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MEDIA BIAS
TO:    David bar-Ilan, Eye on Media, Jlem Post
FROM:  Steve Amdur, Kibbutz Haon, Jordan Valley, 15170 Israel.
       Telephone:  972-6-757572; FAX:  972-6-757554
DATE:  01/03/94
RE:
REF:   Jlem Rpt "1/13/94"; TIME 1/3/94
CC:   David Bedein, Israel Resource, Bet Agron; 02-247803; 257303 
------------------------------------------------------------------
			
ARAFAT AS SANTA-CLAUS:

It's not easy to make a bloodthirsty effeminate maniac lookcuddly, but the media are doing the best they can for Arafat.
The Jerusalem Report, in choosing a photo of him for its 1/13/94cover, chose an official portrait; the TIME 1/3/94 portrait-sketchhas mastered the trick of squeezing a soulful wistfulness out ofthose madman's eyes.

ARAFAT AS ABE LINCOLN

TIME: 1/3/94:  (Man-of-the-Year Issue) Writer: Nancy Gibbs;Reporters:  Lisa Beyer (Jlem); Dean Fischer (Tunis)
                     
SUMMARY:  A white-wash puff-job, primarily on Arafat, secondarilyon Rabin; but with a number of cutting apercus hidden in the text.

(1)  p2 Lead sentence, large type: "The peace on which YasserArafat has staked so much is not yet real for the men and womenand children dying in the streets of the West Bank and the Gazastrip."
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COMMENT:  Aw -- bullsh-t:  it's a well-wrought line,unfettered by facts; I don't recall any fatalities to women(& children?) in either Gaza or the West Bank since 9/13/93.
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Israeli women and children were killed by Palestinianterrorists in this period; so the author is notliterally wrong; but since the reader is led fromcontext to assume that she is referring only toPalestinians, she is duplicitous.  
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Equal opportunity, USA-style.
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(2)  "the PLO leader greets his guests warmly, giving no sign heis troubled by the turmoil of things not done.  He is direct andengaging, full of a charm half-calculated, half natural as hemakes his case."
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COMMENT:  Other visitors, at least those not angling forsubsequent interviews, have had rather a different impressionof that creature's character.
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(3)  "Asked if he has concerns about his own personal security, hechuckles
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`cackles'?
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I fear only g-d.'"
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and sleeps in a different bed each night only for variety
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(4)  ["Rabin is calm, almost relaxed."]
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See Puffing Rabin, elsewhere.  
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(5)  "During a heated debate with reluctant associates earlierthis year in Tunis, Arafat pounded on the table and boomed
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`screeched'?
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Source?
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Was you there, chickie?
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Arafat would not 'boom' (basso); he has a high-pitched voice,
reminiscent of that half-hung house-painter
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(6)  "Both men are dangerously flanked by extremists."
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Settler-bashing; implicitly equates the militant non-violentprotests of settlers with PLO-rejectionist assassinationattempts.
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'fanatical settlers and other right-wing Jews'
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A nice trick; let's name it the UNQANTITIZED DISJUNCTIVE
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There's no (locutionary) 'implication' in the logicalsense of entailment; but the reader is led to understand or `given the impression' that virtually all settlersare fanatics; while the writer remains safe from chargesof deliberate falsehood because, by strict logic, thestatement could be true of any class containing 2 ormore `fanatic settlers'.
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'fanatic settlers' has become an epithet, like 'fleet-footedAkilles'
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"swear
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Why not 'vow'?  Because 'swear', unlike 'vow', can also mean'curse', and so carries inflamatory overtones, especially toa Catholic readership to whom, at least in the good old days,swearing (ie, using the words 'damn' and 'hell') was a sin
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"never to give up one inch of the West Bank soil that is part ofwhat they call Eretz Yisrael"
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Oh, those pagan primitive fanatical tribe of settlers.
'one inch' -- how petty can you get
'of the soil' -- peasants
'that is part of what they call' -- that real Palestiniansoil is part of their ideologic fantasy
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one might have said "are determined not to voluntarilysurrender Jewish control of any portion of the biblicalland of Israel"
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(7)  "The pressure from enemies only complicates an already knottynegotiation."
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Quite.  But stay loose, Rabin's cool.

'enemies':  Moral equivalence strikes again, via simplerhetoric; if you lump Palestinian & Jewish opponents of theRabin/Arafat DOPes in one phrase, then, if the former includewhat can accurately be termed `enemies' (eg, folks who'd liketo off their bugger) then by simple rhetoric the term ispredicated of the latter, even those these are regional andnational democratically-elected representatives committed todemocratic process.

Rabin & Arafat may be latent manic-depressives with mutuallyreinforcing neuroses 
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(or, on the other hand, they may be pink kangeroos, ornone of the above, 
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as we journalists are wont to hypothesize),
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 but the phrase 'complicates an already knotty negotiation --
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knotty-pine paneling at Camp David & all that 
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-- makes them sound like cool professional statesmen      

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Again, I suggest that one must bring the methodololgicanalysis of subliminal advertising techniques to bear inanalyzing media bias, and recognize that literal as wellas visual mass-media commnicate primarily by conceptual'images' (which may be ideas, visual images, or acombination)
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(8) "When the two were alone with U.S. President Bill Clinton justbefore the ceremony in Washington,Rabin recalls, 'Arafat and Ididn't exchange anything, except I told him it's going to be verydifficult to implement the accord. He said, 'I know.'"
	
