A TIME TO SPEAK
VOLUME I:3 (No. 3)
March
2001 – Adar 5761
You
shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
-- Exodus 20:13, Deuteronomy 5:16
Truthful speech abides forever, a lying tongue for but a moment.
-- Proverbs
12:19
Those whose purpose is to harm or
destroy Israel, adopt and spread the usual lies: The forgeries of The Protocols
of the Elders of Zion, denial of the Holocaust, even the medieval canard that
Jews murder non-Jews to bake matzah with their blood. They also invent current
political lies, that are less obviously bogus, and therefore more easily
accepted by well-meaning people.
One invention
is the description of Israel as the "aggressor", unlawfully occupying
"Palestinian territory" to which it can have no claim.
Another invention is a spurious version of United Nations
Security Council Resolution 242, passed in the wake of the Six Day War. This
version alters the text to create a demand that Israel withdraw unconditionally
from "all the territories" it won.
In fact, the Resolution was deliberately crafted not
to say that. It refers vaguely to withdrawal from undefined
"territories" – not "the territories" much less
"all the territories" – and only in the context of "agreed
and secure borders" to be negotiated. (Even this authentic text has no
foundation in historical precedence or international law when it calls upon a
nation that won a war of self-defense to accommodate demands by defeated aggressors.)
It takes no great effort to check these and similar
falsehoods against recorded reality. That cannot be expected of readers of
newspapers and audiences of newscasts, but it is incumbent on those who are in
policymaking positions, who teach, or who bring news to the public, that they
verify statements before they accept and disseminate falsehoods. If they
neglect that duty, they become accomplices in deceit.
Those who invent falsehoods may then believe they are truth.
They espouse them as righteous, and so all who dispute them are wicked. There
is no need for those who read and hear the falsehoods to follow along this path
of delusion.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
"Truth is
generally the best vindication against slander."
-- Abraham
Lincoln
Anti-historical
inventions in the anti-Jewish cause extend even to the American Founding
Fathers, as exposed by Joseph Farah, WorldNetDaily, 24 January 2001:
Were America's founders
anti-Semites? Yes, if you are to believe the vicious propaganda increasingly
seeping into periodicals and speeches in the Arab world. In December, Egypt's
General Hassan Sweilem authored a two-part series in the weekly October
titled "The Jewish Personality and the Israeli Action." The series
was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI)
Here's an excerpt: "Historians,
race-studies professors and sociologists agree that humanity, throughout its
long history, has never known a race such as the Jewish race in which so many
bad qualities -- base and loathsome -- have been gathered. The Jews had a
quality which distinguished them from others: whenever they gathered in a
particular place and felt comfortable there, they turned the place into a den
of evil, corruption, incitement to internal strife and the spreading of wars.
The Jews took advantage of the lack of attention by the people and rulers to
the plots and traps designed by the Jews."
Sweilem then retraces his version of
"history" right up through the Holocaust, which he proclaims a
"lie." "This is a huge
lie which they managed to market around the world," Sweilem writes. .
. . . "The first American presidents warned
against the danger of Jewish hegemony over American life,"
Sweilem claims. "First and
foremost was President George Washington who warned in 1788: 'It is troubling
that the … nation has not purified its land from these pests. The Jews
are the enemies of America's well-being and the corrupters of its prosperity.'
Further, Washington writes about the Jews: 'They operate against us in a way
much more effective than the enemy's armies. They endanger our liberty and our
interests one hundred times more than the enemy. It is most troubling that the
states have not begun long ago to follow them, because they are a plague (threatening)
society.'"
Of course, anyone who has read the
precious writings of George Washington can instantly recognize from the style
alone, not just the substance, that this statement is a forgery through and
through. But Sweilem continues to libel another of America's early statesman.
'American President Benjamin Franklin [sic] said in his speech to the 1789
Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia: A great danger threatens the United
States -- the Jewish danger. When the Jews settle down, we will discover that
they are weakening the determination of the people, shaking up the ethics of
trade and establishing a government. When they meet resistance, they will
suffocate the nation economically.'
