;.cNewsweek 3/9
;.l1,6,60,66,1,0,10,75,192,2,15,20,25,127,10,0,
;.l2,15,75,192,2,20,25,127,15,0,
;.l3,20,75,192,2,25,127,20,0,
;.l4,25,75,192,2,127,25,0,
;.l5,30,75,192,2,127,30,0,
;.l6,12,90,192,2,18,24,127,12,1,
;.l7,17,124,192,2,34,127,17,2,
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:  3/9/94
REF:   Newsweek March 14, 1994; Tom Masland writer; reportersJeffrey Bartholet ("on the West Bank"), & 2 in Washington
CC:   David Bedein, Israel Resource, Bet Agron; 02-247803; 257303 
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GENERAL REMARK:  It's a plot.  No Israel bashing this time around;that should make anyone paranoid.  Rabin is the good guy; thesettlers are the bad guy; the Hebron massacre was a useful thingto clarify the need to disband the settlements.  Then we can havea Palestinian state and we'll all live happily ever after, at leatas far as CNN is concerned.  In virtual reality, who needs more?

Cover story:  "Israel's Settlers:  Armed and Dangerous."
Cover Photo:  A settler, posed against a blood-red sky, looking upinto space as if receiving an immaterial FAX from the deity ofspace cadets, wearing a Mets T-short, with a kid wearing a Nw YokT-shoirt, holding a wood-stocked Uzi with his left hand on thetrigger guard.  Wife looks up adoringly.  Setttler looks moreYemmenite than New Yorker, but who knows.
Cover photo Rina Castenuovo, Contact Press Images.

Inside photos:  "Palestinians flee Israeli forces during aconfrontation in Hebron."  The Palestinians seem all under age 14. There's no indication of what, if anything, happened shortlybefore the photo was shot, nor how the photographer happened to beconveniently located in their line of retreat.
Photo -- Thomas Hartwell - Sara.

2nd photo, also on inside cover.  3 yeshiva kids walking pastHebron shuk with weapons, one has his finger nearly on thetrigger.  All 3 wear T-shirts, which might be a bit chilly at thistime of year.  Photo;  Ricki Rosen -- Sara.                                                        
**REMARK:  It might be interesting to find out when and wherethese photos were taken, and how they were processed:  fromvideotape?  posed?  using models? (cover photo?).
  
"But Israel is no longer willing to leave a lunatic fringe of thesettler movement to pursue [Kach's] violent, anti-Arab vision."
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COMMENT:  The problem is, it is and has; the crackdown onKach has been less window-dressing ("round up the usualsuspects") than one expects from a bananna republic.  So whyis Newsweek, which usually blames Israel for everything butthe weather, lauding it?
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Cf. a quote on the "Perspectives" page, the equivalent of thecomic page, which is what one turns to first:
"'You are an errant weed.  Sensible Judaism spits you out.' Yitzak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister, on the militant settlerswho defend the massacre of Arabs in Hebron."
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COMMENT:  As I've suggested, 'militant settlers' is given alargely tautologous sense by the media, 
i.e. 'militant settlers''all settlers'
So the effect here is for Newsweek, exploiting the contextfree character of quotations, to take a remark predicatedonly of Kach/Kach-like extremists, and extend it, in the nameof the state of Israel, to all settlers.
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"To some Israelis, the crackdown looked halfheated, even laughable... A week after announcing the crackdown on Kach and relatedgroups, only two of the six leaders had been captured."
	
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COMMENT:  Who said there were only 6 leaders of Kach andrelated groups?

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"Experience has taught the radicals not to fear governmentauthority.  For years they have attacked Arabs with impunity, sayhuman rights workers." 
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Swell; which disinterested groups say it?
ACRI, Amnesty International and B'Tselem have credibility; AlHaq may be otherwise.
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"They say 
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Did anyone say anything on the record?  Or is this just morePLO propaganda clothed in human-rights paper?
Avigor Feldman is cited in a follow-up sentence, whichsuggests but does not entail that he's the source of theprevious remarks.  
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**Since it would have been simple enough stylisticallyto cite him as their source, and since, as I've tried toshow in previous memos, media bias frequently turns onthe reader's giving the writer the benefit of stylisitcdoubt, one may suspect a new trick of bias here.

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"settlers seeking to avenge Arab violence burn Palestinian cars,break windows, shoot holes in rooftop water tanks and injure oreven kill Palestinians without much fear of legal repercussions."
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**A big lie packaged in a lot of smaller truths.
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Correction; the writer seems to substantiate his point.
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"Rabin neglected the fact that many radical settlers are notconnected to the Kahanists, who number only in the hundreds."
l2
That's an important point; I'd like to say they are, bydefinition, and that the total is only a few hundred, who caneasily be contained.
The critical question, which the whole nation is agonizingover is:  what must be done to minimize the possibility ofrecurrence of Jewish terrorism.  The IDF seems to be saying,install metal detectors & locks in the Kevre; Peres & Rabinas usual seem to be talking out of both sides of both mouths;some suggest detaining at least several dozen activists andstrictly restricing several hundred;  the PLO calls fordisarming and expelling all settlers.
Again, the critical question is not how many settlers wouldsay they'd like to kill Arabs; but rather, how many might.
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