In my previous post, I wrote about the obvious antisemitism that is displayed by the world media when Israel’s attempts at self defense are reported. In what other ways does the media show its’ bias? The mainstream media responds differently to expressions of anti-Semitism from people on the left and the right. In the past few years, two prominent Hollywood personalities have made clear expressions of anti-Semitism. The two proponents of these anti-Semitic feelings were treated very differently by the media.
Mel Gibson, a religious conservative, uttered offensive antisemitic remarks when he was apprehended during a traffic stop. He was drunk at the time, but that was not accepted as an excuse. He was lambasted by the media for his comments, and deservedly so. The entertainment industry followed suit and expressed its’ disapproval of Gibson’s comments and the rest of his bigoted activities that evening. There are indications that his career has never recovered from these and other racist remarks.
Contrast this with the media response to antisemitic comments uttered by Oliver Stone. During a recent interview with the Sunday Times, he claimed that Jewish control of the media encouraged Hollywood to focus on the Holocaust and also prevented the media to put the rise of Hitler in Germany in correct context. He also claimed that Israel had adversely affected American foreign policy for years and stated that Iran was not as bad as it was being portrayed. A few days later, he made a half-hearted apology for these horrendous comments. What did the media do? Not much. Did his career suffer? Not really.
Why? I contend that the difference in the liberal media’s treatment of Mel Gibson’s and Oliver Stone’s anti-Semitic remarks stems from the fact that Gibson is a religious conservative and Stone is a liberal progressive, who espouses many of the ideas that they themselves support. Among those ideas, it is fashionable among the Hollywood liberal elite to criticize Israeli policy (in a way that can only be antisemitic as well), and blindly supporting the Palestinian narrative without accurate knowledge of the facts on the ground. (As an example, let me remind you of the Time article that I recently wrote about on this blog.) They act as if Israel is huge and strong like Goliath, while the Palestinians and other Arabs are little Davids. The liberal media continues its’ blind support of the ‘downtrodden’ Palestinians because it is populated by lazy individuals who continue to advocate the progressive/liberal nonsense that ignores the size and population difference between Israel and the 50+ Arab/Muslim nations. Reality is not changed by laziness.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Antisemitism and the Media- Part I
Antisemitism seems to have become mainstream, nowadays. Anti-Israel sentiment is dismissed by those who espouse it, as mere policy disagreements with Israel and its actions. However, this anti-Israel sentiment rises to the level of rank antisemitism when a double standard is employed by Israel’s critics. These critics seem to expect more from Israel than what would be expected from other countries in a similar position.
Israel has been bombarded with thousands of rockets from Gaza, since the unilateral withdrawal that took place in 2005. After this unilateral withdrawal, the Palestinians destroyed structures and greenhouses that were left in usable condition, and then elected a terrorist organization to govern in Gaza. Thousands of rockets then began to rain down on Israel, from positions deep within Gaza and from areas closer to the border with Israel.
In response to these rockets, Israel is has been encouraged to utilize restraint and not to respond militarily. Israel’s leaders exercised enormous restraint for an inordinate amount of time until December 2008 when they launched Operation Cast Lead into Gaza to rout out the terrorists launching these attacks and to destroy their firing positions. World leaders and others who criticize Israel and claim that the Gaza campaign was disproportionate should ask themselves what their responses would be if faced with attacks launched against their civilians from enemy territory. Would they permit such egregious behavior towards their own citizens without responding in kind? I highly doubt it. But Israel is expected to absorb such attacks without reacting.
