As violence rages, are media giving Israel a raw deal?

NEW YORK -- Are the media biased against Israel? It's a question many Jews, consumed with recent events in the Middle East, are asking.

While not everyone is quick to assume bias, there is growing concern that in the battle for world opinion, Israel is getting a raw deal.

Media watchdogs cite a New York Times report last week as the latest evidence that readers are not getting the whole story.

The report from Ramallah said that Israel is pressing the Palestinian leadership to clamp down on its official media, saying it incites crowds to violent confrontation with Israeli security forces.

The report says Israel cited as one "egregious example" a televised sermon that defended last month's murder of two Israeli soldiers by a Palestinian mob.

"Whether Likud or Labor, Jews are Jews," the newspaper report quoted Sheik Ahmad Abu Halabaya saying in a live broadcast from a Gaza City mosque the day after the killings.

The Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America quickly lambasted the Times report as a "cover up."

What it did not include, said CAMERA, were the other remarks about Jews Halabaya made in that same Oct. 13 broadcast, according to the translation from Arabic by the Middle East Media and Research Institute:

"They are the terrorists. They are the ones who must be butchered and killed, as Allah the almighty said: 'Fight them; Allah will torture them at your hands, and will humiliate them...' Have no mercy on the Jews no matter where they are, in any country. Fight them, wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill them. Wherever you are, kill those Jews and those Americans who are like them and those who stand by them..."

Why did reporters leave that part out?

"I can't read anyone's heart; I can't impugn their motives," said Andrea Levin, CAMERA's executive director. "All I can do is read their work. And this was unconscionable, a gross distortion. To say this was an 'egregious' example, and then to quote a benign line, is to make the Israeli claims look absurd."

The impact of such reportage may pale in comparison with searing images of 12-year-old Mohammad al-Darrah being shot and killed in his father's arms, which may have instantly turned the world against Israel. But it illustrates the uphill struggle Israel faces in presenting its side of the conflict that has engulfed the region for more than a month.

It also shows how, due to the proliferation and saturation of 24-hour news networks and Web sites, pictures are shaping world opinion more than bullets.

"What we see now is not a war in a traditional sense, but a PR war and a war for public opinion," said Arye Mekel, director of the Israeli Foreign Ministry's media center.

Many in the American Jewish community, like Levin, believe the deck is stacked against Israel.

Noting the media's tendency to pull for the "underdog," they believe many major media outlets -- like CNN and National Public Radio -- harbor an anti-Israel bias that unfairly portrays Israel as aggressor, Palestinians as victims.

These critics find no comfort in the fact that Arab-American groups see it precisely the other way around: that the U.S. media are decidedly anti-Palestinian.

But when it comes to accusations of bias, distinctions need to be drawn, say Jewish observers, between print and electronic media, between news and commentary, even between the media in America and Europe.

When weighing these factors, overall the American media can be viewed as doing a "fair" job, both in terms of fairness and performance, said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League.

In a survey of editorials of the nation's largest circulation dailies from Sept. 30 to Oct. 15, the ADL found "overwhelming support and sympathy for Israel's position," including in the New York Times.

And in a random sampling of editorial page cartoons, the ADL found cartoons that depicted the Palestinian side as the source of the violence outnumbered those that blamed Israel by 3-1.

As for journalists on the ground, faulty reporting may be guided by "sensationalism, a lack of perspective or ignorance," said Foxman, but not bias.

"When we accuse CNN or anyone else of bias, we are saying that they are coming together to decide or conspire to slant a story," said Foxman.

"That's a very, very serious charge. It's the opposite charge of Jews controlling the media or Hollywood. And that's irresponsible," he added. "It doesn't get us anywhere and makes the media our enemy. The media is not our enemy. We need to engage the media."

Nevertheless, Foxman met with CNN officials last week to express some concerns -- why, for example, CNN did not report Halabaya's fiery sermon.

Foxman said CNN officials "said they take seriously charges of bias or that they have made mistakes, but will not take seriously claims that they are Nazis, or an adjunct to the Palestinian Authority" -- as some have accused them of being.

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