There's more, but you get the idea.
You might be wondering which U.S. history textbook Sweilem used to find this
quotation from Franklin, who, of course, never served as an American president.
It turns out the forgery first appeared in 1935 in German in the Nazis'
'Handbook on the Jewish Question.' . . . .
As America nears Washington's
birthday, it might be a good time to recall what Washington actually wrote
about the Jews, a people whose history he studied in the scriptures for clues
about building a new civilization in the New World. In an August 1790 letter to
Moses Seixas, the warden of the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, R.I., the
President wrote,
"It is now no more
that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of
people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent rights. For happily
the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to
persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its
protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all
occasions their effectual support." Washington then concluded with a
quotation from Micah 4:4: "May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who
dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other
inhabitants while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree,
there shall be none to make him afraid."
Some current mendacity is cited in excerpts from
"Lies and Libel of Israel in the Palestinian Authority",
PMW (Palestinian Media Watch), 25 February 2001:
Libels, lies, and false accusations
against Israel and Jews are frequent, prominent components of the Palestinian
leadership's public discourse and in the Palestinian media. Suha Arafat's
accusation, made while standing next to Hillary Clinton, that Israel was
poisoning Palestinians was consistent with standard Palestinian libels.
The quantity and intensity of these libels have increased
lately with the aim of presenting Israel and Jews as evil, treacherous enemies
that pose a mortal danger to the Palestinians, to Islam, and to all that is
holy to them. The intent of this campaign is to intensify the hostile
atmosphere toward Israel and is consistent with the Palestinian Authority's
policy of fostering hatred toward Israel. [. . . .]
In a sequel to Suha Arafat's accusations, the Palestinian
Authority's newspapers reported again about gas poisonings: "Medical
sources reported yesterday evening that more than 40 residents were injured in
a strange occurrence of hysteria and nervous collapse as a result of their
inhaling poison gas, fired for the first time by the Israeli occupation forces
on defenseless residents. Medical specialists are of the opinion that it is
nerve gas, prohibited by international law
[Al Ayyam, 13 February 2000, and a similar report in Al Quds]."
Two other recent Palestinian "medical" reports:
"Senior medical sources related yesterday that the occupation forces used
a new kind of lethal bullets against innocent residents. The new bullets have
sharp metal wings and they fly at great speeds [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, 28 October
2001]." "Authoritative medical sources revealed that there is an
increase in the average number of deformed births in the Shafaa hospital in
Gaza. They do not deny the possibility that this phenomenon is associated with
depleted uranium [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, 31 January 2001]."
There is of course no basis to any of this. Not only has the
Israeli Army categorically refuted the allegations, but it is clear that these
claims are in the same category as the Palestinian libel that Israel infected
Palestinians with AIDS. [ . . . . ]
The portrayal of Israel as wanting to expand to occupy all
the Arab states is a common lie. This is
exemplified in a particularly venomous video clip entitled This is How they
Humiliated My Mother that began airing recently. A teacher is depicted in the
video clip with a classroom of Jewish children wearing kippot (religious
skullcaps) in front of the Israeli flag, teaching: "The Land of Israel
from the Nile to the Euphrates" [Palestinian Television, 14 February
2001]. The video clip is shown as if were an actual classroom in a Jewish
school. The actors speak Hebrew.
The denial of Jewish history and tradition with the goal of
negating Israel's historical right to exist, is policy within the Palestinian Authority's
formal and informal educational frameworks. In textbooks and similarly in
educational television broadcasts, the P.A.'s leadership and educators erase
the entire Jewish past, denying Jewish presence in Jerusalem and the Land of
Israel. The Palestinian go to especially great lengths to try to refute that
Jerusalem is the site of the Temple. . . . . This week Sheikh Ikrama Sabri, the
PA-appointed Mufti of Jerusalem, released a religious ruling, a
"Fatwa", denying the Jewish connection to the Kotel: "No
stone of the Western Wall has any connection to Hebrew history". [ . . . . ]
This distortion is part of the continuing attack on Jewish
tradition by the Mufti who, a few months ago, said: "There
is not a single stone in Palestine that proves the [historical] Jewish
existence [in the land" [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, 15 October 2000].
