For example, when a pregnant Israeli, her infant child, and other family members were attacked at their family Passover meal at Elon Moreh on March 28, 2002, the only coverage the Times provided was the following sentence buried in an article about Yasir Arafat: ”Even as Mr. Arafat made his pledge, a Palestinian gunman shot and killed four Israelis in a Jewish settlement near the West Bank city of Nablus.” No mention of the seven children left orphaned in that attack.
What Passover Massacre?
The slants and omissions in the Times extend well beyond basic reporting. For example, in last year’s ”Year in Review” calendar (December 29, 2002), the Times highlighted the most important events of the year. The entry for March 28 read: ”Arab world agrees to relations with Israel if land is returned” (this is hardly news; it is a claim some Arabs have made for decades) — followed directly by, on March 29, ”Israel invades Yasir Arafat’s headquarters, 5 Palestinians, 1 Israeli die.” The reader is left with the impression that Israel’s only response to the supposed Arab peace offer was violence.
In fact, on March 27 (on which only the death of comedian Milton Berle was marked by the Times), 29 Israelis were blown up while celebrating a Passover seder at a Netanya hotel, something the Times did not list in its calendar. (The Times does mention the Passover bomb in a footnote to its calendar, but says only that ”more than a dozen people died,” an odd way to characterize a group of 29 people. Incidentally, six Israelis, not one, were killed by Palestinians on March 29.)
These are the kind of errors that the Times makes almost every day in it Middle East coverage. If the paper were making similar errors in favor of Israel, we might put it all down to sloppiness. But it doesn’t.
Jews for Arafat
The Times also likes to devote ample publicity to anti-Zionist Jews. Last March and April, for example, in a period when it ran almost no stories on the hundreds of Israeli victims and survivors of suicide bombs (which were then occurring at a record rate), the Times carried at least four stories quoting Adam Shapiro, an American Jew who entered Ramallah to protect and assist Yasir Arafat.
The Times repeatedly referred to Shapiro as a ”humanitarian worker.” This was curious, since Shapiro himself admits to his support for ”armed resistance” and a Palestinian ”violent movement.” Nowhere in its extensive and largely sympathetic coverage of Shapiro did the Times quote from his article in Palestine Chronicle a month earlier, in which he explains that when he said he told Western journalists he supported non-violence this was merely a tactical maneuver to ”manipulate…a story.” In the same article, Shapiro also referred to a ”suicide operation” as ”noble.”
The Times’s largely sympathetic portrayal of Shapiro fits into a familiar pattern of photo captions, headlines, and articles about Western supporters of Yasir Arafat, in which they are described as ”pacifists,” ”peace advocates,” or ”peace activists.”
Saddam’s Best Friend
Over the last year, the Times has devoted hundreds of thousands of words to both Arafat and Saddam Hussein. Yet you would be hard-pressed to find any reference to Arafat’s continuing support for Saddam. When Arafat sent ”holiday greetings” to the Iraqi dictator, as he did last month in a telegram (reported in other Arab and Western media on February 22, 2003), calling him ”Your Excellency, Brother-President Saddam” and writing that ”Together, hand in hand [we will march] to Al-Quds Al-Sharif [Jerusalem] with the help of Allah,” you won’t find mention of it in the Times.
