In the postwar decades, Western media have assumed the role of a fourth force in addition to the executive, legislative, and judiciary forces in contemporary democracy. Increases in freedom of speech, press, as well as academic freedom have, however, led to a reality where in the media, many manipulators of information also have free rein.

Many media play an important role in the propaganda war particularly against Israel and to a lesser extent against the Jews. They are both perpetrators and transmission conduits for hate. Various factors interact here. To mention one, in West European countries the number of right- and left-wing voters is roughly similar. Yet there are many indications that in several countries, left- wing opinions prevail among journalists and a disproportionate number of them are extreme leftists.1

The media have the power to select what they publish; they can manipulate news and criticize others relentlessly. There are, however, few ways to rebut them. Their staff is mainly subject to the specific media’s self-regulatory rules. Various mainstream European media have taken predominantly anti-Israeli positions. Others give space to journalists and op-ed writers who demonize Israel. As it is far easier to demonize people than to fight the demonization, this creates a structural imbalance. Media most probably make a major contribution to Israel’s demonization.

It is impossible to present here a full overview of how anti-Israeli media bias functions in different Western countries. In many of them there is a large number of media. An adequate analysis would require a book dealing in far greater detail with the deconstruction of the specific methods of demonization by media in target countries. Falsification of facts and fallacious arguments abound. The various subcategories of double standards regarding Israel and its enemies, set forth earlier, are applied countless times.

Germany

The situation in Germany is particularly important in view of that country’s partly undigested past. Daniel Killy, a senior German journalist, says, “In general, as in society, contemporary anti-Semitism in the media is hidden behind criticism of Israel. A study on this bias was conducted by the Berlin office of the American Jewish Committee in 2002.”

It found:

In particular, the analysis of the representation of Israel and the Israelis shows that they are portrayed in an extremely negative manner, especially regarding the depiction of the unequal balance of power between the Israeli army, which is characterized as ruthless, and the Palestinians, who are depicted as the hope- less underdogs (e.g., tanks vs. stone-throwers). The Palestinians are also viewed critically, but are clearly assigned the role of the victim.2

Killy remarks:

In 2006, the “Media Tenor International” analysis of the news coverage by Germany’s public TV stations ARD and ZDF regarding events in the Middle East was published. It covered the period from 21 July until 3 August 2006, during the Second Lebanon war.

Its main conclusions were that an anti-Israel perspective prevailed. First, the Israeli army was primarily shown in the context of violent assaults, while Hizbullah fighters hardly appeared at all. Secondly, the victims shown were mostly Lebanese; images of Israeli victims were rare. Furthermore, Israel was usually portrayed as the perpetrator.

The situation in two of Germany’s leading dailies, the Frankfurter Allgemeine

Zeitung and the Süddeutsche Zeitung is similar to that of the public broadcasting companies. There is no anti-Israel editorial policy, yet these papers are safe havens for anti-Israel writers. All vicious attacks are hidden behind a wall of “pluralism.” Whenever one exposes this, one is automatically accused of attack- ing the “freedom of press.” Thus it becomes hard to fight as one cannot publicly accuse any paper of being openly anti-Zionist or anti-Semitic.3

Hildegard Müller, a former high-ranking German Christian Democratic parliamentarian, observed that Israel’s problematic image in Europe is partly due to media distortions. She noted that many media do not research the news they cover, and added:

Many newspapers have no editors anymore for specific topics. They take their news from press agencies, such as Agence France-Presse [AFP]. The next day one finds the same news in tens of newspapers. No journalist in any of these media has checked the truth of this information. Slowly an overall picture is created: a small Palestinian force fights against the high-tech Israeli army. This creates the distorted image of David versus Goliath.4

The Distorted Reporting of Protective Edge

During the 2014 Protective Edge campaign, Deidre Berger, director of the American Jewish Committee in Berlin, said that in German media it was far too rarely mentioned that:

The violence did not start with Israeli military actions but with the year-long rocket fire against Israeli civilians . . . Without mentioning this important fact, often a distortion of cause and effect takes place. Thus it is suggested to the reader, listener, or viewer that Israel and Hamas have contributed equally to the escalation of the conflict.5

Anatol Stefanowitsch, linguistics professor at the Free University of Berlin, undertook a study where he analyzed 170 headlines from German media during six days of the campaign. He concluded that there was a systematic asymmetry in the presentation of the actors, which was negative toward Israel.