The Kotel, the Wall known as the Western Wall
or the Wailing Wall, is a remnant of the Second Temple. For at least 2,000
years, Jews all over the world turn in its direction for prayer. Visitors to
the Wall often place written personal prayers in the cracks between the stones.
The PA Mufti now proclaims that Jews are not permitted to
touch the Wall, because it is not a Jewish site but part of the Muslim Al-Aqsa Mosque.
(The mosque itself was originally a Christian church built centuries after the
destruction of the Temple, and converted into a mosque in the Seventh Century
C.E.).
IMRA (Independent Media Review and Analysis)
asked a spokesman for the Mufti:
"So as far as Islam is concerned the Jews should not be
putting notes in the Wall, they should not be touching the Wall, they should
not be doing anything with that wall?".
"Exactly. And we believe that this is our religious
property and we will take it back from them one day."
"Get your
facts first. Then you can distort them as much as you wish."
-- Mark Twain
Some journalists fail to heed this advice. They skip the
facts and go straight to the distortions. When the subject is Israel, the
reporting that is distorted or biased, careless or ignorant, shoots up beyond
any statistical chance or law of averages.
1] Affix standard epithets to the names of selected
personalities and parties: Those who do not follow the approved ideology
are "right-wing" "hard-line" "ultra-nationalist"
"extremist". Rarely are those of approved persuasion labeled
"left-wing" or "soft-line" "anti-national".
2] Use Arabic versions of Israelite place names: The
medieval Arabic Harem el-Sharif [Noble Sanctuary] gets preference over
the ancient Hebrew "Temple Mount". Some reporters may add that Harem
el-Sharif" is the place that "the Jews call Temple Mount".
It is often designated as "sacred to Muslims and Jews", only
occasionally in order of seniority as "sacred to Jews and Muslims".
Either way, there is rarely any distinction between what this hill means to the
Jews as the site of the First and Second Temples and the worldwide focus of
their worship for 3,000 years, in contrast to the meaning to Muslims of a hill
never mentioned in the Koran, and who center their worship on Mecca and Medina.
3] Broadcasters especially submit news items about Israel to
review by its deadly foes. News on Great Britain is not regularly followed by a
comment solicited from Sinn Fein, but news about Israel is regularly followed
by a comment from the PLO, or – for change of menu – an Israeli
known to be politically correct. The broadcaster need not trouble to learn and
understand the relevant facts and background – just ask Hanan Ashrawi.
Accurate and fair news reporting need not preclude the
expression of opinion, whether the reader/viewer finds it gratifying or vexing.
That's the reason for editorials and op-ed columns. If they are based on
information and logic, so much the better. It does preclude mixing the opinions
in with the news reporting, and/or slanting the reporting to fit the opinions.
1]. In the early days of the Oslo War (a/k/a Al-Aqsa
Intifada), Palestinian gunmen in the Gaza Strip opened fire on an Israeli
position and the Israelis fired back. A photographer caught a picture of an
Arab man and his twelve-year-old son caught in the crossfire, huddled between a
wall and a small barrier. Moments later, the boy was fatally struck by a
bullet.
The picture and the story aroused spontaneous pity and
horror worldwide, and rightly so. Israel was blamed worldwide for the boy's
death, but not rightly so. A journalist witness did admit that the man and boy
could not have been seen from the Israeli position, but that did not mitigate
the impression made by the picture.
Technical experts thereafter produced a detailed study
showing that relative positions, lines of fire, angles and trajectories make it
almost certain that the fatal bullet was fired by a Palestinian gunman. This
study was virtually ignored by the news media. (It did get a mention on BBC
Radio News, dismissed with the words "Pooh-pooh".)
Thus, the grievous loss of a young life has been exploited
for propaganda. Countless people around the world are left with the indelible
impression that is Israeli military policy to murder Arab children.1
2]. On 28 September 2000, an Associated Press photographer
snapped a picture of a young man on the ground, injured and bleeding, with a
man in military uniform standing over him wielding a baton. In the background
can be seen an automobile and part of the sign of a filling station.