This double standard has been more pronounced recently in the aftermath of the Gaza flotilla incident. Israel has placed a blockade on Gaza that is permissible under international law, to prevent the importation of goods and supplies that could be used by Hamas and other terror organizations to construct smuggling tunnels and produce other items that can be used against Israeli civilians. In an obvious attempt to run the blockade, the Free Gaza movement organized the flotilla. Everyone knows that activists on the Mavi Marmara attacked the Israeli commandos (the video clearly shows this), but Israel is still accused of using disproportionate force, In addition, members of the media and the international community conveniently forget that Gaza also shares a border with Egypt, which participates in the blockade of Gaza, along with Israel. Much of the media also did not accurately report the story of this altercation, and in fact, some media outlets (specifically, Reuters) altered photographs of the incident to obscure the fact that many of the activists on the Mavi Marmara were armed with deadly weapons. Unfortunately, this is not the first time that Reuters has altered photographs in an attempt to implicate Israel in unethical and inappropriate behavior. Photographs of Beirut during the 2006 Lebanon war were altered to infer that the damage to Beirut was much greater than it actually was.
I doubt that this will be the last time that Reuter’s unethically does this.
Israel has been bombarded with thousands of rockets from Gaza, since the unilateral withdrawal that took place in 2005. After this unilateral withdrawal, the Palestinians destroyed structures and greenhouses that were left in usable condition, and then elected a terrorist organization to govern in Gaza. Thousands of rockets then began to rain down on Israel, from positions deep within Gaza and from areas closer to the border with Israel.
In response to these rockets, Israel is has been encouraged to utilize restraint and not to respond militarily. Israel’s leaders exercised enormous restraint for an inordinate amount of time until December 2008 when they launched Operation Cast Lead into Gaza to rout out the terrorists launching these attacks and to destroy their firing positions. World leaders and others who criticize Israel and claim that the Gaza campaign was disproportionate should ask themselves what their responses would be if faced with attacks launched against their civilians from enemy territory. Would they permit such egregious behavior towards their own citizens without responding in kind? I highly doubt it. But Israel is expected to absorb such attacks without reacting.
This double standard has been more pronounced recently in the aftermath of the Gaza flotilla incident. Israel has placed a blockade on Gaza that is permissible under international law, to prevent the importation of goods and supplies that could be used by Hamas and other terror organizations to construct smuggling tunnels and produce other items that can be used against Israeli civilians. In an obvious attempt to run the blockade, the Free Gaza movement organized the flotilla. Everyone knows that activists on the Mavi Marmara attacked the Israeli commandos (the video clearly shows this), but Israel is still accused of using disproportionate force, In addition, members of the media and the international community conveniently forget that Gaza also shares a border with Egypt, which participates in the blockade of Gaza, along with Israel. Much of the media also did not accurately report the story of this altercation, and in fact, some media outlets (specifically, Reuters) altered photographs of the incident to obscure the fact that many of the activists on the Mavi Marmara were armed with deadly weapons. Unfortunately, this is not the first time that Reuters has altered photographs in an attempt to implicate Israel in unethical and inappropriate behavior. Photographs of Beirut during the 2006 Lebanon war were altered to infer that the damage to Beirut was much greater than it actually was.
I doubt that this will be the last time that Reuter’s unethically does this.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
A Biased TIME Article and My Response
Why Israel Doesn't Care About Peace
I am writing in response to the article in cover story of the September 13, 2010 issue, entitle “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace”. From the photograph on the cover, to the article itself, I have never read a more outrageous piece of journalistic tripe, in my life. The article is merely an anti-Israel, anti-Semitic diatribe that has somehow found legitimacy in what used to be a respected magazine. Most of the article claims that Israelis (the vast majority of whom are Jewish) are concerned only with their creature comforts and making money and are not interested in the peace process, but then ends with the statement that they cannot help but be involved. The ‘author’ of this article has refuted his basic premise and, on his own, has revealed his article to be a waste of four pages, a cover photo and the time of anyone who took the time to read it.
This article also perpetuates the age-old stereotype of the Jew who cares only about money and nothing else. I thought that we had moved past such ugly stereotyping, especially in a mainstream publication, but I was mistaken. For this author, and the editor of Time to believe that Israelis do not care about peace merely because 2 1/2 years have passed since the last terror attack (that is before the 2 attacks this week that killed 4 people and were meant to derail the peace process) is also demeaning. Does he really believe that a population that has sustained terrorist attacks for years, and has suffered so many wars that have killed so many of their sons, fathers and brothers do not care about peace? What type of aliens is he portraying Israelis (and other Jews) to be? Does he truly think that they are less traumatized than the United States is after the terrorist attacks of September 11th?
