Singling Out Israel & Jews
Media gives not a damn over millions of innocents elsewhere butchered over millions of acres each year worldwide

Israel: Land of Free Speech and a Free Press
Arab States & Iran: Stifled Press and Stifled Speech
Arab States & Iran: Media is little more than propaganda tool for regime
Arab States & Iran: Even Foreign Media Can't Report Full Truth

In the Middle East, black means white

Focus on what the Palestinian Arabs lost while attempting to destroy Israel

Media doubletalk obscures the horror of the Mideast war

Why Israel, and not Sudan, is singled out (Boston Globe, Charles Jacob, Oct 5, 2002)

Covering of the Palestinian violence against Israel: Next time you read about Israel in the newspaper, be sure you know how to read between the lines (Lenny Ben-David).

The picture that moved hearts: This picture was taken near the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, on Friday, April 6, 2001, by Evelyn Hockstein, a Reuters photographer. A Palestinian child was caught by Israeli policemen, and, in his fear - he wet his pants. Undoubtedly, this picture is very moving, and everyone can share the pain and panic of the child, that led to such an embarrassing moment.

The Palestinians, who truly understand the power of the image, spread this picture worldwide, through the media and e-mails, but - they did not explain the photo's background. A few minutes before the above picture was taken, another Reuters photographer, Natalie Behring, had taken the following picture -- which was not as widely distributed (please notice the child in the center of the picture):

It's the same child. Only at this stage, we may assume that his pants were still dry...

On April 13th 2001 the head of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat, abuses the same child and the truth by inviting the boy to his bureau in Ramallah and gives him words of encouragement for the above acts of violence (Aliam newspaper, April 14th 2001). They pose commonly displaying the picture with the wet pants ...

The Egypt State Information Service, Aug 5, 2003) is abusing the child and the truth on its "Photo Album" of "Scenes Disturb World conscience" - the boy is this time a "terrified Palestinian girl".

The Photo that Started it All (Honest Reporting, May 2002/updated by Middle East Info Dec 9, 2003): On the day the Intifada broke out, Tuvia Grossman was riding a taxi to visit the Western Wall. He was unwittingly thrust into the international limelight -- and nearly killed in the process.

On September 30, 2000, The New York Times, Associated Press and other major media outlets published a photo of a young man -- bloodied and battered -- crouching beneath a club-wielding Israeli policeman. The caption identified him as a Palestinian victim of the recent riots -- with the clear implication that the Israeli soldier is the one who beat him.

The victim's true identity was revealed when Dr. Aaron Grossman of Chicago sent the following letter to the Times:

Regarding your picture on page A5 of the Israeli soldier and the Palestinian on the Temple Mount -- that Palestinian is actually my son, Tuvia Grossman, a Jewish student from Chicago. He, and two of his friends, were pulled from their taxicab while traveling in Jerusalem, by a mob of Palestinian Arabs, and were severely beaten and stabbed.

That picture could not have been taken on the Temple Mount because there are no gas stations on the Temple Mount and certainly none with Hebrew lettering, like the one clearly seen behind the Israeli soldier attempting to protect my son from the mob.

In response, the New York Times published a half-hearted correction, which identified Tuvia Grossman as "an American student in Israel" -- not as a Jew who was beaten by Arabs. The "correction" also noted that "Mr. Grossman was wounded" in "Jerusalem's Old City" -- although the beating actually occurred in the Arab neighborhood of Wadi al Joz, not in the Old City.

In response to public outrage at the original error and the inadequate correction, The New York Times reprinted Tuvia Grossman's picture -- this time with the proper caption -- along with a full article detailing his near-lynching at the hands of Palestinians rioters.

Read Tuvia Grossman's in-depth, first-person account of his ordeal, entitled Victim of the Media War. www.aish.com/jewishissues/israeldiary/

The photo of a bloodied Tuvia Grossman became a symbol in the struggle to ensure that Israel receives the fair media coverage that every nation deserves.

