Arab and North African migrations into Europe.  Sometimes people despise her as a "racist" for such sentiments, but there simply is no question that the changing demographics in Europe are altering European culture in a way that directly clashes with western Enlightenment values.  That is not her fault.  Melanie is just delivering the news.

One of Phillips' main points, as Belman notes in his piece, is that the Israeli government has got to get out there and make its case.  Belman writes:

She divides her time between London and Jerusalem and is a highly regarded journalist. She expressed her pet peeve about the Israeli government which is AWOL when it comes to public diplomacy. She said she has tried talking with government officials who she said don’t have a clue about what’s going on out there and who are unwilling to do something about it.

Vic Rosenthal

Vic started writing the exceedingly interesting Abu Yehuda blog after he made aliyah from California and thereby gave up his exceedingly interesting Fresno Zionism blog.  Vic was practically a neighbor, given that Fresno is not really that far from the Bay Area, and I am pleased to say that I played a significant role in bringing him over to the Elder of Ziyon where he now publishes a weekly column.

One idea that Vic and I have in common is opposition to "politically correct" discourse when that discourse stands in the way of the truth and thereby stands in the way of the well-being of the Jewish people.  As he writes:

PC is all about making rules about things that cannot be said, and punishing transgressions. But it is not ideologically neutral. It supports universalist, cultural relativist, and multiculturalist ideologies, and insists that a subjective sense of ‘injury’ can be the arbiter of legitimate discourse, rather than ideals of truth or logic. It provides a way to bypass the ideal of free speech and to shut down speech that is uncomfortable.

The Houseboat Summit

Alan Watts and his hippie-counterculture "houseboat summit" went nowhere.  By the middle of the 1970s the western counterculture was dying, if not dead, and when Reagan came into office as president in January of 1981, he stomped the life out of what was left of it.  By the time that I got to the University of Connecticut in the early 1980s the counterculture was over with.  Students had become more interested in business than in bullshit and no one believed that LSD represented a pathway to a better life or a more "spiritual" existence.

{Or, almost no one, anyway.}

What Landes, Belman, Phillips, Rosenthal, and the rest of those sitting around that table did is different precisely because they are not counterculturalists.  These are not hippies.  These are people with their feet firmly grounded on planet Earth.  I can say that with terrific confidence because I read each of them on a regular basis.

What is needed is for Richard Landes or Melanie Phillips, or whoever has the most pull, to turn this into an annual event and to expand on it.

I want to be there next year.