Israel

Watchdogs on the media battlefield

Pro- media monitors say they are on a mission to keep the world’s pressBy Tibor on Krauszits toes 18 The Jerusalem Report february 25, 2013 TING ST RE PO R HON E ST T E S Y UR CO

The Jerusalem Report february 25, 2013 19 Israel

Her reasoning: The disproportionate num- as a terrorist organization or a bus bombing ber of Palestinians released in return for a as a terror attack in the name of avoiding single Israeli soldier “tacitly acknowledges ‘value judgments.’” what so many Zionists believe – that the lives Selective omission: Foreign reporters rou- of the chosen are of hugely greater conse- tinely cite Israel’s “occupation” of Gaza, quence than those of their unfortunate neigh- even though Israel unilaterally withdrew bors.” A fact the journalist – described by her from the territory in 2005, uprooting all its employer as “one of Britain’s leading social settlements in the process. “Often the BBC and political commentators” – conveniently omits relevant context that would help to ac- overlooked is that , not Israel, had in- curately present Israel’s case,” says Simon sisted on the terms of the prisoner swap. Plosker, the Jerusalem-based managing edi- “Orr resorted to the anti-Semitic ‘cho- tor of the influential media watchdog, Honest All sen people’ canard,” Levick says. “It was Reporting. “That matters because the British atrocious.” media has a global influence far beyond its Faced by an outcry, the journalist issued an size,” adds the British Jew, who moved to Adam Levick requires for his job is a laptop apology. Writing in the passive voice of art- Israel in 2005. – and a touch of masochism. He employs ful evasion favored by bureaucrats and poli- Such complaints against the BBC have both to peruse , one of Brit- ticians the world over, she noted, “My words been voiced for years. In 2004, senior BBC ain’s so-called progressive dailies, and its were badly chosen and poorly used.” She news editor Malcolm Balen was even tasked popular online spinoff, Comment is Free, then went on to lament the “problematic” with investigating the BBC’s reporting from or CiF. Levick is managing editor of CiF circumstances of Israel’s creation in 1948, the Middle East over persistent allegations Watch, which monitors bias against Israel in before implicitly chiding Israelis for not be- of anti-Israeli bias. His report’s findings are the two publications. He doesn’t have to look ing more open to criticism. rumored to be damning of the corporation, too hard. The editors of CiF and The Guardian did and the BBC has fought against their release. The Guardian is well known for its hostil- not respond to The Report’s repeated re- Subtle verbal cues: Members of Fatah or ity towards Israel, and, despite perfunctory quests for comment. In a recent column, Hamas known for their past involvement in protestations of balance, wears its anti-Zion- however, readers’ editor Chis Elliott ac- terrorism and openly genocidal anti-Semitic ism bias proudly on its sleeve. The newspa- knowledged the use of anti-Semitic termi- views are often labeled “moderate” as long per has eulogized Palestinian terrorists, and nology in certain Guardian articles. “These as they pay lip service to “the peace pro- CiF has posted flattering comments about included,” he wrote, “references to Israel/ cess.” Meanwhile, Israelis who insist on unabashed Jew-haters like Israeli-born saxo- US ‘global domination’ and the term ‘slav- reciprocal concessions from Palestinians in phonist/conspiracy theorist Gilad Atzmon ish’ to describe the US relationship with Is- the land-for-peace scheme may end up being and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. rael.” Journalists, the editor added, “have to labeled “right-wing.” “In The Guardian and especially on CiF, be aware that some examples involve coded “The common media labels include ‘Ne- Israel is the subject of rebuke and moral op- references. They need to ask themselves, for tanyahu is hawkish,’ ‘Abbas is a moderate,’ probrium quite out of proportion to any other example, if the word Zionist is being used as ‘Settlers are all religious fanatics,’ ‘Pales- country,” Levick, a Philadelphia native, who a synonym for Jew.” tinians just want to harvest their olives in now lives in Jerusalem, tells The Jerusalem Bias against the Jewish state, say pro-Israel peace,’” a prolific American Jewish blogger Report. “Their criticisms of Israel contain media watchdogs, comes in several forms who goes by the pseudonym Elder of Ziyon classic