He also concluded that: “As an actor in the conflict, Israel is mentioned far more often than its opponent.” Stefanowitsch further noted that the words Israel or Israeli appeared very frequently together with “military institutions.” When the word Palestinian was mentioned, it was connected to a far greater variety of issues.6

The distorted reporting from Israel continued after Protective Edge as well. Yet it is rare that articles by foreign journalists are analyzed anywhere in detail for factual inaccuracies. One such analysis was made about a three-thousand-word feature story in Newsweek on December 4 titled “The Young Woman at the Forefront of Jerusalem’s New Holy Year.” Jerusalem Post opinion editor Seth Frantzman devoted more than 1,400 words to illustrating the many mistakes in the article. He noted that the Newsweek piece was “full of errors, bias, callous discussion of Jerusalem and a dismissive attitude toward accuracy.”7

France

French sociologist Shmuel Trigano said that in the first years of the last decade, the French elites’ attitudes about Middle East politics were almost uniform. He wondered how, in a democracy, all major currents in society could propagate similar ideas: “It was frightening to turn on a television or to read a newspaper and see the same ideological discourse of disinformation about Israel.”

He concluded:

The majority of viewers have no other sources of information and cannot discern between truth, manipulation and lies. They see selective images and hear handpicked Israelis, usually very critical of their own government, express their opinions. Those with different views on Israel are considered outsiders and troublemakers. For a long time, people like myself who affirmed that there was anti-Semitism in France were considered a problem because we deviated from public opinion. It was psychologically difficult to live with that.

What does such a reality tell about French society? I do not believe in a con- spiracy. There is no commander or organization behind the multiple attacks on Israel. Yet the assaults create the feeling of a near totalitarian society regarding Israel and the Jews.

Trigano slowly started to realize that the extreme power of the media represents a major danger to Western democracy.

Their attitude toward Israel and the Jews over the last few years has shown that they can pervert analysis, debate and criticism. We are dependent on a class of journalists with consensus political views. They read and co-opt each other’s opinions, without accountability to anyone. Freedom and democracy however, cannot coexist if truth and facts are obscured.8

In 2002, French journalist Clément Weill-Raynal analyzed several cases of AFP’s reporting. The fi st concerned incidents on the Temple Mount on September 28, 2000, considered the start of the second Palestinian uprising. Another event he investigated was the aforementioned death of the Palestinian boy Muhammad al-Dura, which AFP ascribed to bullets fired by Israeli sol- diers, while many observers believe they were probably Palestinian ones. The debate on how the French media have treated the al-Dura affair has continued now for many years.9

In January 2005, L’Express editor-in-chief Denis Jeambar and another French journalist, Daniel Leconte, wrote that they had seen all the footage on al-Dura shot by the cameraman, including the half-hour that had not been shown on France 2 television. They concluded that many staged events were visible in the videotape, with Palestinians pretending to be wounded and being brought to ambulances.10

Another case studied by Clément Weill-Raynal concerned AFP’s silence about Palestinian Communication Minister Imad Faloudji’s declaration on March 2, 2001 that the Palestinian uprising—or Second Intifada—had been planned for more than a year, and was not caused by Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount.11

A major step forward in exposing the French media’s anti-Israeli bias was the documentary Décryptage (Decoding). Its directors, Jacques Tarnero and Philippe Bensoussan, analyzed AFP’s reporting of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through interviews and scenes from the media. They said this enabled the viewers to form their own opinion on the press agency’s anti-Israeli bias.12

The New York Times

In the United States, The New York Times has often been accused of anti-Israeli bias. This has been documented in much detail. Andrea Levin, executive director of the media watch organization CAMERA, says:

Of particular concern has been The New York Times, which continues to be influential especially as a trend-setter for other media outlets that often echo its story choice and emphasis. As in the past, the newspaper is prone to placing the onus heavily on Israel for problems of the Palestinians and absence of peace. The role of the Palestinians in fueling conflict is slighted. In addition, The New York Times has been largely silent in the face of increasing global anti-Semitism, doing almost nothing to expose the biased enmity toward Israel. From the news pages to the opinion pages and even into the culture sections, The New York Times has an undeniable tilt against Israel.13

CAMERA has published a study on The Times’ bias against Israel from July 1 to December 31, 2011. It found that when reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, “Israeli views are downplayed while Palestinian perspectives, especially criticisms of Israel, are amplified and even promoted. The net effect is an overarching message, woven into the fabric of the coverage, of Israeli fault and responsibility for the conflict.” Of the 275 passages studied pertaining to Israel during this period, 187 were critical of Israel and only 88 were critical of Palestinians.14

Senior CAMERA analysts Ricki Hollander and Gilead Ini summarized their findings:

The New York Times is guilty of advocacy journalism. Both its editorial pages and news reporting lean heavily toward an anti-Israel perspective. This is in blunt contravention of its directive to journalists in the Ethical Journalism handbook it publishes, “to cover the news as impartially as possible” and “tell our readers the complete, unvarnished truth as best we can learn it.”15

In 2011, when The Times asked Prime Minister Netanyahu to write an op-ed for the paper, his senior advisor Ron Dermer replied by explaining why the prime minister declined the offer. Dermer wrote: “On matters relating to Israel, the op-ed page of the ‘paper of record’ has failed to heed the late Senator Moynihan’s admonition that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but that no one is entitled to their own facts.”

