With Arafat gone, the television screens of America are filled with “Middle East experts” who tell us that it was Arafat who was the obstacle to peace and that a new dawn is now upon us. Last night on Hardball with Chris Matthews, the host and caption team couldn’t even pronounce or spell the name of guest Palestinian Legislative Council member Hanan Ashrawi, repeatedly referring to her as Ashwari. Commentary from the guests was similarly insightful. Today, MSNBC’s Lester Holt continued the Ashwari mangling and “Terrorism expert” Harvey Kushner ludicrously claimed an Arafat/Al-Qaida link. Switch the channel, no real difference. It was the kind of Middle East coverage that got Bush reelected. Read more about Blaming Arafat for Israel's torpedoing of Oslo
In Britain, the recent publication of Glasgow University Media Group’s book ‘Bad News from Israel’ has again highlighted the depth of ignorance around the Israel-Palestine conflict and the media’s inadequacies in providing vital historical and legal context within its news coverage. Looking beyond the realm of TV news to media coverage of the conflict as a whole, it is no surprise that the likes of News International’s Times, or the Daily Telegraph with its explicit pro-Israel editorial policy, would be unwilling to address the ideological issues that lie at the heart of the conflict, but what some might find surprising is that this ideological void also exists within the supposedly liberal/centre-left press such as the Guardian and Independent. Benjamin Counsell makes the case, Guardian comment editor and columnist Seumas Milne responds. Read more about The Guardian of Zionism: The "Liberal" Press and its Missing Contexts
The Economist has a way with cover art. In early 2001, the magazine lampooned George W. Bush’s first transatlantic trip with a cover photo of Neil Armstrong walking on the moon: “Bush goes to Europe,” the caption read. Intellectual, witty and harmless, it was the Monty-Python-meets-MI6 humor that characterizes a magazine that’s above the vainglory of bylines. Last week’s cover showing a photo of Ariel Sharon with an olive branch in his mouth—“Israel’s unlikely dove”—had a different resonance. What was mildly amusing for Economist readers was a cheap shot to Palestinians: Israel’s mass destruction of olive groves is a frustration tactic that Israel has used to displace Palestinians for the past 56 years. Read more about The Economist Sheds Some Bad Habits
“The book is based on a very long research study centered on public knowledge (from Europe and the US). We found that everybody in our sample had watched news on the conflict; they had memories of it, they could describe events they had seen. However, what we found was that, overwhelmingly, very few people understood the origins, the causes of the conflict.” Greg Philo, author of Bad News From Israel, explains in an interview with the Palestine Report his troubling research findings regarding media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the U.S. and the U.K. Read more about "A failure by the Western media"
One need not look further than the present, Gaza’s “Red October”. To date, Israeli forces have killed over 140 Palestinians, while some ten-times that number are homeless and starving. For the most part, the Times has its snake oils out again. A few exceptions stand out, like the vaguely balanced and grimly titled feature by Steven Erlanger, “Intifada’s Legacy at Year 4: A Morass of Faded Hopes”; or the October 4 op-ed by Michael Tarazi, which, unlike other Times op-eds, was pulled from the Web site the following day. Zachary Wales reports. Read more about The New York Times' coverage of Operation "Days of Penitence" in Gaza
If Americans appreciated the scale of human rights abuses committed by Israeli colonists in the occupied territories, they would condemn the journalists who keep them in the dark, a US peace activist says. Kim Lamberty, a member of the Christian Peacemakers Teams (CPT), has told Aljazeera.net on Tuesday that a cruel and criminal practice is largely going unreported: settlers are routinely attacking children on their way to school. And Lamberty should know. Unable to walk since a vicious attack on 29 September by Jewish colonists, she says physical assaults on schoolchildren and the volunteers who escort them have all increased in the past two weeks. Read more about Of settler crimes and media silence
“Three and a half years ago, when the current Palestinian uprising began, I started to look into Israel and Palestine. I had never paid much attention to this issue before and so - unlike many people - I knew I was completely uninformed about it. I had no idea that I was pulling a loose piece of thread that would steadily unravel, until nothing would ever be quite as it had been before.” If Americans Knew Executive Director Alison Weir looks at an old subject in a knew way - the cover-up of the truth of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the progressive press as well as the mainstream media. Read more about Israel and Palestine, Finally: A chapter from CENSORED 2005
In a groundbreaking departure, a recently released book by a major progressive institution dedicated to exposing “censorship” in the American media reveals that the organization itself also omitted information on the Israeli-Palestinian issue over its 20-plus years of operations. The book, CENSORED 2005, is the most recent in a series produced by “ProjectCensored,” a highly respected media research organization whose mission is “To Tell The News That Didn’t Make the News.” The strongly worded chapter, by If Americans Knew founder Alison Weir, describes the history of Israel, its continuing violations of human rights, and the cover-up on this issue in the American press. Read more about New book breaks censorship on Palestinian issue
Anyone following mainstream media today couldn’t miss the news today. CNN reported that two suicide bombers set off almost simultaneous blasts on buses in Beer Sheva, killing 16 people in addition to themselves. At least 93 people were wounded. Usually, such attacks are followed with a wide range of condemnations. While mainstream media tend to portray suicide bombings as a return to violence after a “relatively quiet” period, at least 436 Palestinians have been killed since March 14. This month alone, Israeli forces killed 43 Palestinians and injured 285. This underscores the lack of evenhanded attention given to loss of life in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Read more about Israel killed 436 Palestinians in past 'quiet' six months
The “terrorist” charges against Shahawar Matin Siraj and James El Shafay of New York are nothing short of illegal entrapment. Regardless of what happens from this point on, their futures are ruined. Ironic that Siraj, a 21-year-old Pakistani immigrant who works longer hours than President Bush, in addition to attending night school, came to America for freedom and opportunity. His crime, as spelled out clearly in the complaint filed against him last weekend, was his “hatred of America.” In the coming days, the tabloid press will demonize Siraj and El Shafay, , while the moderate New York Times will dance around the digestible semantics of “Other” and the “anti-Americanist” template of Other’s mindset. Read more about New York Plays the Arab Card