In April 2002, a District Court in Paris ordered the French daily newspaper "Liberation" and the Associated Press to pay damages to Grossman in the amount of 4,500 Euro.

The Court condemned the Associated Press for "mispresenting [Grossman] as a member of the Palestinian community," while the court censured "Liberation" for "publishing the litigious picture with a comment edited the same faulty way, giving the picture a meaning and a scope it could not have."

===== ARAB ABUSE =====

Even more remarkable is that Arab groups have adopted Grossman's photo to use in their own propaganda campaigns, cynically using a bloodied Jew as a symbol of the Palestinian struggle.

An official Egyptian government website (Egypt State Information Service) is using the Grossman photo on its "Photo Gallery" of "Scenes Disturb World conscience".

The Palestinian Information Center, www.islam.net incorporated Grossman's photo onto its homepage banner. The graphic was removed from the site, but is reprinted here:

Grossman in the Palestinian Islamic Jihad's homepage banner (Dec 9, 2003)

Additionally, some Arab groups have called for a boycott of Coca-Cola, for doing business with Israel, and have circulated a series of posters to state their case. One poster shows Grossman's bleeding face juxtaposed with the Coca-Cola logo, and the tag line: "By supporting American products, you're supporting Israel."

 Snopes.com reports that, ironically, since Ramallah is home to a Coca-Cola bottling facility that employs about 400 local residents (and indirectly creates employment for hundreds more), and Coca-Cola industries throughout the Middle East are operated as local businesses, any boycott of Coca-Cola in Middle Eastern countries is likely to cause more monetary harm to Arabs and Palestinians than it is to Americans or Israelis.

Snopes.com notes another irony: Pepsi is also on the Arab boycott list, with claims that the name "Pepsi" is an acronym for 'Pay Every Penny to Save Israel' or 'Pay Every Penny to the State of Israel.' As the Associated Press once noted, "Calling Pepsi a 'Jewish product' is ironic, given that Pepsi was one of many multinationals that wouldn't do business in Israel during the 40-year Arab commercial boycott of the Jewish state."

And of course the biggest irony of all is that the image chosen in the poster to represent Palestinian suffering was none other than Tuvia Grossman who nearly beaten to death by a Palestinian mob.

PALESTINIAN WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN THE THROES OF ISLAMIKAZE TERRORISM (Raphael Israeli): "The world often views Islam as a seventh century anachronism. But the truth is the Islamic world is playing and winning a sophisticated game of media manipulation in which powerful and wealthy police states and anti-democratic political movements are more often portrayed and perceived – at least in the context of the Arab-Jewish conflict – as victims rather than threatening oppressors. This paper will contrast what Islamic leaders say about their intentions for the state of Israel in English while western television cameras are rolling and what they say to their own constituents in Arabic."

7 Principles of Media Objectivity (Rabbi Shraga Simmons). With the media playing such an important role in Mideast events, here are some tools to ensure that you're more than just a passive player in the process.

On Hating Israel. What we know but can't say out loud. (NRO, Victor Davis Hanson)

Treatment of Israel strikes an alien note (Prof. Alan M. Dershowitz, National Post): "If a visitor from a far away galaxy were to land at an American or Canadian university and peruse some of the petitions that were circulating around the campus, he would probably come away with the conclusion that the Earth is a peaceful and fair planet with only one villainous nation determined to destroy the peace and to violate human rights. That nation would not be Iraq, Libya, Serbia, Russia or Iran. It would be Israel."