Dermer noted how The Times had reprinted Mahmoud Abbas’s falsification

of history in the United Nations General Assembly about the fact that the Arabs had rejected the 1947 UN partition plan, without commenting on this. Dermer remarked that the quote “effectively turns on its head an event within living memory in which the Palestinians rejected the UN partition plan accepted by the Jews and then joined five Arab states in launching a war to annihilate the embryonic Jewish state. It should not have made it past the most rudimentary fact-checking.”

Dermer added:

The opinions of some of your regular columnists regarding Israel are well known. They consistently distort the positions of our government and ignore the steps it has taken to advance peace. They cavalierly defame our country by suggesting that marginal phenomena condemned by Prime Minister Netanyahu and virtually every Israeli official somehow reflects government policy or Israeli society as a whole. Worse, one columnist even stooped to suggesting that the strong expressions of support for Prime Minister Netanyahu during his speech this year to Congress was “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby” rather than a reflection of the broad support for Israel among the American people.16

CNN

The 2007 CNN series God’s Warriors is a typical example of major media bias. Alex Safian, associate director of CAMERA, says it needs to be reassessed in light of the fact that religiously-based violence almost exclusively in the name of Islam, has greatly intensified since the series was first aired. The perpetrators’ targets are Jews, other Muslims and increasingly, Middle Eastern Christians. One need only note the massive bloodletting in Syria to see how cloudy [Christiane] Amanpour’s crystal ball was.

As the title of the series suggests, it was ostensibly about the growing role of religious fundamentalism inside the world’s three major religions. Amanpour’s true aim however, seems to have been to propagandize by grossly exaggerating the role of Jewish fundamentalism and the incidence of Jewish-based terror, by denigrating Christian believers as backward and reactionary and by whitewashing Muslim fundamentalism as mostly peaceful and only violent when provoked.

At CAMERA we identified this series as “one of the most grossly distorted programs to appear on mainstream American television in many years.”

It relied on pejorative labeling, generalities, testimonials and a stacked line-up of guests, which are classic elements of propaganda. As such, it was the opposite of journalism—Amanpour’s supposed profession.

Safian added:

Amanpour was heavily criticized for her many distortions, including by other journalists. In a segment on his program titled “CNN’s Holy War?” Dan Abrams of MSNBC said, “CNN should have called it what it was, a defense of Islamic fundamentalism and the worst type of moral relativism.” He added, “Christiane Amanpour avoided getting bogged down in objectivity.”17

Associated  Press

In 2001, one of the recipients of HonestReporting’s Dishonest Reporting Award was the Associated Press. As an example, when a Palestinian sniper murdered a ten-month-old Jewish baby in Hebron, the AP headline writers gave the article the title: “Jewish toddler dies in West Bank.” They made no mention in the article of who perpetrated the murder, and readers could get the impression that the baby had died from natural causes or an accident. HonestReporting gave several other examples.18

Later that year American journalist Jeff Helmreich analyzed in a detailed article how AP had covered Yasser Arafat’s Al-Nakba speech in May of that year. He wrote of the speech:

By the time it reached the newspapers, entire sentences and clauses had been excluded; moderating words had been added; fiery attacks—like a slur about the United States—had been cleaned out; statements had been condensed, enhanced, or otherwise altered. In short, AP’s purported “excerpts” of Arafat’s remarks were at best edited, at worst fabricated. Moreover, they served to dis- tort (and significantly soften) the message that passed through Arafat’s lips.19

In August 2014, former AP journalist Matti Friedman wrote about his experiences at this press agency. In his words:

Israeli actions are analyzed and criticized, and every flaw in Israeli society is aggressively reported. In one seven-week period, from Nov. 8 to Dec. 16, 2011, I decided to count the stories coming out of our bureau on the various moral failings of Israeli society—proposed legislation meant to suppress the media, the rising influence of Orthodox Jews, unauthorized settlement outposts, gender segregation, and so forth. I counted 27 separate articles, an average of a story every two days. In a very conservative estimate, this seven-week tally was higher than the total number of significantly critical stories about Palestinian government and society, including the totalitarian Islamists of Hamas, that our bureau had published in the preceding three years.

Friedman also supported his story with other quantitative examples, comparing the relatively small death totals of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to much larger but rarely reported conflicts like the Mexican drug war and carnage in the Congo.20

Former AP Jerusalem bureau chief Steven Gutkin reacted. Strangely enough he chose the local Indian website Goa Streets, his new place of employment after leaving. Much of his article was an ad hominem attack on Friedman. He defended his actions and those of the bureau from his own perspective, with little quantitative response. Gutkin defended his reporting by claiming that Israel could become a better place.21 This is the kind of absurd argument that can be applied to any society since paradise was lost. However, one does not see AP investing similar human resources to direct such scrutiny at other countries.

