How the mainstream media helps the terrorists
Another blogger I got to meet in person on Sunday was Richard Landes. Richard was deservedly acknowledged several times during the course of the day as being one of the prime movers in exposing the Mohamed Al-Dura fraud. In an op-ed in Sunday's JPost, he talked about the use of the western mainstream media by the Islamist terror organizations. Publishing lies about the Israelis will, at worst, get you pained protests; publishing anything that offends the Palestinians (or in Europe, the Muslims), could get you killed. Asked why British cartoonists pick on Israel but not the Palestinians, the head of the professional society that had just given its annual award to a depiction of Ariel Sharon devouring Palestinian children, said: "Jews don't issue fatwas."The problem is that it is rare that any country outside Israel pays a price for trashing our country. So they don't even consider it a possibility. That's why the apparent freeze on Israel's relations with the European Union so long as Sweden holds its Presidency is so important. Unfortunately, the rest of the world is unwilling or unable to make those who perpetrate frauds against us pay a price. We must force them to pay that price ourselves .
That rare candor aside, most journalists, for fear of losing their audience, cannot admit how much they're intimidated, to what extent they buy access to Palestinian sources by scrupulously following "the journalistic procedures with the Palestinian Authority for work in Palestine." Were they to tell the West what was really going on, at best they'd lose access, at worst, their lives.
So in order not to admit even to themselves that they're misreporting, they become advocates: "I'm for peace, justice and fairness, so I support the underdog Palestinians." "In the Middle East a picture can be worth 1,000 weapons," said Bob Simon. 'So,' reasons many a reporter, 'if the Israelis have the weapons, why not level the playing field by giving the 'weak' the victory in the battle of images?'
NO WONDER so many Middle East journalists take the side of the Palestinians. Only that kind of pack mentality can present the image of Israelis as killers of civilians, when Israel has by far the lowest rate of civilian casualties in the world - a 2:1 ratio of target to civilian vs. a 1:10 ratio for the next best. [By the way, the next best is the United States. CiJ].
It may seem "cost free" to trash Israel and "respect" Palestinian sensibilities in the short run, but the long-term consequences are destructive. Through the MSM's (and the NGOs') laundering of Palestinian propaganda as real news, Westerners have had their minds colonized by the Palestinian narrative: It is our fault they hate us; if we could only make enough concessions, we could fix the problem.
This susceptibility of Western news media to Palestinian disinformation imperils not just Israel (its apparent target), but the entire West. It never occurred to the European journalists, for example, whose use of Dura aroused the rage of their Muslim immigrant population, that they too would be the targets of jihad.
Read the whole thing.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:35 PM
1 Comments:
Europe has too many Muslims and too few Jews. And they pay no price if they offend Israel as we saw over the summer whereas they face internal unrest if anything happens Europe's Muslims dislike. And the antipathy to Israel is just going to deepen with the passage of time.
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