If I were a professor of journalism, I could use last Saturday’s New York Times article about Israel for an entire class lesson on how to slant an article against Israel while pretending to be an objective reporter.
The article was written by Diaa Hadid, who was recently hired by the Times to report on Israel even though she has a long track record of anti-Israel bias. Among other things, she was previously a columnist for the anti-Israel website Electronic Intifada. Hadid, who describes herself as “an Australian of Lebanese and Egyptian descent,” also served as public relations officer for the pro-Palestinian group Ittijah. Its director, Amir Makhloul, is in an Israeli prison for espionage on behalf of the Hizbullah terrorists.
Hadid’s article in the March 26 edition concerned the Israeli soldier who shot and killed a wounded terrorist in Hebron last week.
Let’s first consider the established facts about the incident and then we’ll see the clever way in which Hadid rewrote those facts to smear Israel.
Without any cause or provocation, the terrorist, 21-year-old Yusri al-Sharif, attempted to murder an Israeli soldier by stabbing him with a large knife. As blood gushed from the victim’s shoulder, his fellow-soldiers shot and wounded the terrorist.
We know what happened next because within hours of the incident there were multiple videos of it posted on YouTube.
The terrorist lay on the ground, wounded but not dead. He was still moving. He was wearing a coat, even though Hebron was in the midst of a heat wave; it was 77 degrees that day. On the videos, you can see what appears to be a bulge in the coat.
The medics who were treating the wounded soldier can be heard shouting that the terrorist might have a suicide bomb strapped to him. On one video, there is a voice – it could be that of a soldier or a medic – yelling, “It looks like he has a bomb on him. Until a sapper comes, nobody touches him!” Then you hear a medic yelling, “That terrorist is still alive, the dog! Don’t let him attack us!”
Those are the facts. Now let’s see how Diaa Hadid cleverly wrote her story to ensure that readers will sympathize with the terrorist rather than the soldier.
Start with the opening sentence: “The Israeli military said on Friday that a soldier who shot a Palestinian assailant in the head as he lay motionless on the ground was being investigated on suspicion of murder.”
See how she slipped “motionless” in there? Of course he was not motionless – the whole point is that the terrorist was still moving, as the videos show. But by using the word “motionless,” Hadid conveys the sense that he could not possibly have posed any threat, and therefore shooting him must have been unjustified.
Also note that Hadid calls the stabber an “assailant.” She does so again in a later paragraph. She also refers to him as “the wounded man.” Never in her twelve-paragraph article does she call Sharif a terrorist. (And not until the fifth paragraph does she mentions that Sharif stabbed anybody.)
Hadid’s most subtle and effective anti-Israel twist comes when she presents the soldier’s point of view. This is not until the seventh paragraph. She does not quote the soldier, even though he gave statements to the news media she could have cited. She does not quote his lawyers, even though they were available to be interviewed.
Instead, she presents a one-sentence paraphrase of their position, distorted in such a way as to make the soldier’s case seem implausible: “The soldier’s lawyers say he acted appropriately, because Mr. Sharif still had the intention and ability to harm soldiers.”
Note how she didn’t cite any of the points that the soldier or his lawyers made, such as the fact that the terrorist was still moving; that his coat had a bulge; that the medics were shouting he had a bomb; and that standard Israeli Army procedure is for a soldier to assume that a wounded terrorist might have a concealed bomb. Instead, Hadid made it seem as if the soldier were ludicrously claiming that he somehow knew the terrorist’s “intentions” – that he could read the terrorist’s mind.
It’s Journalistic Bias 101: Don’t present the actual arguments of persons whom you dislike, because readers might agree with them. Instead, couch their arguments in language that makes him seem less than credible.
Diaa Hadid’s predecessors at The New York Times’ Jerusalem bureau had an advantage. When the likes of Thomas Friedman, David Shipler, and Joel Brinkley were covering Israel for the Times back in the pre-Internet age they could report whatever they wanted and the public could do little to fact-check them.
Hadid, however, lives in a different era. Her greatest enemy is YouTube. Readers who are interested can go look at the Hebron videos for themselves and see the truth. And while there are questions about the soldier’s actions, including whether he abided by the so-called rules of engagement, they can only be investigated by looking at all the facts and circumstances of the case
Hadid’s only hope is that not many readers will care enough to double-check. But some of us do care. And we will check. And we will keep telling the truth, to counter her lies.