Friedman then responded to Gutkin: “We should thus believe him when he says my essay is ‘hogwash,’ even if he can’t be bothered to actually disprove anything . . . I’m making a case about the coverage. Anyone hoping to dispute what I wrote has to provide, as I do, concrete information about the coverage.”22

Friedman later wrote an article in The Atlantic titled, “What the Media Gets Wrong About Israel.” In it he further exposed how AP intentionally reported stories that cast Israel in a negative light and chose not to report on reprehensible Palestinian conduct.23

In October 2014, a terrorist from East Jerusalem rammed his car into a crowd, killing two people including an infant and injuring several more. The terrorist was shot by police. AP reported on this incident in an article head- lined “Israeli Police Shoot Man in East Jerusalem.” The article also began with the words: “Israeli police say they have shot a man whose car slammed into a crowded train stop in east Jerusalem, in what they suspect was an intentional attack.” Only after public outcry was the article edited to reflect what had really happened. An analysis of this case by journalist Ariel Cahana also describes how other important media distorted this incident and presented it as a road accident and not an intentional terror attack on civilians.24

Admitting Biased Reporting

Only in rare cases do journalists admit that they or their colleagues have been reporting in a structurally biased way. In 1989, Thomas Friedman of The New York Times cited a major example of such reporting in his book From Beirut to Jerusalem: “It would be hard to find any hint in stories from foreign correspon- dents stationed in Beirut before 1982 about the well-known corruption in the PLO leadership, the misuse of funds, and the way in which the organization had become as much a corporation full of bureaucratic hacks as a guerilla outfit.”25 Friedman spoke in general terms, without accusing himself.

One can only wonder that a journalist who has since spent time in so many Arab and other countries in the Middle East has abstained from an ongoing, huge indictment of the human rights situation and the massive wave of hatred coming out of these countries.

One well-known case of someone indirectly but substantially indicting himself was Riccardo Cristiano, correspondent of the Italian state network Rai in the Palestinian territories. On October 12, 2000, two Israeli reserve soldiers were lynched by Palestinians in Ramallah. The Italian network Mediaset filmed the murders and smuggled the pictures out. They included, among other things, a picture of one of the killers standing at a window with “his bloodied hands raised in triumph to signal to the crowd below that the soldiers had been killed.” As it was not known which Italian network had taken the pictures, Cristiano wrote a letter, published on October 16 in the Palestinian daily Al-Hayat al-Jadida, disclosing that it was Mediaset that had taken them. As a result, this network had to withdraw correspondents from the area back to Italy so as to avoid Palestinian revenge.

Cristiano also indicated that he would never have published the pictures had they been his own. In his open letter, he also offered “congratulations and blessings” to his dear friends in Palestine.26

In July 2014, the Dutch public-television news service NOS had to admit that it had intentionally deleted the placards bearing Israeli flags with a swastika on them from its report on an anti-Israeli demonstration in The Hague that was primarily attended by Muslims.27

The earlier-mentioned disclosures by former AP journalist Matti Friedman have shown how valuable the information on bias provided by a former reporter can be. Another example is Dutch journalist Hans Moll, who worked for the daily NRC Handelsblad. After his retirement he published a book on its anti-Israeli bias.28 It would be advisable for Israel to systematically seek out journalists who are willing to disclose the bias of their former employers.

Lack of Transparency

The structural bias of some journalists is influenced by the information that emanates from the Arab world. One confirmation of that was given by a Dutch correspondent on the Middle East, Joris Luyendijk. He wrote about the Arab-Israeli conflict:

The Arab countries are often dictatorships that exist thanks to lack of transparency. Everything is based on appearances. Both parties, but in particular the Arabs, lie the whole day. You really have to check their statements there on the spot. Also, reliable figures are not available: the authorities lie flagrantly in all fields. All figures are adapted to what is politically desirable.29

In the Netherlands, Luyendijk is considered a great expert on the Middle East. He wrote a bestselling book in Dutch in which he contributed to the bias against Israel.30 In it Luyendijk details various news manipulations by journalists, including his own. He writes much about the tiny so-called Palestinian peace movements but remains silent about the many genocidal and inciting calls of Palestinian leaders.

In his book Luyendijk explains the essence of his work as Middle East cor- respondent. His editors at home sent him articles from the international press agencies; he rewrote them and they were then published under his name. These articles were supplemented with his own work. Luyendijk also relates that at the beginning of the First Iraq War, he was asked by a Dutch radio station how the Arab population would react to the American bombardments. He answered that it had emerged from conversations that they would be even more furious toward the United States.