Karl Vick reveals his profound and complete ignorance of the mind set of Israelis, as well as a deep denial of the facts on the ground. In a nation where not one person has been left untouched by terrorism, where every soldier’s death is felt personally, where military service is mandatory and expected for all young adults and where many older adults remain in the reserves and perform military reserve duty on a regular basis, they all care deeply about peace. This is a country whose entire population mourned when the bodies of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev (the two IDF soldiers whose kidnapping by Hezbollah sparked the 2006 Lebanon war) were returned by Hezbollah in July 2008. This is a country whose mothers send their sons off to fight for the country’s very survival and whose fathers fought in previous wars. This is a country that was torn apart when 50,000 of its’ soldiers were mobilized to remove 8,000 of its’ own citizens from their communities and homes in 2005, in the name of peace. Many of these wounds are still open today, five years later, and many of these displaced residents are still suffering today.
Israelis have always squeezed as much pleasure and joy from their daily lives as possible. They go out to cafes, clubs and restaurants during the week, and seek respite at the beach after a day of work. They work hard, create, invest, innovate and yes, even make money. Why have they always done this? Why do Israelis (and Jews, historically) engage in these behaviors that Mr. Vick, in his ignorance, says reveals that they do not care about peace, but are concerned only with making money, sitting in the sun and living their lives as Californians do? It is because they do not know what tomorrow will bring. It is because they have suffered through numerous wars and countless terrorist attacks that they live life with gusto, use their creativity and try to get the most out of life. It is the Israelis’ zest for life that has sustained them for decades that this ‘journalist’ sees as a sign that they do not desire peace.
Does he really think that the Palestinian question is far from Israelis’ minds when they have to go through security examinations every time they enter a mall, or a restaurant, or an office building? Does he truly think that they are unconcerned with Palestinians when thousands of rockets have flown from Gaza after Israel unilaterally disengaged from Gaza in 2005, instead of the Palestinians constructively using the structures and greenhouses that were left intact?
How about a more rational explanation for what he sees as indifference? Perhaps Israelis are tired of the peace process because they have seen very little in return for the significant concessions that Israel has made. No matter what Israel does, she is the object of the world’s disdain. Israel unilaterally disengaged from Gaza and received rockets in return fired by Hamas and its’ compatriots. Israel left Lebanon in 2000 and Hezbollah established strongholds in Southern Lebanon allowing it to attack and murder Israeli soldiers and kidnap two of them. Israel had to fight another war against Lebanon in 2006 and was again pressured to leave before the job was finished, leaving the relatively useless UN in charge. Hezbollah has since rearmed with more rockets that have a much longer range and again reestablished itself near Israel’s northern border. Even the ‘moderate’ Palestinian Authority, the supposed negotiating partner for peace, expresses one view to the Western world, while continuing to perpetuate anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiment by teaching their children to hate Jews and that all of Israel is occupied land, and by honoring and commemorating Palestinians who have committed terrorist attacks and murdered innocent Israelis.
This biased piece of what Time assumes passes for journalism has prompted me to cancel my subscription to your magazine. I will try to convince as many people as I can to follow suit and cancel their subscriptions to your rag. You should be ashamed of yourselves.
I am writing in response to the article in cover story of the September 13, 2010 issue, entitle “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace”. From the photograph on the cover, to the article itself, I have never read a more outrageous piece of journalistic tripe, in my life. The article is merely an anti-Israel, anti-Semitic diatribe that has somehow found legitimacy in what used to be a respected magazine. Most of the article claims that Israelis (the vast majority of whom are Jewish) are concerned only with their creature comforts and making money and are not interested in the peace process, but then ends with the statement that they cannot help but be involved. The ‘author’ of this article has refuted his basic premise and, on his own, has revealed his article to be a waste of four pages, a cover photo and the time of anyone who took the time to read it.
This article also perpetuates the age-old stereotype of the Jew who cares only about money and nothing else. I thought that we had moved past such ugly stereotyping, especially in a mainstream publication, but I was mistaken. For this author, and the editor of Time to believe that Israelis do not care about peace merely because 2 1/2 years have passed since the last terror attack (that is before the 2 attacks this week that killed 4 people and were meant to derail the peace process) is also demeaning. Does he really believe that a population that has sustained terrorist attacks for years, and has suffered so many wars that have killed so many of their sons, fathers and brothers do not care about peace? What type of aliens is he portraying Israelis (and other Jews) to be? Does he truly think that they are less traumatized than the United States is after the terrorist attacks of September 11th?
Karl Vick reveals his profound and complete ignorance of the mind set of Israelis, as well as a deep denial of the facts on the ground. In a nation where not one person has been left untouched by terrorism, where every soldier’s death is felt personally, where military service is mandatory and expected for all young adults and where many older adults remain in the reserves and perform military reserve duty on a regular basis, they all care deeply about peace. This is a country whose entire population mourned when the bodies of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev (the two IDF soldiers whose kidnapping by Hezbollah sparked the 2006 Lebanon war) were returned by Hezbollah in July 2008. This is a country whose mothers send their sons off to fight for the country’s very survival and whose fathers fought in previous wars. This is a country that was torn apart when 50,000 of its’ soldiers were mobilized to remove 8,000 of its’ own citizens from their communities and homes in 2005, in the name of peace. Many of these wounds are still open today, five years later, and many of these displaced residents are still suffering today.
Israelis have always squeezed as much pleasure and joy from their daily lives as possible. They go out to cafes, clubs and restaurants during the week, and seek respite at the beach after a day of work. They work hard, create, invest, innovate and yes, even make money. Why have they always done this? Why do Israelis (and Jews, historically) engage in these behaviors that Mr. Vick, in his ignorance, says reveals that they do not care about peace, but are concerned only with making money, sitting in the sun and living their lives as Californians do? It is because they do not know what tomorrow will bring. It is because they have suffered through numerous wars and countless terrorist attacks that they live life with gusto, use their creativity and try to get the most out of life. It is the Israelis’ zest for life that has sustained them for decades that this ‘journalist’ sees as a sign that they do not desire peace.
Does he really think that the Palestinian question is far from Israelis’ minds when they have to go through security examinations every time they enter a mall, or a restaurant, or an office building? Does he truly think that they are unconcerned with Palestinians when thousands of rockets have flown from Gaza after Israel unilaterally disengaged from Gaza in 2005, instead of the Palestinians constructively using the structures and greenhouses that were left intact?
How about a more rational explanation for what he sees as indifference? Perhaps Israelis are tired of the peace process because they have seen very little in return for the significant concessions that Israel has made. No matter what Israel does, she is the object of the world’s disdain. Israel unilaterally disengaged from Gaza and received rockets in return fired by Hamas and its’ compatriots. Israel left Lebanon in 2000 and Hezbollah established strongholds in Southern Lebanon allowing it to attack and murder Israeli soldiers and kidnap two of them. Israel had to fight another war against Lebanon in 2006 and was again pressured to leave before the job was finished, leaving the relatively useless UN in charge. Hezbollah has since rearmed with more rockets that have a much longer range and again reestablished itself near Israel’s northern border. Even the ‘moderate’ Palestinian Authority, the supposed negotiating partner for peace, expresses one view to the Western world, while continuing to perpetuate anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiment by teaching their children to hate Jews and that all of Israel is occupied land, and by honoring and commemorating Palestinians who have committed terrorist attacks and murdered innocent Israelis.
This biased piece of what Time assumes passes for journalism has prompted me to cancel my subscription to your magazine. I will try to convince as many people as I can to follow suit and cancel their subscriptions to your rag. You should be ashamed of yourselves.
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