This picture was distributed worldwide by the AP, with the
caption: "An Israeli Policeman and a Palestinian on the Temple
Mount". Many newspapers featured it large and in color on their front
pages – including the venerable New York Times. Readers worldwide
were thus given prominent and graphic proof of Israeli brutality.
The father of the youth saw the picture and spread the word
of inaccuracies in the caption. The victim was not a Palestinian, he was an
American from Chicago, who was studying at a Yeshiva in Jerusalem. He was not
attacked by an Israeli policeman. He and two friends had been dragged from a
taxi by a rampaging mob of local Arabs who beat and stabbed them. The Israeli
in uniform -- policeman or soldier – rescued them from the mob. The site
of the attack was a Jerusalem street, not Temple Mount (an unlikely venue for a
filling station).
Otherwise, the caption was reasonably correct.
Even
when there is a real admission of error, it never catches up with the original
untruth. Again, countless numbers of people around the world have been left
with an indelible impression of Israeli brutality to Arabs.
In many journalistic and government circles, it was accepted
as axiomatic: On 28 September 2000, Ariel Sharon, then Leader of the Opposition
in the Knesset, visited the ancient Jewish holy sites on Temple Mount. (The
Jordanian administration of 1948-1967 banned any Jew of any nationality from
visiting these sites.) He never entered a mosque or showed it any disrespect.
However, the mere presence of a Jew on Temple Mount was so
outrageous an offense to Arab sensibilities that they have not been able to
restrain themselves from rock-throwing, shooting and bombing in almost six
months since then. All the trouble and annoyance to the world, therefore, was
caused by Ariel Sharon.
A PLO official burst this bubble. As reported by
MEMRI, 9 March 2001:
PA Minister: The Intifada Was Planned from
the Day Arafat Returned from Camp David: PA Communications Minister, 'Imad
Al-Faluji, visited Lebanon and spoke at the 'Ein Al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp.
In his speech Al-Faluji stated that the Al-Aqsa Intifada was pre-meditated, and
was the Palestinian response to their failure to achieve their goals at the
Camp David negotiations."
The Jerusalem Post, 4
March 2001:
Palestinian Authority Communications Minister Imad Faluji
told a PLO rally in the Ein Hilwe refugee camp in South Lebanon on Friday that
the five-month-old intifada was not a spontaneous reaction to the September
visit of Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount, but was planned
after peace talks failed in July.
"It [the uprising] had been planned since [PA] Chairman
[Yasser] Arafat's return from Camp David, when he turned the tables on the
former US president and rejected the American conditions," Falouji said.
*
* * * * * * * * * * *
To chronicle
the false witness of false reporting by newspapers, broadcasting networks and
organizations such as Amnesty International would take volumes. Time
Magazine alone could provide enough fodder for a Master's Thesis or even a
Doctoral Dissertation. Time on the election of Menahem Begin as Prime
Minister of Israel gave its readers a helpful guide to pronunciation:
"Begin rhymes with Fagin". Time for more than thirty years has
been presenting Arafat and the PLO as Robin Hood and the Merry Men in
kaffiyahs.
Tzemach
News Service posts on its website surveys and analyses of media bias against
Israel. Some of the most recent examples are in its issue of 11 March. 2001:
Last week the world witnessed several acts of terrorism --
an IRA car bomb at the BBC offices in London, and two deadly Palestinian bomb
attacks against Israeli civilians -- one in a crowd in Netanya, the other a
taxi in the Galilee. This prompted
HonestReporting.com to ask: How were the two stories reported? A survey
of CNN and BBC indicates a pattern of anti-Israel bias. Both Web sites labeled
the IRA bombers "terrorists" -- and then did verbal contortions to
avoid calling Palestinians by the same incriminating appellation. Instead,
Palestinian bombers are referred to as "militants".