Luyendijk admits that his sole “source” was the waiter who had brought him his room-service breakfast in the hotel in Amman, Jordan, where he was staying.31

During Protective Edge one of the techniques of many media was to omit incriminating information about Arabs and their supporters.

Denmark

In Denmark the Liberal daily Politiken has been at the forefront of anti-Israeli bias. Historian Arthur Arnheim writes:

By the end of 2002, a violent campaign by a number of Danish media and politicians against Israel and Jews reached its peak. Many felt it especially painful that the Politiken newspaper took part in the slandering, because for decades Politiken had been seen as a leading protagonist of liberal ideas and tolerant views on public affairs.

Now it appeared that the paper had changed its cause as far as Israel and the Jews were concerned. A full-page paid advertisement with more than 700 signatures—by Jews as well as non-Jews—was placed in the paper with a sharp protest under the headline: Nu er det nok (Now, it’s enough). A few quotations from it will explain what triggered the reaction:

“Over a period of time Politiken has contributed to aggravating moods and attitudes towards Israel and the Jews. This is apparent from editorials, articles, and letters to the editor. By comparing Israel’s occupation to the Holocaust and Nazi atrocities during the war, Israel is demonized and the Palestinians raised to a symbol of suffering.

“Articles in the paper have stressed that public and collective threats to Danish Jews are pardonable as long as not all Jews dissociate themselves from Israel’s policy . . . We oppose that the one and only democracy in the Middle East is made an object of hatred and described as an evil empire and the root of all evil in the Middle East and the world.

“Politiken mixes political attitudes together with conception of Jews as a minority. This fact represents a derailing of the debate and opens an opportunity to single Jews out and attack them in a way not seen in Europe since the Nazi and Communist campaigns against the Jews . . . it opens gates and gives free opportunities to Jew haters.”32

The response from Politiken appeared the same day in an editorial. If the 700 who signed the protest had expected a reaction of understanding or perhaps even remorse by the editors they were disappointed. Nothing of the kind was expressed in the reply.33

In 2012, Politiken was one of the European papers that published the anti-Israeli hate poem by Günther Grass.34

Pro-Israeli Media Watching

Twenty years ago, David Bar-Illan, then editor of The Jerusalem Post, correctly pre- dicted that despite Israel’s massive concessions to the PLO in the Oslo Accords, the strong anti-Israeli bias of the major print and electronic media would continue.35 The large number of journalists in the Middle East has contributed to fre- quent news manipulation regarding Israel. This, in turn, has led to the establishment of pro-Israeli media-watch bodies.36 Bar-Illan was one of the pioneers of this new approach.37 He asserted twenty years ago that the BBC was “by far the worst offender when it comes to Israel.” One example he mentioned of its malice concerned a coffeehouse that collapsed in Arab East Jerusalem due to structural problems. Jews and Arabs worked together to save lives, which stunned PLO activists. The BBC did not say a word about this collaboration; all they reported was that Arabs had suffered, while repeating the libel that a bomb had been placed in the coffeehouse. Bar-Illan added that there were hundreds of examples of BBC malevolence in the political sphere.38

More on the BBC

Since then, analysts and media watchers have developed more systematic methods of deconstructing the work of biased media. Many years later Trevor Asserson, a litigation lawyer, undertook some detailed analyses of how the BBC operates regarding Israel. He wrote: “Its news reports concerning Israel are distorted by omission, by inclusion, by only giving partial facts, by who is interviewed, and by the background information provided, or lack of it. I also found that there is a systemic problem with the BBC complaints system.”

Among Asserson’s many examples: “In Iraq, Western coalition troops are described in warm and glowing terms, with sympathy being evoked for them both as individuals and for their military predicament. In contrast, Israeli troops are painted as faceless, ruthless and brutal killers, with little or no understanding shown for their actions.” He concluded that “the partiality of the BBC’s reporting quite possibly infects its coverage of all politically sensitive issues.”39

Asserson showed with this and other examples that the BBC has frequently transgressed the various legal obligations under its monopoly charter from the British government. His findings included that 88 percent of documentaries over a certain period of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict conveyed a negative impression of Israel, or a positive image of Palestinians.