anti-Semitic tropes about the danger – from purposeful slants to selective omis- tells The Report. of ‘Jewish power,’ the old charge of dual loy- sions, from subtle verbal cues to outright Outright hostility: In a discussion ahead alties, and sometimes even the insidious sug- hostility. of the US presidential elections last year on gestion that Jews are inherently racist.” Purposeful Slant: In its online country Exhibit A on that last score: Israel’s deci- profiles during the run-up to the London Many battles, if left sion in September 2011 to release more than Olympics, the BBC failed to list any city 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, many of them as Israel’s capital, yet declared “East Jeru- unfought, would lead convicted murders, in exchange for kid- salem” to be the capital of Palestine. “The napped soldier Gilad BBC’s culture of political over-correctness to a far worse situation Shalit “is simply an indication,” opined The often hampers impartial reporting on Israel,” for Israel’s image in the Guardian columnist Deborah Orr, “of how says Hadar Sela, a British-born Israeli who inured the world has become to the obscene runs the BBC Watch blog, adding, “The or- media. We can’t let that idea that Israeli lives are more important ganization’s Editorial Guidelines prescribe than Palestinian lives.” that BBC journalists cannot describe Hamas happen

20 The Jerusalem Report february 25, 2013 Ireland’s TV3 channel, presenter Vincent branding the ban “petty and vindictive.” Browne opined, “Israel is the cancer in for- Undeterred, Levick maintains his mission eign affairs. It polarizes the Islamic com- on his blog. His aim, he says, is to demand munity of the world against the rest of the not only balance but also an accurate reflec- world.” That statement, Honest Reporting’s tion of the facts. “The disinformation propa- Plosker points out, has put the Irish broad- gated daily about Israel in [some] foreign caster on a par with Iranian President Mah- media outlets is astonishing,” Levick says. moud Ahmadinejad, who has labeled the “It’s our job to make sure that they’re held Jewish state a “cancerous tumor.” Browne accountable and the truth about the Middle later apologized for his “infelicitous use of East is told.” the word [cancer],” before citing, like The Easier said than done: A hatchet job on Guardian’s Orr, the “injustice [of Israel’s Page 1 carries far more weight than a subse- creation] at the center of the conflict.” quent brief correction at the bottom of Page To most Israelis, the broke 13 – if any editorial mea culpa is forthcom- out as follows: Then-Prime Minister Ehud ing at all. And once a malicious claim about Barak offered historic concessions to Pales- Israel is afforded legitimacy by mainstream tinian leader Yasser Arafat during the Camp media coverage, it will often gain a life of David 2 negotiations of July 2000 to end the its own – even once proven false – by being conflict. After some dithering, Arafat re- repeated endlessly on social media by “anti- jected them, returned home and launched a Zionists.” bloody uprising against Israel. The fact that cause-and-effect relations are routinely ignored or obscured in me- The international media, however, as dia reports, thus masking the reasons for is their wont, had a different spin on cause Israel’s actions, is cause for concern. The and effect: After the failed negotiations, dis- The Sunday Times of London subsequently IDF’s response to a deadly terror attack gruntled Palestinians started rioting, where- apologized after publishing a blatantly or a series of provocations often ends up upon Israel began responding with brutal anti-Israel cartoon by Gerald Scarfe on being presented as just another case of force. January 27 (International Holocaust Israeli aggression, seemingly out of the The dichotomy between reality and media Memorial Day) featuring Prime Minister blue, against long-suffering Palestinians. coverage proved the tipping point for Shraga Benjamin Netanyahu; (preceding pages) It’s invariably described as “dispropor- Simmons, an American-born Israeli jour- Simon Plosker, managing director of tional.” “We [often] see biased headlines nalist. He set up an email alert team whose Honest Reporting, in the Jerusalem office where chronology is inverted and Israeli members would notify one another of in- countermeasures against terror are the fo- stances of biased news coverage and fire off cus rather than the Palestinian terror that letters to editors, demanding corrections. prompted