OPEN LETTER TO THE EDITORS OF TIME MAGAZINE
From Americans For A Safe Israel

   Time seems to have stood still for your magazine’s anti-Israel policy, which hasn’t changed in all the time AFSI has been tracking it. From THE MEDIA’S WAR AGAINST ISRAEL, edited by Stephen Karetzky & Peter Goldman-1986, we read that, “After the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Time’s bias was so glaring that it drew particular attention. Jews were shocked in 1977 when Time introduced Menachem Begin, the newly elected Prime Minister of Israel, with the words “rhymes with Fagin.”

    In The New Republic, 1980 , Rael Jean Isaac writes, “Time reacted to the Israeli elections of May 1977 with a string of calumny. The new Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, who had led a parliamentary opposition party for 29 years, was repeatedly described as a “terrorist.” Time went on to report falsely that Begin’s men “tortured two British soldiers to death,” “massacred,” “mutilated,” and “raped” innocent villagers, and that Begin himself, after the sinking of the Irgun ship, the Altalena, vowed to “see to it that the state of Israel sinks with us.” During the slow Sadat/Begin negotiations of 1978, “Time managed to transform its contempt for Begin into a contempt for Israel itself.”

    Time’s obsession with depicting Arafat and the PLO fallaciously goes back to the 1970’s. “On May 14, 1980, Time called the 100 member Palestine National Council “probably the most democratic institution in the Arab world.” Dr. Isaac concludes her article by stating, “What Time has done to the reader’s vision of the world through the corrupt use of language is probably irremediable.”

    In the February 21, 1983 issue of Time, entitled “The Verdict is Guilty,” the magazine’s report was false and defamatory, blaming Ariel Sharon for the massacres at Sabra and Shatilla. A law suit resulted with Ariel Sharon as plaintiff against Time, Inc. The jury found “Time magazine guilty of both defamation and falsehood in a report on Sharon’s role in the 1982 Beirut massacre of Palestinian refugees.” However, the verdict continued to state that Time had “acted without malice,” thereby canceling the $50 million dollar payment that Time would have had to pay.

    Indeed, Time wasn’t the only media outlet that exercised unrestrained bias against Israel. NBC was notorious for its distorted and misleading coverage, as was ABC, The Christian Science Monitor, UPI, and a wide range of important sections of the American, French, and British media. In many cases they relied on exaggerated reports about the numbers of dead and wounded, and the amount of damage done to Lebanon, promulgated by the Red Crescent of Lebanon, a PLO operation controlled by Yasir Arafat’s brother. It was Arafat and the PLO who emptied Lebanon of its Christians and caused that country to become a satellite of Syria. It was Arafat who attempted a takeover of Jordan. It was Arafat, the unrepentant terrorist and murderer of Americans and Israelis that Time saw fit to glamorize in its recent 5 page story, “Waiting for History to Happen.”(Feb. 26, 2001). After more than seven years of Arafat controlled deception, lies, treachery and terrorism following the signing of the Oslo accords, trumpeted as the “peace” process, some honest members of the press are saying that Oslo is dead. But there is Time magazine, promoting Arafat as though he were a worthy head of state. Scott Macleod, the author, writes that Arafat is “terrified” of Ariel Sharon who bears “indirect responsibility’ for the massacre of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.” (No mention of the Sharon vs. Time trial that exonerated Sharon.) Macleod continues to dwell on the Beirut experience saying, “The dread is, it could be Beirut all over again.”

    Macleod goes on to state that it was Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount that sparked the September outbreak of violence, which he calls the “intifadeh,” and which we call a war. This idea has been so solidly disproven, with Arafat admitting openly that plans for an outbreak of terrorism had been in the works, and had already begun before Sharon’s visit. The implementation of the right of a Jew to visit the holiest of Jewish sites should not spark a war. When it does, it is the obligation of those reporting the story, to get it straight. It is the obligation of the press to put an end to the lie. The Time reporter outdoes himself in his description of the “Catastrophe, in which Jewish forces…sent 800,000 Palestinians fleeing into Arab countries as refugees.” Where is the mention that in 1948, when Israel was a newborn state, with its citizens barely recovering from the horrors of the holocaust, that it was attacked by the Arab nations and that it was the Arabs who urged their people to leave for a short time, until the Arab victory had been accomplished. Documented reports tell us that there were no more than 450,000 Arabs who fled. With the help of the United Nations and its UNWRA program, the number of Arab “refugees” has grown to a claim of four million. Where is there mention of the 600,000 Jewish refugees who were expelled from their homes in the Arab nations? No attempt at “even-handedness” here for Time magazine.

    Space does not permit a line- by- line refutation of Macleod’s article. Suffice it to say that an honest article would have shown Arafat as the man he is, a terrorist, murderer, ruthless dictator, subjugator of his own people, and guilty of stealing billions of dollars deposited into his Swiss bank accounts. Arafat’s constant calls for jihad, his training of young children to become suicide bombers and martyrs, and his PLO sponsored vitriol in the press, radio, and television give ample evidence of the nature of the man. Following such an article, Macleod’s conclusion would have made sense: “Many Palestinians believe their fortunes will improve only when Arafat’s domination of their affairs ends…Arafat will never admit that he made a mistake. He will simply blame Israeli aggression.”

    It’s time for Time to admit its mistakes in regard to its coverage of Israel and its enemies. Perhaps, in time, psychologists will shed light on the compulsion and preoccupation of an editorial policy that refuses to honor its professional pledge to objective reporting. Until then, may we invite the editorial staff to consult with organizations such as Americans For a Safe Israel, which has been in existence for over 30 years, disseminating the truth about Israel and its Arab neighbors. We would welcome your questions and comments. We can be visited on our web site: www.afsi.org , or contacted by email: afsi@rcn.com.

                                                                                                                Sincerely,

                                                                                                                Herbert Zweibon, Chairman
                                                                                                                Helen Freedman, Executive Director
                                                                                                                AMERICANS FOR A SAFE ISRAEL/AFSI;