CNN's Access of Evil (Franklin Foer, Washington Post, Apr 14, 2003): "As Baghdad fell last week, CNN announced that it too had been liberated ... Eason Jordan, the network's news chief, admitted that his organization had learned some 'awful things' about the Baathist regime--murders, tortures, assassination plots--that it simply could not broadcast earlier. Reporting these stories, Mr. Jordan wrote, 'would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff.' ... Upon arrival in Iraq, journalists contended with constant surveillance. Minders obstructed their every move, dictated camera angles, and prevented unauthorized interviews. When the regime worried that it had lost control of a journalist, it resorted to more heavy-handed methods. Information ministry officials would wake journalists in the dead of night, drive them to government buildings, and denounce them as CIA plants. The French documentary filmmaker Joel Soler described to me how his minder took him to a hospital to ostensibly examine the effects of sanctions, but then called in a nurse with a long needle 'for a series of blood tests.' Only Mr. Soler's screaming prevented an uninvited jab. With so little prospect for reporting the truth, you'd think that CNN and other networks would have stopped sending correspondents into Iraq. But the opposite occurred. Each time the regime threatened to pull the plug, network execs set out to assiduously reassure them."

Ten Tips on How to Be an Arafat Apologist (Jamie Glazov, Frontpage Magazin, Apr 11, 2002)

"Lebanese model Nathaly Fadlallah models the 'Dress of Revolution,' designed by Saudi haute couture designer Yehya al-Bashri. The dress was part of a collection featured at an Arab fashion festival in Beirut on September 17, 2002 to demonstrate solidarity with the Palestinian uprising against Israel."

The dress is covered with faux bloodstains from the waist to the knees, and below the knees it shows an Israeli tank against a background of burning buildings.

Needless to say, in Saudi Arabia, the home of the designer, the same woman would be imprisoned as a "prostitute" for daring to dress like that.

Reuters, by the way, classifies this as an "entertainment" photo.

Saudi Internet Rules (Council of Ministers Resolution, Feb 12, 2001): "All Internet users in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia shall refrain from publishing or accessing data containing some of the following: Anything contravening a fundamental principle or legislation, or infringing the sanctity of Islam and its benevolent Shari’ah, or breaching public decency. Anything contrary to the state or its system. Reports or news damaging to the Saudi Arabian armed forces, without the approval of the competent authorities. Publication of official state laws, agreements or statements before they are officially made public, unless approved by the competent authorities."

Apparatus of Lies. Saddam’s Disinformation and Propaganda 1990-2003 (White House)

Sheikh 'Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari, dean of the Faculty of Shar'iah at Qatar University (MEMRI, May 9, 2003): "To a large extent, the Arab media was characterized by selectivity, and it was decidedly on the side of the Iraqi regime. Our intellectuals took over the line and constantly repeated it. Our media then devoted special programs to disseminating and repeating the falsehoods of [Iraqi Information Minster] Sahaf. Their biased point of view was imposed on listeners."

Muslim apartheid seen on the highway to Mecca/Saudi Arabia (PPS, 418 KB)

The Awakening. We need a clean slate in the postbellum world (Victor Davis Hanson, NRO, Aug 14, 2003)

Palestinian Pretense & Israeli Reality. What the world knows, but can’t say, to be true (Victor Davis Hanson, NRO, Mar 18, 2003): "Much of the problem, then, quite simply is also psychological and arises because a Jewish state is right smack in the middle of the Arab world — and by every measure of economic, political, social, and cultural success thriving amid misery. Without oil, without a large population, without friendly countries on its borders, without vast real estate, and without the Suez Canal, it somehow provides its citizenry with a way of life far more humane than what is found in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, or Egypt. Yet the world listens to the Palestinians' often-duplicitous leadership — despite the corrupt nature and murderous past history of Mr. Arafat's regime — because its sponsors sell a good part of the globe's oil. And to risk their wrath, one would have to support a few million Jews, not hundreds of millions of, say, British, Swedes, or Italians. And so we give not a damn over millions of innocents elsewhere butchered over millions of acres each year worldwide, but instead focus on what the Palestinians lost while attempting to destroy their neighbors."

Jihad and Terrorism Studies Project to monitor militant-Islamic groups that educate and preach Jihad and martyrdom in mosques, school systems, and in the media (MEMRI)

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