Zvi Shtauber, who was Israel’s ambassador in London from 2001 to 2004, said:

The BBC is a problem in itself. Over the years I had endless conversations with them. Any viewer who for a consistent period looks at the BBC information on Israel gets a distorted picture. It does not result from a single broadcast here or there. It derives from the BBC’s method of broadcasting. When reporting from Israel it usually showed in the background the mosque on the Temple Mount, which gives viewers the impression that Jerusalem is predominantly Muslim. When Sharon was elected prime minister, it struck me that the BBC spoke about him as the “military strongman.” Initially I thought this expression would be mentioned only once. They continued using it for several months. I contacted them and asked whether they called Pakistan’s President Musharraf a “military strongman” as he had come to power through a military coup. They did not. I then asked about whom else they used this terminology and they could not name anybody.40

There is much more evidence of the BBC’s anti-Israeli bias. One more example occurred when Arafat was flown to Paris before his death. Barbara Plett, correspondent for BBC Radio 4, said, “When the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose about his ruined compound, I started to cry . . . without warning. In quieter moments since, I have asked myself, why the sudden surge of emotion?”41

The media-watch organization HonestReporting noted under the title “Weeping for Yasser”: “Plett’s revelation of an emotional bond with Yasser Arafat is a clear acknowledgement of her partisan stand in the conflict . . . What does it say about the BBC that they employ news reporters who are emotionally or ideologically attached to one side of the conflict?”42

In 2003, the Israeli government broke off relations with the BBC for several months. In 2004, in a rare reaction from Jerusalem, Minister Natan Sharansky wrote to the BBC that its reporter Orla Guerin had not only set a new standard for biased journalism but her reporting “has also raised concerns that it was tainted by anti-Semitism.” Sharansky referred to the case of a Palestinian youth who was set to explode as a human bomb. Whereas other major media, in reporting on this case, focused on the use of children by Palestinian terror groups, Guerin’s main item was that the Israelis had paraded a child in front of the international media. Sharansky also pointed out that he did not recall a single report in which the BBC noted “the ways and means in which the Palestinian authorities stage events for the media or direct the media to stories that serve Palestinian advocacy goals.”43

A Journalist or a Propagandist?

For a number of years, the chairman of the Foreign Press Association in Israel was Dutchman Conny Mus, who passed away in 2010. He sometimes showed extreme anti-Israeli bias.

In one example at the end of April 2007, this veteran correspondent interviewed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh for the RTL television station. Haniyeh was then prime minister of the short-lived Hamas-Fatah Palestinian govern- ment, which would collapse a few weeks later amid internecine killings in Gaza. In his broadcast Mus proudly noted that, while Haniyeh had been inter- viewed by Arab journalists, he was the first Westerner to be given this opportunity. He also stressed the fact that he could ask Haniyeh whatever he wanted. Mus did not, however, pose the main question that needed to be asked.

What would have been more logical than to quote a few lines from the Charter of the Hamas movement, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. For instance, Article 7:

Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah’s promise whatever time it might take. The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: “The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!44

And if this was too long a query, he could have summarized it as: “What about killing all the Jews as the Hamas Charter advocates?” This would have been a crucial question, as Haniyeh stated that two-thirds of the Palestinians sup- ported Hamas. Mus concluded that Haniyeh’s declarations about Israel were vague, an obvious outcome of his omitting to ask about the party’s genocidal charter. He also said he would have liked to accompany Haniyeh on his planned trip to the Netherlands, which, however, did not take place because the Dutch government did not give him an entry visa.45

Mus’s interview of Haniyeh is a paradigm of media distortion and unethical journalism, the more so as he had been a Middle East correspondent for over fifteen years. Mus’s approach to journalism also serves to illustrate where distortion can lead. On the basis of the interview, the Palestinian Platform for Human Rights in the Netherlands claimed a few days later that Haniyeh had shown his respect for the Netherlands and its people and also had not said a word about the destruction of Israel. They avoided mentioning that he did not have to express himself on the subject because the interviewer had refrained from asking the question explicitly.46

Also in later years, Haniyeh had no problem promoting the extermination of Jews. PMW reported that Hamas TV broadcast statements from Haniyeh in summer 2014 such as: “We love death like our enemies love life! We love Martyrdom, the way in which [Hamas] leaders died.” Hamas TV also broad- cast a sermon reiterating the Hamas ideology, which claims that according to Islam it is Muslim destiny to exterminate the Jews. PMW quotes many similar statements calling for the murder of Israelis and Jews.47

Cartoonists

Although cartoonists publish mainly in the media, they have to be analyzed as a separate category. The reason is that their method is so different from broad- casters and writers. Cartoons convey a message far more directly and quickly. As previously shown, one of the best methods to illustrate how anti-Israelism uses the same core and submotifs as religious and racist anti-Semitism is by analyzing contemporary anti-Israeli cartoons.

