Looking for Ways to Make Israel Look Bad?

by Dr. Michael Goldblatt

Readers of the Philadelphia Inquirer have grown accustomed to its
habit of spotlighting Israel's alleged flaws while rarely, if ever,
covering much worse behavior by the Arabs. Sometimes it seems as if there
are editors at the Inquirer who spend their time searching for ways to make
Israel look bad. Four recent cases in point:
 
1. There Goes the Neighborhood. If an Arab encounters
difficulties purchasing a house in a private, mostly-Jewish community
Haifa, should that front-page news in Philadelphia? The editors of the
Inquirer think so. On July 3, they ran a strongly sympathetic,
32-paragraph feature story by correspondent Barbara Demick, starting with
the provocative front-page headline, "An Inviting Location? Not for an
Arab Family." The Arab family's interest in buying a home will be dealt
with by the Israeli courts, which will have to balance the Arabs' demand
against the desires of a private, closed community with a screening
committee that, until now, has had the right reject applicants, whether
Arabs or Jews.
But in the meantime, one is left to ponder the double standard:
When a Jewish family sought to move into a legally-purchased home in a
mostly-Arab neighborhood on Jerusalem's Mount of Olives last year, did the
Inquirer ran sympathetic feature stories about the right of Jews to live
anywhere they want? Does anybody remember any Inquirer headlines such as
"An Inviting Location? Not for a Jewish Family" ...? Hardly. Instead, the
Jews were portrayed as intruders, provokers of tension, spoilers of peace,
and the like.
An interesting footnote to this story: four days before the
Inquirer published its story, terrorists from Yasir Arafat's Fatah group
hurled firebombs and sprayed gunfire at the home of an Arab-American family
named Sumrean, in the town of El-Bireh. Arafat's goons want the Sumrean
family to move out so that another family, the Mardes, can move in--the Mardes are relatives of a prominent.Arab terrorist (he murdered an Israeli civilian shopping for eggs near El-Bireh in 1993), which in Arafat's book makes them heroes who deserve the house. The attack on the Sumrean home was big news in Israel, but not in Philadelphia. If Jews can be portrayed as discriminating against an Arab family, it's front-page news, but if Arabs discriminate against an Arab family, it's another story--or, in this case, no story at all.
 
2. A Vote for Weizmann. When Israeli President Ezer
Weizmann recently criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the
Inquirer ran a lengthy, 14-paragraph story across the top of page 4, with a banner headline, "Weizmann Blames Netanyahu For Stalled Peace." But when Netanyahu replied to the criticism the next day, did the Inquirer give him equal prominence? Hardly. Netanyahu's response was limited to just 7 paragraphs --half the space given to Weizmann-- and confined to the bottom, inside column of page
21. The headline: "Netanyahu Lashes Back at Weizmann."
 
Notice the pejorative term "Lashes," the kind of word one might use
when referring to a wild animal, or an irrational person lashing out. When
Weizmann attacked, he wasn't "lashing out," but when Netanyahu responded,
the Inquirer portrayed him as "lashing out." To make matters worse, the
correspondent who reported Netanyahu's response included a line that
sounded more like editorializing than news reporting, asserting that
Weizmann's remarks "lent greater credibility to opposition assertions that
early elections are the only way to rescue the peace process."
 
3. Glorifying Killers. It's no secret that a tiny minority
of Israelis were sympathetic to the actions of Dr. Baruch Goldstein, who
killed 29 Arabs in Hebron in 1994. But why is that a news story? The
Inquirer 's correspondent in Jerusalem, Barbara Demick, decided that it was
not just a news story, but a big news story--a huge, 26-paragraph feature
story, complete with photographs, plastered across the front of the
Inquirer's international news section on July 1. The occasion for the
story was the decision by the Israeli government to dismantle a paved
prayer area set up near Goldstein's grave by his family. The fact that the
government is taking such action should have set Demick to thinking about
the contrast between Israel's treatment of a killer of Arabs and Yasir
Arafat's treatment of killers of Jews.
Israel has repeatedly complained about the fact that Arafat named a
public park in Jericho after Yiyhe Ayyash, the master Hamas bomb-maker responsiblefor the murders of dozens of Israelis. Not only that, but Arafat and other senior Palestinian Authority officials have repeatedly praised Ayyash as a
"martyr" and a "hero." The Palestinian Arab public is also sympathetic to
Ayyash, to judge by the hundreds of thousands of people who attended his
funeral.
 
So the Israeli government and overwhelming majority of its public
repudiate a killer of Arabs, while the Palestinian Authority and its public praise a killer of Jews and name a park after him. Yet the Inquirer spotlights the killer of Arabs, and is silent about the killer of Jews.
 