them in the first place,” Plosker The grassroots activism soon mushroomed progressive journals and blogs for anti-Se- notes. into a professionally run nonprofit organi- mitic content. In 2009, he moved to Israel, Similarly, whereas journalists exer- zation. Today, Honest Reporting has some and was appointed editor of CiF Watch a cise a healthy skepticism towards all Is- 150,000 subscribers worldwide. Headquar- year later, dedicating himself full time ever raeli sources, they rarely extend the same tered in Jerusalem, the media watchdog op- since to combating bias in The Guardian “courtesy” to Palestinian ones. They often erates offices in the United States, the United and its online mouthpiece. allow accusations by pro-Palestinian ac- Kingdom and Canada. Last December, without warning or ex- tivists about Israel’s alleged crimes and The start of the second intifada, with planation, CiF’s administrators deleted nefarious intentions to go unchecked, pub- the ensuing lopsided media coverage, was Levick’s account and erased all his posts lishing them as fact. also a turning point for Levick, a political in the talkback section of the site, in which, “One studio guest on an Australian science graduate of Temple University in he says, he strove to set the record straight Broadcasting Corporation radio show Philadelphia. “It caused me to drop my Oslo about Israel. “They banned me, a Zionist recently suggested that Israel had been delusions that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Jew, from their talkback section, even as responsible for attacking its own embas- was largely about territory,” he recalls. “I re- radical Islamists like Raed Salah [a leader sies [during a recent spate of terror attacks alized that Israel was in a war of survival.” of Israel’s Islamic Movement] and Hamas from India to Thailand] in a pretext for He began writing letters to editors in de- leaders are afforded above-the-line plat- a planned attack on Iran,” Plosker says. fense of Israel, and went on to work for the forms [for full-length essays] despite pro- “That disgusting canard was allowed to Anti-Defamation League, where he scoured moting extreme anti-Semitism,” he fumes, stand by the interviewer. Equally appall-

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ing was one Canadian television host’s as- up by , which published sertion on Quebec TV that Israel simply an op-ed by Sarah Schulman, an American didn’t deserve to exist. Which other country gay rights advocate and anti-Israel activist, has its own existence called into question in who argued that the Jewish state uses “such the media?” pinkwashing” to “conceal the continuing vio- lations of Palestinians’ human rights.” Often it’s not only what foreign media re- Pro-Israel bias? What pro-Israel bias? Well, port, but also what they don’t. Calumnies of according to pro-Palestinian media watchers, Jewish perfidy and Zionist brutality are com- it’s flagrant pro-Zionist bias that permeates monplace in the Arab and Palestinian media, the media. Last October, Middle East Moni- but almost none of it shows up in foreign me- tor (MEMO), a news agency that promotes a dia analyses about the “root causes” of the pro-Palestinian agenda, staged a book launch conflict. All “cycles of violence” and any lack at the University of London for “The Battle of peace are down to Israel’s “brutal” and “il- for Public Opinion in Europe,” which argues legal” occupation of , that mainstream European media outlets “rou- and that’s that. tinely espouse Israeli government propaganda In the same vein, whereas Israel is a mod- [in the service] of the Israel lobby in Europe.” ern, democratic, multicultural country in The launch’s panel featured The Guardian which citizens enjoy a vibrant cultural life and columnist Seamus Milne and Tim Llewellyn, boisterous free press, many foreign journalists the BBC’s former Middle East correspondent. prefer to ignore all this and frame almost any Llewellyn insisted that “a tremendously story, even about mundane matters of daily well-organized, careful, assiduous and ex- life, in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian tremely well-financed propaganda campaign” conflict. In news report after news report, Is- is under way in Britain “through the higher raelis and Palestinians are portrayed as mere levels of pro-Israel Zionists who are scattered extras in a great morality play of the oppres- at strategic points throughout the British es- A lot of sors and the oppressed. tablishment.” He lamented