Those who create cartoons for mass media must touch upon widespread and easily recognizable stereotypes in their society. At the same time, they further strengthen these stereotypes. As the mass audience is unsophisticated, the cartoonist relies on a few recurrent subthemes in depicting Israel, Israelis, and Jews as absolute evil. These are then packaged in many diverse ways. Analyzing such cartoons allows for systematically identifying these basic themes. This, in turn, enables pointing to the same anti-Semitic motifs appearing elsewhere in society. Arieh Stav has undertaken an important analysis of anti-Semitic imagery in Arab cartoons. He notes that he mainly focused on “how Israel and the peace process have been reflected in the mirror of Arab caricature, which is a direct, authentic and highly influential expression of views in the Arab world, where nearly half the population is illiterate.”48

Many thousands of Arab anti-Semitic caricatures have been published. The analysis of anti-Semitic cartoons, particularly in the Arab world but also elsewhere, has been further developed by Belgian political scientist Kotek. He points out that besides classic submotifs of anti-Semitism, new ones can also be found regularly in Arab cartoons. These include that Arabs want peace and Israel does not. Another one concerns apologies for suicide bombers.49

In the 2006 Holocaust-cartoon competition in the Iranian Hamshahri newspaper, caricatures that were collected also depicted most of the ancient prejudices.50 Among 1,100 entries from over sixty countries, over two hundred cartoons were selected for the exhibition. Several portray Israel as having taken the place of the Nazis. The Palestinians are often portrayed as suffering Nazi-like or even worse treatment by the Israelis.

Other cartoons convey the message that Israel exploits the Holocaust, either as a weapon against the Palestinians or as a tool to garner world sympathy. Still other cartoons indicate that the Holocaust is a hoax, or grossly exaggerated. Again others exploit the classic anti-Semitic motifs such as the alleged “extreme evil of the Jews,” deicide, conspiracy theories of world domination, blood libel, infanticide, zoomorphism, and so on. Some contain more than one anti-Semitic motif.51

The Hamshahri cartoon collection shows once more how anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism overlap. Cartoonists commingle supposed Israeli and Jewish characteristics in their pictures. Caricaturists from Muslim countries often depict Jews as ultra-Orthodox, with black hats and sidelocks. Those from other countries frequently draw Israeli soldiers.52

Media and the Million Cuts

Television and written media have greatly contributed to the incitement against Israel. Many media do so “drop by drop.” The recurrent manipulation of TV news gives relatively major attention to negative items about Israel, while a vastly smaller proportion of the far more frequent and far more violent negative news items about Arab and Muslim countries are shown. The media category of Israel-hate perpetrators offers one of the best illustrations of how the million- cuts method of delegitimization works.

Shtauber summarized his experience with British media when he was Israeli ambassador to the UK: “In the media there is no limit to the idiocies one is confronted with. Many young journalists do not listen to what they are told. The reports they prepare are often unprofessional.”53

In this cultural atmosphere, journalists themselves start to believe the false image built up by their colleagues. Shtauber observes:

Shortly after I arrived in London, the board of an association of journalists came to visit me. One of the five respectable visitors, a very important journalist, asked me: “We want your assurance, Mr. Ambassador, that it is not the official policy of the government of Israel to shoot journalists.” I looked at him and hardly knew what to say.

The tools to analyze media bias against Israel have been developed by a variety of experts. It is now up to the Israeli government to ensure that such investigations are carried out on a large scale and provide the funding for them.