4. Tension in Jerusalem. In June, the Jerusalem Institute
for Israel Studies released a study showing that Jerusalem's Arab
population is growing at a rate four times faster than that of the city's
Jewish population; that the Arabs of Jerusalem presently constitute 30% of
the city's population, and will reach 45% in 20 years; and that since 1967,
when Israel reunified Jerusalem, the capital's Arab population has grown by
164%, while its Jewish population has increased by just 113%.
Not only did the Inquirer ignore the news about Jerusalem's rapid
Arab population growth--instead, it ran a large story on page 3, headlined
"Housing Plan Stirs New Tension in Jerusalem."
Notice how that headline clearly blamed the Israeli housing plan
for the tension? In the pages of the Inquirer, Arabs who riot at the
prospect of having Jewish neighbors are never blamed for being racists and
causing tension. Illegal Arab construction in Jerusalem is never depicted
as a cause of tension. The constant illegal activities undertaken in
Jerusalem by Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority police --including the
kidnapping and torture of Arabs who fail to toe the Arafat line-- are never
called a source of tension. But peaceful, law-abiding Jews wanting to live
in their 3,000 year-old capital--that's the cause of the tension, according
to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
A journalist's job is to ask questions. A reporter is supposed to look at a breaking news development and figure out what to ask the parties involved. An editorial-writer should examine a news topic and raise questions about those aspects that others are ignoring. But when it comes to news items that might embarrass the Palestinian Arabs, the reporters and editors for our local Philadelphia media seem to be strangely silent.
 
Consider the case of the Pakistan reward money. The Clinton
administration recently offered a reward of $2-million for information
leading to the capture of the terrorists who killed four American citizens
in Pakistan. That's standard operating procedure for law-enforcement
agencies. And since American law requires the U.S. to track down those who
kill Americans in other countries, the reward for information that will
help uncover the Pakistani killers makes perfect sense. The U.S. has
likewise offered such rewards to obtain information about killers of
Americans in other parts of the world, as well.
 
But there is one part of the world where the Clinton administration
has refrained from offering such rewards: the territory ruled by the
Palestinian Authority.
 
Why? That's what our Philadelphia media should be investigating.
Reporters should be grilling State Department spokesmen for an answer.
Editors should be writing editorials denouncing the Clinton
administration's double standard when it comes to Israel and the
Palestinian Arabs.
 
But they're not asking those questions. They're silent. That
leaves it up to the parents of the victims to speak out. Three weeks ago, Stephen Flatow, the father of one of the victims, sent a letter to the media -including the Philadelphia media-- about this very subject. So far none of our local media have reported his plea.
 
 
"I applaud the Clinton administration's offer of a $2-million reward for
information leading to the capture of the terrorists who killed four
American citizens in Pakistan," Flatow wrote. "But I wonder why the
administration has failed to take such steps in other cases of Americans
who have been murdered abroad, including my daughter?"
 
Flatow's 21 year-old daughter, Alisa was killed --along with seven other
innocent people-- in a Palestinian Arab terrorist bombing in the Gaza Strip
in 1995. Last year, the Israeli government reported that Nabil Sharihi,
the terrorist who "helped prepare [the] bomb" used in that attack, is being
sheltered by Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority, which controls most of
Gaza.
 
Twelve other Palestinian Arab terrorists involved in the killings of 11
American citizens during 1993-1998 are also in Palestinian Authority
territory--and four of them are serving in Arafat's Preventive Security
Forces. Yet Arafat has refused to hand them over to Israel for prosecution
(as the Oslo accords require), and the Clinton administration has refrained
from asking Arafat to hand them over to the U.S., even though they could be
prosecuted here under the terms of the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1986.
 
Flatow is all too familiar with the excuses that the State Department
musters up when this issue is raised. He wrote: "Some administration
officials have claimed that they have insufficient evidence to pursue
Sharihi and the other Palestinian Arab killers of Americans. I am
skeptical about this claim, because I know that in at least 5 cases,
Israeli courts have reviewed the evidence of these Palestinian terrorists
and found it sufficient to issue arrest warrants. But if the Clinton
administration is concerned about the quality or quantity of the evidence
they currently possess, the logical next step would be to offer a large
reward, just as the U.S. did in the Pakistani case; advertise the reward in
Palestinian Arab newspapers, just as the U.S. placed large ads in the
Pakistani press; and offer potential informers protection and relocation, just as the U.S. has done in Pakistan."
 
Stephen Flatow is right. There should be no double standard. The U.S.
should pursue Palestinian Arab killers of Americans just as vigorously as
they have pursued Pakistan killers of Americans. And our Philadelphia
media should be reporting about this issue with the same vigor it displays
when Americans are killed in Europe or Asia.