the pressure on This reductionist view leads to predicable the BBC to exercise “self-censorship” about journalists caricatures. In a recent article on the BBC’s Zionist “atrocities” by “an alien people in the have an website, the organization’s Gaza correspon- region [Middle East].” The Guardian’s Milne dent used the pretext of an upcoming show- seconded Llewellyn. “There are well-funded ideololgical down between Spanish footballing giants and well-organized organizations that cam- Real Madrid and Barcelona to present Pales- paign in support of Israel,” he said. “If you’re bias and their tinians as sport-loving underdogs under the editing in these areas, you will find pressure thumb of a mighty opponent. and campaigning constantly by those groups.” editors fail Then there’s Time magazine’s notorious Presumably, they were referring to the cover story on September 7, 2010: “Why Is- likes of Honest Reporting and CiF Watch. to uphold rael Doesn’t Care About Peace.” Featuring The charge of an orchestrated pro-Zionist PR journalistic a picture of Israelis smoking hookahs on a juggernaut to cow Western news organiza- beach, the report, by correspondent Karl Vick, tions into submission through letter writing standards describes Israelis as callous, happy-go-lucky campaigns and other tactics is nothing new. souls, who prefer to engage in “making mon- Vocal critics of Israel dismiss all noise about ey” rather than peace. The Anti-Defamation perceived anti-Israel bias in the media as just League condemned the article for its “insidi- another bogus claim of hasbara (literally “ex- ous subtext,” and Honest Reporting named planation,” but often used as a synonym for Vick “Dishonest Reporter of the Year” in its “Zionist propaganda”). (Top) Time magazine cover for an roundup of most noteworthy journalistic hit- Pro-Israel media watchers do call on their article that claimed that happy- and-run jobs. readers to fire off letters of complaint to “of- go-lucky Israelis do not care A few months later, Time followed up with fending” news organizations. Honest Re- about peace with Palestinians, a piece arguing that “Israel’s promotion of its porting openly engages in such pressure September 2010; (above) The progressive gay-rights record [is] a way to techniques. “Often, the sheer weight of the cover of Britain's New Statesman cover up ongoing human-rights abuses in the numbers of people sending complaints or just magazine insinuating Zionist West Bank and Gaza.” The theme was taken the exposure of an instance of bias can force control of Britain, January 2002

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a change,” Plosker acknowledges. “This can Israeli, adds. “A lot of journalists have an recent piece in The New York Times argued be anything from a simple correction or re- ideological bias and their editors fail to up- that they have accepted the two-state solu- traction all the way to, for instance, the firing hold journalistic standards. And that isn’t tion. The reporter didn’t have any quote that of CNN’s senior Middle East editor Octavia just true of Israel; it’s true of a large num- proved it, only quotes that he felt implied it. Nasr [in July 2010] after she tweeted her ad- ber of subjects. In fact, the [biased] media Journalists’ wishful thinking leads them to miration for Hezbollah founder Mohammad treatment of Israel is becoming closer to believe that both sides in the conflict have Hussein Fadlallah upon his death.” typical.” the same ethics and goals. That assumption But Levick, whose modest Jerusalem Context, balance and even common sense is rarely true.” apartment doubles as his office, rejects often take a backseat to agenda journalism, Plosker, however, cautions against crying the idea that he’s part of some “well-funded notes Rubin, who argues that “the media has wolf all too readily. “Some people attribute and well-organized campaign” of coercion become a tool in a political struggle.” The [all] anti-Israel media bias to outright anti- against The Guardian. “We support vigorous worst offenders, he says, are wire services like Semitism, but that’s an unsophisticated an- and open debate about Israel and Jewish-relat- Reuters, the and Agence swer to a multifaceted problem,” he says. ed issues, including issues of controversy [so France-Presse, which rely on local stringers “Occasionally, anti-Semitism does rear its long as they fall within the bounds of honest and freelance photographers, many of whom ugly head, but the reality is far more com- and fair criticism],” he