Notes

1. Manfred Gerstenfeld and Ben Green, “Watching the Pro-Israeli Media Watchers,” Jewish Political Studies Review 16, 3-4 (Fall 2004): 33-58.
2. “The Mideast Coverage of the Second Intifada in the German Print Media, with Particular Attention to the Image of Israel,” Duisburger Institut für Sprach- und Sozialforschung,
3. Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Daniel Killy, “The Tyranny of Political Correctness,” Israel National News, July 30, 2013.
4. Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Hildegard Müller, “Israel and Europe: The Positive and the Negative,” in Israel and Europe: An Expanding Abyss? (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Adenauer Foundation, 2005), 40.
5. Eva Maria Kogel, “Demonstranten in Berlin greifen israelisches Paar an,” Die Welt, July 20, 2014 (German).
6. Ulrich Clauß, “Großteil der Medien berichtet voreingenommen,” Die Welt, August 22, 2014 (German). For more details, see: Anatol Stefanowitsch, “Schlag- zeilen mit Schlagseite,” Jüdische Allgemeine, July 17, 2014 (German).
7. Seth J. Frantzman, “Terra Incognita: Journalists Vs Jerusalem,” The Jerusalem Post, December 9, 2014.
8. Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Shmuel Trigano, “French Anti-Semitism: A Barometer for Gauging Society’s Perverseness,” Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism, 26, November 1, 2004.
9. Clément Weill-Raynal, “L’Agence France Presse: le récit contre les faits,” Observatoire du monde juif, 2, March 2002 (French).
10. Denis Jeambar and Daniel Leconte, “Guet-apens dans la guerre des images,” Le Figaro, January 25, 2005 (French).
11. Weill-Raynal, “L’Agence France Presse.”
12. Décryptage, directed by Jacques Tarnero and Philippe Bensoussan, 2002.
13. Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Andrea Levin, “Fighting Distorted Media Coverage of Israel,” Israel National News, May 12, 2012.
14. “Indicting Israel: New York Times Coverage of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict,” CAMERA, October 15, 2013.
15. Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Ricky Hollander and Gilead Ini, “The Anti- Israel Bias of the New York Times,” Israel National News, July 18, 2014.
16. “PM adviser’s letter to ‘New York Times,’” The Jerusalem Post, December 16, 2011.
17. Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Alex Safian, “A Classic Media Distortion,”
    Israel National News, May 10, 2014.
18. “Dishonest Reporting ‘Award’ for 2001,” HonestReporting, January 7, 2002.
19. Jeff Helmreich, “Journalistic License: Professional Standards in the Print Media’s Coverage of Israel,” Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, August 15, 2001.
20. Matti Friedman, “An Insider’s Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth,” Tablet, August 26, 2014.
21. Steven Gutkin, “My Life As An AP Bureau Chief In Israel,” Goa Streets, September 25, 2014.
22. Matti Friedman, “Ongoing Controversy Around ‘The Most Important Story on Earth,’” Tablet, September 16, 2014.
23. Matti Friedman, “What the Media Gets Wrong About Israel,” The Atlantic, November 30, 2014.
24. Ariel Cahana, “How the Murder of a Jewish Baby is Reported Worldwide,” Israel National News, October 24, 2014.
25. Thomas Friedman, From Beirut to Jerusalem (New York: Anchor Books, Dou- bleday, 1990), 72-73.
26. Rory Carroll and Ian Black, “TV Row over Mob Footage ‘Betrayal,’” The Guardian, October 20, 2000.
27. Servaas van der Laan, “NOS geft toe: censuur hakenkruizen bij anti-Israëlprotest,” Elsevier, July 15, 2014 (Dutch).
28. Hans Moll, Hoe de nuance verdween uit een kwaliteitskrant (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2011). (Dutch)
29. Renske Prevo and Judith van de Hulsbeek, “Vertaler van een onoplosbaar conflict: Joris Luyendijk,” De Journalist, April 10, 2002 (Dutch).
30. Joris Luyendijk, Het zijn net mensen—beelden uit het Midden-Oosten (Amsterdam: Podium, 2006). (Dutch)
31.   Ibid., 27-28. (Dutch)
32. Politiken, December 14, 2002 (Danish).
33. Arthur Arnheim, “Anti-Semitism after the Holocaust—Also in Denmark,” Jewish Political Studies Review 15, 3-4 (Fall 2003): 151-159.
34. “Dokumentation: Læs Günter Grass’ digt,” Politiken, April 7, 2012 (Danish).
35. Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with David Bar-Illan, “The Loaded Dice of the Foreign Media Are There to Stay,” in Israel’s New Future: Interviews (Jerusalem:Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Rubin Mass, 1994), 109-119.
36. Gerstenfeld and Green, “Watching the Pro-Israeli Media Watchers,” 33-55.
37. See, for instance, David Bar-Illan, Eye on the Media (Jerusalem: Gefen, 1993).
38. Gerstenfeld, interview with Bar-Illan.
39. Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Trevor Asserson, “The BBC: Widespread Antipathy Toward Israel,” in Demonizing Israel and the Jews (New York: RVP Press, 2013), 91-93.
40. Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Zvi Shtauber, “British Attitudes toward Israel and the Jews,” in Israel and Europe: An Expanding Abyss? (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Adenauer Foundation, 2005), 183-192.
41. Jason Deans, “BBC’s Arafat Report Sparks Protest,” The Guardian, November 5, 2004.
42. Ibid.
43. Letter from Natan Sharansky to Jonathan Baker, head of Foreign News, BBC, March 30, 2004.
44. Raphael Israeli, Fundamentalist Islam and Israel (Lanham, MD: JCPA, University Press of America, 1994), 132-159.
45. Conny Mus, interview with Ismail Haniyeh, RTL TV, April 20, 2007 (Dutch).
46. Manfred Gerstenfeld, “Als de Media Moordenaars Goedpraten,” Opinio, July 20- 26, 2007 (Dutch).
47. palwatch.org.
48. Arieh Stav, Peace, the Arabian Caricature: A Study in Antisemitic Imagery (Tel Aviv: Gefen, 1999), 18.
49. Manfred Gerstenfeld, interview with Joël Kotek, “Major Anti-Semitic Motifs in Arab Cartoons,” Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism, 21, June 1, 2004.
50. Simon Freeman and agencies, “Iranian Paper Launches Holocaust Cartoon Competition,” Times Online, February 6, 2006.
51. Manfred Gerstenfeld, “Ahmadinejad, Iran, and Holocaust Manipulation: Methods, Aims, and Reactions,” Jerusalem Viewpoints, 551, February 1, 2007.
52. Ibid.
53. Gerstenfeld, interview with Shtauber.