The New York Times headline of March 5th read
"Suicide Bomber Kills 3 Israelis A Day After 6 Palestinians Die". The
story was written by Deborah Sontag, a Jewish journalist . . . . Sontag begins
her story of the Netanya bombing after the misleading headline with the fact
that "only" three Israelis were killed, balanced against the
unrelated fact that six Palestinians were killed the day before. Sontag
deliberately leaves out the fact that over 70 Israelis were maimed by the
Palestinian suicide bomber. Instead, she begins a defensive, damage control
explanation, well-crafted to redirect the readers' shock and anger away from
the terrorist's despicable act. Sontag launches into a plea for other
Palestinians, six of whom were killed by Israelis in other areas during
shootouts the day before. Sontag neglects to mention these casualties were
[inflicted] in self-defense after Palestinian gunfire attacks against Israeli
civilians. She and the New York Times have also never mentioned that
there have been more than 3300 Palestinian attacks with gunfire, bombs and
firebombs against Israelis since the Al Aksa Intifada began last October.
A CNN article (February 25, 2001), entitled "Violence
mars Mardi Gras parties in Austin, Seattle," reports: "[P]olice in
Seattle used pepper spray and rubber bullets to break up an unruly crowd of up
to 2,000 people after bars closed at 2 a.m. Many in the crowd were drinking,
removing their clothes or climbing on cars and light posts, police spokeswoman
Pam McCammon said." As Seattle police fire on the crowd with rubber
bullets, where is the media outrage against this excessive use of force? Where
is the international inquiry?
Israeli soldiers are consistently condemned for using these
same rubber bullets, despite the fact that Israelis are attacked with firebombs
and live ammunition –- an arguably greater danger than drunken Seattle
partiers whose act of aggression was 'removing their clothes'. It is also
interesting that CNN refers here to "rubber bullets", whereas in
reports on Israel, CNN goes out of its way to use the more ominous description:
"rubber-coated steel bullets". Ironically, the Mardi Gras incident
comes the same week that the US State Department issued a human rights report
condemning Israel for "often using excessive force against Palestinian
demonstrators". This also comes on the heels of a report that Taliban
troops rounded up and shot an estimated 500 civilians in central Afghanistan.
There was no UN condemnation.
The Freeman
Center for Strategic Studies circulated an example of how much misinformation
can be squeezed into a few sentences by the U.S. National Public Radio (NPR), 6
March 2001:
Shortly after the outbreak of
the current Palestinian "intifada" or uprising, National Public
Radio's Jennifer Ludden reported: "Today is a repeat of the last three
days . . . You've got this Goliath of an
Israeli army with guns. In some places yesterday they used armored tanks. There
were battle helicopters buzzing overhead. At one point in the Gaza strip
yesterday, Israeli soldiers fired an anti-tank missile. All this directed at
young kids with stones".
NPR's wildly inflammatory and
inaccurate report -- the weaponry cited hadn't been directed at kids, the tanks
were only a deterrent, the helicopters brought in to rescue an Israeli shot by
Palestinians, and the anti-tank missile used against Palestinian snipers firing
at Israelis from high-rise buildings - was only a mild caricature what has been
typical news coverage of the escalating conflict.
Judy Lash
Balint reports on conditions of reporting in and about Israel. From
"Trouble in the Holy Land", WorldNetDaily, 6 March 2001:
Extensive interviews with correspondents based here, as well
as those who have flown in to cover the ever-widening Mideast crisis, reveal a highly
complex journalistic reality that is anything but conducive to unbiased
reporting.
Within the Jerusalem-based press corps of several hundred
reporters, there are varying degrees of knowledge and understanding of the
situation. After the first week of the violence, many media outlets reassigned
journalists from other posts to assist their colleagues in Jerusalem. In some
cases, these people did have previous experience covering the Middle East, but
in most instances, the journalists landed in their bureaus at Jerusalem Capital
Studios with little background on the history, geography or political landscape
of the area.