counters. “Just like The seem to make no bones about playing fast plex. The Palestinian narrative has become Guardian, we engage in the marketplace of and loose with facts and misrepresenting dominant in Western discourse, particularly ideas. Our only weapons are our words, facts events. in academic and liberal circles. Today’s jour- and logic.” nalists graduated from campuses where the bias comes in several norm is a postmodern narrative that denies The foreign media can criticize Israel and forms – from Israel’s rightful historical place in the Mid- should, agrees Michelle Whiteman, a lawyer dle East.” who runs Honest Reporting’s operations in purposeful slants to That’s how the usual red herrings have Quebec, Canada. It’s the nature of a criticism selective omissions, taken unshakable hold, especially in op-eds: that holds a clue as to whether journalists do Israeli “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing,” and so in good faith. “It’s not anti-Semitic to criti- from subtle verbal cues “neo-colonialism.” Ironically, however, it’s cize Israel’s actions,” she stresses. “But a sin- Israeli society’s openness, not its “racist” gular preoccupation with those actions and a to outright hostility insularity, that can work against it, Plosker selective condemnation of them point in that stresses. “Israel is a free society and journal- direction. Take checkpoints and security bar- ists are at liberty to pursue stories without riers. Many countries have them, yet Israel’s Several wire photographers have over the hindrance from the state,” he says. “This is are often exclusively singled out as a symbol years been shown to pass off carefully staged much less so in the Palestinian territories, of repression, rather than as a measure of se- and choreographed Palestinian propaganda where journalists are more wary of report- curity.” events – so-called Pallywood productions – ing negative stories about the Palestinians for “Israel is held to far higher standards than as spontaneous happenings. And images do fear of losing access or, in the worst cases, other countries in the Middle East,” a foreign matter. For people who are largely unfamil- because of intimidation and threats of vio- correspondent with long experience in the re- iar with the history and current realities of lence.” gion concedes. “There’s a certain expectation the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the issue of Media bias doesn’t just skew views about by editors to have stories [adhere to] the Da- right and wrong gets filtered through select Israel; it can have severe real-life conse- vid and Goliath narrative,” he explains. “But media images. quences, Sela insists. “The media is a ma- I don’t think it’s because of anti-Israel bias. In some cases, thinly veiled advocacy jour- jor battlefield,” she says. “Negative reports They just don’t want to look insensitive [to the nalism hides behind a make-work pretense of coming out during the 2006 Lebanon War, Palestinians].” objectivity, as the justness of the Palestinian for example, affected the parameters that the But Barry Rubin doesn’t believe media bias cause is seen to override common journal- IDF could operate under” in trying to root is a matter of sensitivity. “Those of us who istic standards of impartiality, balance and out Hezbollah strongholds targeting Israel have seen behind the scenes know how bad it even accuracy. In other cases, simple wish- with rockets and missiles. is,” Prof. Rubin, a prolific author and Middle ful thinking is at work. And so, for pro-Israeli media watchers, the East expert, tells The Report. “Most editors “[Many] journalists’ desire for peace often media war carries on. “Our existence keeps have no trouble with complete bias. We have outweighs the evidence in front of them,” the media on notice and ensures a level of a number of issues at play here – sympathy argues blogger Elder of Ziyon, an IT profes- accountability that would not otherwise ex- for the underdog, progressives’ hostility to the sional who often dissects news articles and ist,” Plosker says. “Many battles, if left un- West, misdirection by the Palestinians. op-eds about Israel on his site. “Hamas’s fought, would lead to a far worse situation for “When you have that, you have conscious, leaders call for the destruction of Israel in Israel’s image in the media. We can’t let that deliberate bias,” Rubin, an American-born Arabic literally every day,” he says. “Yet a happen.” 

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