Two New York Times journalists get their facts wrong
about Israel, and Wall Street Journal reporter prefers inaccuracies to
corrections
By: LoriLowenthal Marcus Published: August 8th, 2013
NYT Jerusalem correspondent Jodi Rudoren wrote that the
US believes the "settlements" are illegal. That has never been the US
position. The NYT had to issue a correction. NYT Jerusalem correspondent Jodi
Rudoren wrote that the US believes the "settlements" are illegal.
That has never been the US position. The NYT had to issue a correction.
The New York Times recognized that its
correspondent in Jerusalem, Jodi Rudoren, had gone too far this time in
blithely vilifying Jews who live and breathe beyond the so-called Green Line.
Rudoren ascribed a position to the United States government about Israeli
policy which was flat out wrong. That was the only part of the otherwise
slanted and deceptive article which merited a slap on the wrist. Rudoren wrote
that the position of the U.S. is that Israeli towns and cities beyond the Green
Line are illegal, when in fact this government has taken no position on the
legality of Israeli Jewish towns in that region. The actual correction appears
at the end of this article.
Before we get to the begrudging but still
humiliating factual correction, take a stroll through the rest of her article.
In this article headlined, “Israeli Decree on West Bank Settlements Will Harm
Peace Talks, Palestinians Say,” Rudoren not only originally falsely stated that
the United States believes the “settlements” are illegal. Her language
throughout the piece makes clear her hostility to Jews daring to live beyond
what the esteemed Israeli statesman Abba Eban had termed the “Auschwitz
borders,” the lines drawn in 1949 at the end of the war against the
newly-reborn Israel, when surrounding Arab states attacked it rather than
permit a Jewish State in their midst.
For one thing, she described the early
stage approval of subsidies to homeowners in various places including in “Jewish
settlements in the West Bank territory that Israel seized in the 1967 war.” You’d
never know that in 1967 Israel (again) fought a defensive war and gained the
land in a battle for its existence. The verb Rudoren chose, “seized,” suggests
an aggressive action by the belligerent in military hostilities.
Given that the
New York Times is treated like Torah from Sinai by most American Jews, no wonder
they and the organizations those Jews tend to support believe that Israel
should give away that territory to people who never possessed it, and never –
until Israel legally acquired the land – expressed any interest in owning or
governing it themselves.
And it was not until the sixth paragraph of a 10
paragraph story that Israel is even permitted a voice to counter what Rudoren
already set up as a move by the Israeli government to expand “settlements”
which upset the Arab Palestinians and may now torpedo the “fragile peace talks.”
In the sixth paragraph the reader – if he is still reading – learns that all
that happened is the Israeli government has made a completely routine and
preliminary decision to provide assistance to homeowners in authorized towns
and villages for things like “education, housing, infrastructure projects,
cultural programs and sports, along with better mortgage rates and loans for
new homeowners.” Isn’t that what governments are supposed to do? Take care of
their citizens?
Rudoren distances her readers from identifying with Israelis
who might otherwise be considered normal homeowners. She points out that, “Among
the newcomers to the list are three formerly illegal outposts — Bruchin,
Rachelim and Sansana — that obtained government recognition last year.” Rudoren
chose not to more concisely and correctly refer to those three towns as “legal
and legitimate villages.”
But before Israel was permitted to offer a different
point of view, Rudoren first ran condemnations of the move by the infamous
Hanan Ashrawi, whose latest evidence of Jew and Israel hatred was the promotion
on the website of an NGO she founded which claimed that Jews drink Christian
blood on Passover. In the space of three sentences, Rudoren paints a clear
picture with Ashrawi’s words. Ashrawi describes Israel’s move as a “confidence-destruction
measure,” “attempts to grab more Palestinian land,” “provide settlers with
preferential treatment” and the announcement that “the decision would have ‘a
destructive impact’” on the current Israeli-Arab Palestinian talks.
Of course,
Mark Regev was given a cameo appearance in the sixth paragraph. But not to
worry, because in the concluding three paragraphs of the article there is
plenty to ensure that the lasting impression is one of an intransigent Israeli
government filled with “many right-wing settlement supporters” which “refused
to formally freeze settlement construction” in order to induce the
oh-so-compliant, peace-supporting Arab Palestinians to even sit at the table
with the Israelis.
Read more at: http://www.jewishpress.com/news/nyt-gets-us-position-on-israel-wrong-reveals-additional-animus/2013/08/08/ | The Jewish Press
Read more at: http://www.jewishpress.com/news/nyt-gets-us-position-on-israel-wrong-reveals-additional-animus/2013/08/08/ | The Jewish Press
No comments:
Post a Comment