To whom do they turn for a crash course on the Israel-Arab
conflict? By and large it's other journalists who provide them with an overview
of the lay of the land. . . . . Thus, as Fiamma Firenstein, the Israel
correspondent for Italy's La Stampa newspaper points out, 'the extraordinary
informal power of the media -- iconoclastic, sporty, ironic, virtually all of
one mind', comes into play. [ . . . . ] For most of the American Colony
Hotel-based Western correspondents, there are certain 'given' assumptions that
provide the backdrop for all their coverage. Topping the list is the notion
that Palestinians are engaged in a noble struggle for independence and Israeli
oppressors are using their might and muscle to stand in their way.
Journalists arrive at this view based both on experiences in
their own native lands as standard-bearers for minority rights and other
liberal causes, but also as a result of their reliance on local assistance here
in Israel. Since very few of the foreign correspondents in Israel are fluent in
Hebrew or Arabic, they rely on a network of local sources as well as the
service of "fixers" -- locals who can 'fix' situations for them.
Currently, some 400 Palestinian Authority residents are in possession of Israel
Government Press Office credentials. [ . . . .]
When [TV anchorman] Ted Koppel taped a "Nightline"
show at the East Jerusalem YMCA in the early days of this intifada, several
smartly dressed, attractive, young English-speaking Arabs made sure they saved
a chair for New York Times bureau chief Deborah Sontag. When Sontag arrived,
she was greeted with kisses by one of the young women in the group. In
contrast, an older Israeli audience member who went over to introduce himself
was given a cursory nod by Sontag, absorbed in conversation with her chic
friends.
The influence of Arab TV crewmembers is obvious even in the
offices of some news outlets. At the ABC-TV studio, for instance, the only map
hanging in the office is dated March 2000 and displays the title
"Palestine".
A reporter for a Canadian paper explains how knowledge of
Arabic can be a very useful thing. In Beit Jalla last December, the IDF sent a
missile into the Church of St. Nicholas, causing little damage. The PA called a
news conference there. In English, the local clergy said, "Oh, this is so
terrible. See what the Israelis are doing". In Arabic, they were overheard
saying to each other: "That [expletive] Arafat. Why can't he keep his guns
away. He'll get us all killed".
But most journalists speak very little Arabic, so they use
Palestinian crews, which creates another problem. The harassment of Palestinian
journalists critical of Yasser Arafat is well documented by Israeli and
Palestinian human rights organizations. The Committee to Protect Journalists
wrote in an Oct. 20, 2000 report: "Major newspapers routinely avoid
coverage of issues such as high-level PA corruption and mismanagement, human
rights abuses by security forces, and any reporting that might cast Arafat in a
negative light. Moreover, the major Palestinian dailies all enjoy cozy
relations with the PA, further blunting their editorial edge."
Coercion, abduction and violence by PA security chief Jibril
Rijoub's forces is a fact of life for east Jerusalem Arabs. Who knows under
what pressure Palestinians working for Western news organizations operate, or
to whom they report? [ . . . . ]
[O]ne Hebrew-speaking British newspaper correspondent who
requested anonymity noted that the self-censorship exercised by reporters in
the Middle East today is understood and tacitly accepted by the home offices of
their news bureaus. "They turn a blind eye to it because they know they
couldn't function at all without the help of the locals", he said. . . .
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The Balint report cited above also quotes Lee Hockstader,
Jerusalem Bureau Chief for The Washington Post as saying: "We
suffer from a deluge of information".
Perhaps information about the very roots and foundation of
the nation and society he covers floated past him in the deluge. He informed
readers that Ariel Sharon swore his oath of office as Prime Minister on "a
Hebrew version of the Old Testament".
Aaron Lerner, Director of IMRA, asks: "Is
the Hebrew version a translation of the King James English?"
1 Addendum: In March 2002, a most sophisticated technical
analysis done in Germany shows that the boy could not possibly have been hit by
gunfire from the Israeli post. It was then supposed that he had been killed by
PLO gunfire. Still further study and analysis now suggest that the entire
"shooting" of the boy was a hoax, staged by a French television
reporter and his cameraman. These revelations have been given little if any
notice by the news media that made the original false story an international cause
celebre.]