Although the spin is hard to detect for the average reader, New York Times reportage of Middle East affairs is perniciously biased. In their seminal book, Israel-Palestine on Record: How the New York Times Misreports Conflict in the Middle East, Princeton professor Richard Falk and media critic Howard Friel argue that “the Times regularly ignores or under-reports a multitude of critical legal issues pertaining to Israel’s policies, including Israel’s expropriation and settlement of Palestinian land, the two-tier system of laws based on national origin evocative of South Africa’s apartheid regime, the demolition of Palestinian homes, and use of deadly force against Palestinians.” In other words, what is not said by the New York Times may be even more important than what is said.
In June of 2010, a year and a half after the Israeli military launched what a United Nations investigation described as “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population,” the New York Times sent a photographer into Gaza to capture a slice of daily life. Ethan Bronner, the Times Jerusalem bureau chief, wrote the narrative for the photo essay entitled “Gaza, Through Fresh Eyes,” in which he gushes about “jazzy cellphone stores and pricey restaurants … endless beaches with children whooping it up … the staggering quality of the very ordinary.” Seemingly lifted from an apolitical travel magazine, Bronner’s article merely alludes to families who have been “traumatized,” and omits any mention of the UN allegations of recently committed Israeli war crimes and human rights violations. Other than an oblique reference to “destroyed buildings” and “rubble,” Bronner’s travelogue also elides the vast civilian infrastructure Israel destroyed during the onslaught, including chicken farms, a flour mill, a sewage treatment plant, a UN school, vast tracts of civilian housing, government buildings, a prison, police stations, TV stations, newspapers … and between 600 and 700 factories, workshops and businesses. The impression left by Bronner? Gaza is an OK place; nothing remarkable to see there, least of all evidence of Israeli war crimes; move along, move along.
And yet, what is not disclosed is that Ethan Bronner is married to an Israeli citizen and has a son who is enlisted in the Israeli army. When news of these familial connections broke, Times public editor Clark Hoyt wrote an op-ed recommending that Bronner be reassigned to avoid any potential for bias. Executive editor Bill Keller refused, waiving the Times’s normally strict conflict of interest standards.
Times reporter Isabel Kershner is similarly compromised by elisions and distortions. When Kershner reported on Palestinian refugees in Syria who, in June 2011, nonviolently marched into the Golan Heights to protest, she failed to mention that the Golan Heights is Syrian territory illegally occupied by Israel. No government in the world recognizes the Golan Heights as legitimately part of the state of Israel. Kershner also omits the fact that the Palestinian refugees’ right of return to their homes is enshrined in UN resolutions and that Israel has consistently violated international law in preventing the refugees from returning to their homes. Let us also not forget that at this nonviolent protest the Israeli army killed 22 Palestinian and Syrian protesters. In addressing the apparently overwhelming violence against unarmed protesters, Kershner reports: “Israeli officials say they tried every nonlethal method of crowd control at their disposal” before they opened fire “at the feet of the protesters,” implying that the killings were unintentional, and unavoidable, and defied the laws of physics. Kershner quotes none of the protesters as to what they saw. If she had, she may have heard what activist and eyewitness Salman Fakhreddin told independent journalist Jillian Kestler-D’Amours: “Israel decided to kill people in order to frighten them because Israel is afraid of the delegitimization of the state of Israel and Israeli policy in the international community.” By now it may not be a surprise to learn that Kershner is an Israeli citizen who is married to an Israeli citizen and who spent “a couple decades in Israeli journalism and Jewish education” before joining the American paper in 2007.
In large part because of Ethan Bronner and Isabel Kershner’s ahistorical, context-free, reporting-in-a-vacuum, the New York Times is to blame for what Adbusters has previously called “the United States of Amnesia.” American citizens are left unaware of Israel’s current and historical violations of international law and are thus unable to question their government’s multibillion dollar military giveaways to Israel, a state that just happens to be these two reporters’ adopted home.
Read the original article HERE:
And a Blog from Michael Brull on Overland:
Beyond the headlines in Israel and Palestine
Written by Michael Brull on 29-08-2011
A neat story for the latest round of bloodshed in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories would run something like this: Palestinian terrorists attacked Israeli civilians. Eight Israelis were killed, and Israel responded with strikes that killed Palestinians believed to be responsible for the terrorism. A neat story of terrorism and counter-terrorism where Israel defends itself against terrorism. Then responsible commentary on whether Israel has exercised enough restraint in responding to terrorism.
It may be worth delving deeper, to try to gain some actual understanding of the situation and its dynamics. In March this year, a new round of hostilities broke out. Ha’aretz military correspondents Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff reported that the:
current tensions began exactly a week ago when Israel launched an air attack on a Hamas base in the ruins of the settlement of Netzarim, killing two Hamas men. That attack came in response to a Qassam fired from Gaza that landed in an open area. Hamas then responded with a barrage of 50 mortars on communities south of the Gaza Strip.
Israel then:
launched a series of air attacks in which a number of Hamas militants were wounded. Things worsened yesterday afternoon. After a round of mortar fire on kibbutzim east of Gaza, the Israel Defence Forces fired its own mortars right back at the source of the firing – at the Sajaiyeh neighbourhood east of Gaza City, killing four members of a family, including two children.
They went on to state: ‘Hamas TV repeatedly showed close-ups last night of the body of an 11-year-old boy, Mohammed Jihad al-Halu, who was killed by IDF fire.’
In this context, it should be noted: the Qassam rocket may not necessarily have been fired by Hamas. Other militant groups – including anti-Hamas groups – sometimes fire rockets at Israel from Gaza. However, Israel has reserved for itself the right to bomb Gaza as it sees fit. In December, Israel launched three airstrikes, purportedly in response to a rocket that was fired the previous week. In April, Israel bombed Gaza again, killing three Hamas members. The Israeli army claimed the men who it murdered were planning to kidnap Israelis. As per usual, it did not feel a need to grant any of the men due process, or even present evidence for its claims.
Read the rest HERE:
