Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs | Special Report | What Christians Don’t Know About Israel | By Grace Halsell | May/June 1998, pages 112, 126

American Jews sympathetic to Israel dominate key positions in all areas of our government where decisions are made regarding the Middle East. This being the case, is there any hope of ever changing U.S. policy? President Bill Clinton as well as most members of Congress support Israel — and they know why. U.S. Jews sympathetic to Israel donate lavishly to their campaign coffers. .

The answer to achieving an even-handed Middle East policy might lie elsewhere — among those who support Israel but don’t really know why. This group is the vast majority of Americans. They are well-meaning, fair-minded Christians who feel bonded to Israel — and Zionism — often from atavistic feelings, in some cases dating from childhood.
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In the late 1970s, when I first went to Jerusalem, I was unaware that editors could and would classify “news” depending on who was doing what to whom. On my initial visit to Israel-Palestine, I had interviewed dozens of young Palestinian men. About one in four related stories of torture.

Israeli police had come in the night, dragged them from their beds and placed hoods over their heads. Then in jails the Israelis had kept them in isolation, besieged them with loud, incessant noises, hung them upside down and had sadistically mutilated their genitals. I had not read such stories in the U.S. media. Wasn’t it news? Obviously, I naively thought, U.S. editors simply didn’t know it was happening.

On a trip to Washington, DC, I hand-delivered a letter to Frank Mankiewicz, then head of the public radio station WETA. I explained I had taped interviews with Palestinians who had been brutally tortured. And I’d make them available to him. I got no reply. I made several phone calls. Eventually I was put through to a public relations person, a Ms. Cohen, who said my letter had been lost. I wrote again. In time I began to realize what I hadn’t known: had it been Jews who were strung up and tortured, it would be news. But interviews with tortured Arabs were “lost” at WETA.
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My learning experiences also included coming to realize how easily I could lose a Jewish friend if I criticized the Jewish state. I could with impunity criticize France, England, Russia, even the United States. And any aspect of life in America. But not the Jewish state. I lost more Jewish friends than one after the publication of Journey to Jerusalem — all sad losses for me and one, perhaps, saddest of all.
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I realized, quite painfully, that our friendship was ending. Iphigene Sulzberger had not only invited me to her home to meet her famous friends but, also at her suggestion, The Times had requested articles. I wrote op-ed articles on various subjects including American blacks, American Indians as well as undocumented workers. Since Mrs. Sulzberger and other Jewish officials at the Times highly praised my efforts to help these groups of oppressed peoples, the dichotomy became apparent: most “liberal” U.S. Jews stand on the side of all poor and oppressed peoples save one — the Palestinians.

How handily these liberal Jewish opinion-molders tend to diminish the Palestinians, to make them invisible, or to categorize them all as “terrorists.”

Interestingly, Iphigene Sulzberger had talked to me a great deal about her father, Adolph S. Ochs. She told me that he was not one of the early Zionists. He had not favored the creation of a Jewish state.

Yet, increasingly, American Jews have fallen victim to Zionism, a nationalistic movement that passes for many as a religion. While the ethical instructions of all great religions — including the teachings of Moses, Muhammad and Christ — stress that all human beings are equal, militant Zionists take the position that the killing of a non-Jew does not count. ...
- posted by Editor @ 3:28 PM

U.S. Media Coverage of Israel-Palestine Conflict | Monday, 14 February 2005, 3:25 pm | Opinion: Sonia Nettnin

Few Americans realize that U.S. mainstream media coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict passes through America’s political elites, Israeli public relations organizations and private American organizations, before it reaches the public.

One of The Media Education Foundation’s latest films, “Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land: U.S. Media and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” directed by Sut Jhally, examines how these filters distort the realities on the ground. It demonstrates how through word choice, limited historical context and one-sided perspectives, U.S. journalists provide the American public with limited news coverage.
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Through interviews with journalists, media analysts and political activists, the film explores the co-opted media’s techniques for reporting the conflict and mobilizing public opinion. For example, on September 3, 2001, a news network did not want its journalists referring to the Israeli settlement, Gilo, as a “settlement.” Instructions given to journalists explained that “…we don’t refer to it as a settlement…” so in one of the network’s news clips that followed, the journalist reporting from Gilo used the officially substituted word “neighborhood.” The word change altered the perspective of the news report drastically because it removed any perception of colonization from the report’s context. Clearly, replacing or eliminating words from a report can assist with removing skepticism about the nature of its subject matter. Moreover, it helps modify public perceptions as to who is the aggressor.

PR-media strategies explain why the news continues to emphasize the violence directed against Israelis. However, the media reports do not include international law in their coverage, with regards to human rights, the rights of Palestinian refugees and the obligations of occupying forces. The Geneva Conventions and several UN Security Council Resolutions are solid sources for reference. If news reports included the historical fact that Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem exist on Palestinian land, the background information may cause Americans to raise questions about the legality of those settlements. Moreover, people may begin to reassess the root causes of the conflict. When news consumers have thorough, accurate information, the conflict between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians can reflect different meanings or interpretations, absent from the current patterns of news coverage. ....
- posted by Editor @ 3:22 PM

Israeli Deaths Matter Moreby Media Lens / March 12th, 2008

The horrific shooting of eight young people at a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem last Thursday was followed by saturation media coverage. International statesmen lined up with condemnations of the attack and condolences for the victims and their families.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced: “This is clearly an attempt to strike a blow at the very heart of the peace process.”1

Foreign Secretary David Milliband described the slaughter as “an arrow aimed at the heart of the peace process so recently revived.”2

The Guardian’s front page declared: “the descent into violence in the Middle East accelerated last night” in a “dramatic escalation”.3 A Daily Mirror headline read: ‘Kids Murdered In The Library’4 The Telegraph asserted that the attack “is likely to be remembered as the moment the Middle East peace process died.”5

The contrast to reactions to the killing of over 120 Palestinians, including many women and children, in occupied Gaza the previous week could hardly be more striking. On one day alone, 60 people died in a hail of Israeli firepower using F-16 planes, Apache helicopter gunships, tanks, armoured bulldozers and ground troops.

No Western leader was heard condemning the Israeli assault on Gaza as “an attempt to strike a blow at the very heart of the peace process.” To our knowledge, no reporter suggested that “the peace process” had now “died”. No headlines screamed of Palestinian babies “murdered” in their beds. In short, news reports from the Gazan bloodbath typically lacked the anguished details and tone that suffused the reporting from Jerusalem less than a week later. ...
- posted by Editor @ 4:38 PM

February 13, 2008 by CommonDreams.org | Not Revising History on Tom Lantos | by Sam Sedaei
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Tom Lantos passed away on Monday. In light of his death, friends and colleagues have been expressing a great deal of sympathy and have had many nice things to say about him. ...

Since 1981, Lantos spent twenty-seven years representing California’s 12th district and Israeli interests as an AIPAC ally in Congress and was one of the strongest supporters of the Iraq War, which as John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt eloquently lay out in Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, was not our war to fight, but we got pushed into it by Israel. Lantos may have made the same excuses for voting for the war that Hillary Clinton and others who caved make. However, evidence proves the existence of other motivations on his part. On September 30, 2002, Ha’aretz ­- the world-known Israeli newspaper - quoted Lantos as having told Minister of Knesset (Israeli legislature) Colette Avital, “My dear Colette, you won’t have any problem with Saddam. We’ll be rid of the bastard soon enough. And in his place we’ll install a pro-Western dictator who will be good for us and for you.” This may be why as one former AIPAC leader put it, Lantos “is true blue and white” and Serge Halimi of Le Monde Diplomatique has written that Lantos has acted “as a mouth piece for Likud policies.”

Lantos used his status as a holocaust survivor in Congress and an unconditional supporter of Israel to obtain the support of Pro-Israel PACs. ...
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But as anything short of unconditional support for Israel is unacceptable to the Israel lobby, Pro-Israel PAC funds channeled the total sum of $31,600 in campaign contributions to Lantos (WRMEA). The contribution helped him hold on to his seat despite strong anti-war sentiments in his district. Pro-Israel PACs were quite generous to Lantos over his career, and as of 2006, they contributed $112,750 to his campaigns (WRMEA). While he did not receive as much as the authors of the anti-Iran Kyl-Lieberman Amendment over their lifetimes - Senator Kyl: $163,025, and Senator Lieberman: $286,258 - as of today, Lantos has been the 8th highest receiver of Pro-Israel PACs contributions in the U.S. House of 435 representatives. ...
- posted by Editor @ 4:33 PM

February 1, 2008 by TruthDig.com | Giving Israel a Pass | by Barry Lando
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Why is it that so many of my fellow Jews have a hair-trigger response to the slightest suggestion that anti-Semites may once again be on the prowl in England or France or Iran-that another Hitler lurks just over the horizon?

Why are they so quick to demand that academics who suggest that Jews wield considerable political influence be banned from speaking, or, better yet, fired? Why so ready to dismiss criticism of Israel from Desmond Tutu or Jimmy Carter as anti-Semitic garbage? Why so swift to call meetings, launch petitions, take to the streets, bombard their congressmen, demand embargoes, sanctions, pre-emptive strikes, targeted bombings, invasions-whatever it takes to destroy any perceived menace to Jews or the state of Israel, even if it later turns out the threat was a fabrication of someone’s inflamed imagination?
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I continue: Why the refusal to recognize that in 1947 and 1948 Jewish fighters embarked upon a policy of ethnic cleansing that succeeded in driving tens of thousands of Palestinians from their fields and villages?

This is not a charge made by hate-filled Iranian or Syrian propagandists but one that has been meticulously researched and documented by Israeli historians themselves.

Why the reluctance to speak out when Israeli forces wreaked appalling death and destruction among civilians after they invaded Lebanon in 1982 and again last summer?
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Why no horrified response to Israeli leaders who measure success these days in body counts and order so-called targeted assassinations with rockets in densely populated civilian areas, knowing that many innocents may be blown apart for every terrorist who is hit? Are the 27 decorated Israeli pilots 27 decorated Israeli pilots who refused to take part in such attacks to be considered anti-Semitic by their American cousins?

Why no outcry when Israel launches a brutal blockade-a collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinian men, women and children-threatening their supplies of fuel, food and medicines?

Israel’s own domestic Jewish critics, far more vociferous than most Jews abroad, point out that there is another way to end the rocket attacks from Gaza against Israeli settlers: start talking with Hamas. You wouldn’t know it from most of the American media, but Hamas has, in fact, repeatedly offered a cease-fire if Israel will also cease targeted assassinations and attacks on Gaza. ...

- posted by Editor @ 4:28 PM

Op-Ed: Posters, pettiness and Palestine | February 7, 2008 | By George Stevens

I’d like to comment about Stanford Israel Alliance’s (SIA) new poster campaign and why it bothers me as a Stanford student and as a Jewish Zionist.

The first poster I encountered says, “What do you call Arabs who stayed in Israel after 1948? Israeli citizens.” Then it has a picture of an old Arab man voting. At the bottom it reads: “Israel: the oldest democracy in the Middle East.”

Yes, Arabs who stayed in Israel were given Israeli citizenship and they do have the right to vote. But if you’re going to brag about Israel’s history as a democracy, especially as it pertains to its Arab citizens, you might note that Arab Israelis were subject to military rule and strict curfews for the first 16 years of the state. They were Op-Ed: Posters, pettiness and Palestine
February 7, 2008
By George Stevens

I’d like to comment about Stanford Israel Alliance’s (SIA) new poster campaign and why it bothers me as a Stanford student and as a Jewish Zionist.

The first poster I encountered says, “What do you call Arabs who stayed in Israel after 1948? Israeli citizens.” Then it has a picture of an old Arab man voting. At the bottom it reads: “Israel: the oldest democracy in the Middle East.”

Yes, Arabs who stayed in Israel were given Israeli citizenship and they do have the right to vote. But if you’re going to brag about Israel’s history as a democracy, especially as it pertains to its Arab citizens, you might note that Arab Israelis were subject to military rule and strict curfews for the first 16 years of the state. They were not allowed to have their own political parties for four decades. And their roads, schools and medical centers are still disproportionately under-funded. And their roads, schools and medical centers are still disproportionately under-funded. ...

But I do have a problem with a fence that runs through densely populated regions of the West Bank rather than around the territory as a whole, preventing people from going to schools, jobs and hospitals. I have a problem with a fence that does so to include Israeli settlements which are clearly illegal under any reasonable interpretation of the Geneva Convention (including that of most Israeli scholars) and which are only justified because God’s law is supposedly higher than human rights law.
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I am as Zionist as they come. I’ve lived in Israel and plan on living there again. But being a Zionist does not mean supporting Israeli policy regardless of its human toll. Instead, being a Zionist means supporting a Jewish state, a state that expresses Jewish values. And if Jewish values do not include treating minorities as equals, if Jewish values do not include sympathy for the pains of a nation without a state and support for their cause, then we have learned nothing from our history. And if you look at Israel today, it has fallen short of the Jewish values it was created to fulfill. So I criticize Israel, not out of hate, but because of a sense of responsibility.
- posted by Editor @ 4:23 PM