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IMAGE:  It's lonely at the top.  
Statue of Abe Lincoln overlooking the Washington mall, esp.as in the closing shot of Clint Eastwood's current hitfilm,'Firing Line'.
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THEORY:  Media bias addresses a particular cultural subgroup by evoking images presumably common to that group- it's not news that to be au courant -- ie, to beupwardly mobile in the managerial class -- one must keepup with the fashionable movies, TV shows, etc.  So onemay assume that these have been evoked with deliberatetaste, if not necessarily explicit intent.
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COMMENT:  Somehow,this rings false.  Maybe the writerreworked Rabin's words; maybe Rabin did; maybe context andnuances have been reworked.
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(9) "Arafat is just as sternly pragmatic."
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Or, more precisely, an amoral psycopath, sexual anomaly, andprofessional assassain.
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(10) "Arafat stands alone as a folk hero to his people."
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    Him and Abe Lincoln.
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(x1) "The teetotaling vegetarian  "
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COMMENT:  That is not reassuring.
Are you sure we're not all in a movie by Stephen King?
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(x2) "Never much of a soldier..."
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COMMENT:  This is useful.  Note that reporters try to smugglea bit of truth into their stories, disguised byunderstatement, usually in a subordinate clause that may passby an antagonistic reader.
It was once said of The New York Times, "one musts readbetween the lines, but at least there are lines to readbetweeen."  
If memory serves, it was the first post-Sept. 13 issue ofTIME that broke the news that Arafat is bald; now we learnthat he's a military incompetent.  
That's all helpful; it's been noted that the first step inbringing down a leader is to get the public to laugh at him.
l1
(x3)  "The headdress [kayieffeh, as worn by Arafaat] had nospeical meaning until he draped it to approximate the shape ofmandatory Palestine.  Then it became an emblem of Palestiniaunity."
.a3
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COMMENT:  I'll bet y'all didn't know that.
I'll also bet no-one but Arafat knew it till now.
This is not precisely a normal gesture.
At least it explains why he's been seen on TV fussing withhis kayiffeh, and why he made that weird remark about greaterIsrael being depicted on the 10 agarot coin.
Why did Rabin choose this fruitcake, of all people, aspartner?  
2 lunatics playing a happy game of dice for the future of ourworld.
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(x4)  "Until 1991, when he wed Suha Tawil, a Christian less thanhalf his age, he was always said to be married to the revolution. Now it would be more accurate to say Suha is married to therevolution."
l2
Again, look in any deviation from the most conventional formof expression, for a hidden message.  It would be moreaccurate to say 'Suha is married to Arafat'; if the writersays, instead, 'Suha is married to the revolution', andmoreover says -- which would ordinarily go without saying,since supposed all writers try to be as accurate as possible-- that 'it would be more accurate to say' that -- then onemay suppose that she is trying to convey that there is nothere a physical marriage relation.
l3
This ain't precisely an application of analyticphilosophy; but one does get a hint of how John Austingot a job in British intelligence.                       
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(11) "After graduating from Cairo University, he went to Kuwait tomake his fortune in construction."
l2
Another news-magazine said he handled plumbing; but it's notso glamorous to be described as a used toilet salesman. 
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(12) "Whether he gave the orders or not, ... "
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In other words, he presumably gave he orders, but we cannotprove that he was not on the Moon at the time, so let's setit aside as an question whose answer cannot be conclusivelydetermined.
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Like I say, Sceptical epistemology is the last refuge ofa scoundrel.
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(x5)  "Israeli troops had his head in gunsights when he led hisdefeated soldiers, under a U.S. guarantee, out of the wreckage iBeirut in 1982."
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We're lucky Japan didn't win World War II yet; in the USA,one's own career takes precedence over company loyalty.  Heretoo the writer seems to be sneaking in an important ifpolitically embarassing revelation:  that Israel could havekilled Arafat in Beirut in 1982 but was stopped by the USA.
                                                             
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(13) Puffing Rabin:  "He ... devised the tactics for Israel'sbrilliant victory over Syria, Egypt and Jordan in the 1967 Six-DayWar.  Swashbuckling [!] Defense Minister Moshe Dayan took most ofthe credit -- an injustice that rankles Rabin to this day."
l2
Apparently Rabin had not fully recovered from his May 24-25breakdown at the outbreak of hostilities, and Weizmann was ineffective command; it was the pre-emptive Air Force strikethat had much to do with the Israeli success.  Shortly afterthe War Rabin became Ambassador to the USA; one must assumehe was 'kicked upstairs'; had he been the military genius andhero that USA apologists pretend, it seems unlikely that hewould not have remained in the IDF.
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(14): "As a sabra -- a native-born Israeli -- Rabin does not havethe refugee mind-set shared by the country's founding fathers."
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The goyim don't mind Israelis, what they can't stand is Jews.

Again, this is the good-nigger/bad-nigger gambit; divide &conquer.  When the goyim start praising you, look out.
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(x6)  "The Prime Minister has a keen sense of history, andespecially of his own place in it.  He confides to close friendsthe feeling that he has never been given the prominence in theannals of Israel that he deserves.  Now, as an old soldier who hasseen too much death,he wants to be remembered as a peacemaker."
l2
Ie:  having screwed up a lacklustre military career, he gotmad and decided to make his mark in history by joining theother side.  Again, this is typical of manic depression,whose symptomology Rabin seems to have emulated.

One doubts that he can understand much more of history booksthan the index; but nowadays history is the ultimate consumergood for the man who has everything.
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(x7) " In the ancient lands of Moses...two men are playing tohistory - and history is paying them back."
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A suitably ironic epitaph for Rabin.
Recall that 'pay back' has, in USA slang, the force, not of'repay', but of 'get revenge'.      







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