;.cTNR 12/20/93 (Lane)
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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:       
RE:
REF:   The New Republic (TNR) "12/20/93", Charles Lane "Meltdown"
       PRINTED 12/02/93
CC:   David Bedein, Israel Resource, Bet Agron; 02-247803; 257303 
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This syrupy article, quietly anti-Israel in tone, is adisappointment in one of the few news-magazines from which oneexpects honest, incisive, cleanly-written analysis fron a LeftZionist perspective.

"Abu Rish, tragically enough, was one of the [PLO-Fatah] Hawkswho...accepted Israel's amnesty.  Abu Rish died in a shoot-outwhen two wanted Hawks he was habroing were disvoered by theIsraelis.  In other words, Abu Rish died honoring the same codethat had probably {emph. added to highlight an assumption whosebasis is merely literary} saved his life many times in the past: you don't turn a watned man out of your house."
{Nor be so uncouth as to refuse to pick up a weapon and fire a fewrounds in his support when the army stops by.}  

"No one can say Hamas doesn't stand up for its 'wanted men'. After Israeli troops gunned down Imad Akkel, the 24-year-old chiefof Izz al-Din [sic] al-Qassam, wanted for attacks on elevenIsraelis, Hamas staged a violent street demonstraton in Gaza inwhich one teenageer was killed and dozens of people wounded byIsraeli gunfire."
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COMMMENT:  Man, that's such an old-fashioned trick, the dudemust wear buttoned suspenders.  
	The good guys 'honor' and 'stand up', and at worst'stage' a 'demonstration' and were 'wanted for attacks'; theBad Buys 'gunned down'.  The Hamas leader as a '24-year-old';the Israeli soldiers are not identified in terms of age.
	N.B.:  Given the printing date of 12/02/93, presumablythis article was written before the Hamas terrorist killingsof civillians in explicit response to the killing of theirleader.                                      
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.p
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:       
RE:
REF:   TIME 12/20/93
CC:   David Bedein, Israel Resource, Bet Agron; 02-247803; 257303 
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Writer:  Kevin Fedarko; reporters:  David Aikman (Tel Aviv);Robert Slater (Hebron)

BOTTOM LINE:  A number of distortions; the reporters should becalled to account on this one, and presumably will blame thewriter.
Incidentally, it's not obvious what the reporter from Tel Avivcontributed to this article, since it has nothing to do with thatcity.  Presumably, he took a cab to the Ministry of Defense to gethis data.

I'd like to start by calling into question the sanctified BaboonTheory of News-Magazine-manship; in which reporters are seen ashunger-gatherers, but the article is written, and shaped to fit aneditorial line, unfettered by feedback from reality, at a deskhalf a hemisphere away but an otherwise undistinguished writer whogets the primary by-line.
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No doubt when TIME tried this approach in the 20's it madefor provocatively 'smart' journalistic stylization; but inthose days facts didn't matter much. 
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("You supply the photos and I'll supply the war" quothHearst of the Battleship Maine incident). 
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The fact is, no self-respecting newspaper nor news-magazine usesthis approach (as distinct from straight-forward non-biasedstylistic assembling/editting).  
The problem is a major one:  if the 'gestalt' of the article isset by someone with no first-hand awareness of the actualsituation, there's no hope that the final article will evenaccurately report reality, let alone offer insight into it; andthe news-magazine has virtually no basis for pretending to be morethan stylizied politicized entertainment.                                                 

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Title page:  "Middle East:  An Eye for an Eye / Israel's settlersare doing their best to derail the peace process."
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COMMENT:  I like that --  2 vile canards in 1 line:
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(a) Respectably anti-Jewish 
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(Cf. anon. England, "anti-Semitism is hating Jewsmore than absolutely necessary") 
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-- viz: the repulsive barabarism of 'an eye for an eye'{blame Hamarubi and his impaling Babylonians} supplantedamongst civilized persons by Xianity    
(b) Another brave blow in settler-bashing
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But bash we must; until Transfer (of settlers) isaccepted, we won't have peace.
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Lead sentence:  "Perhaps the most significant thing aboutMordechai Lapid's death was not who killed him but where they didit."
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COMMENT:  Like Begin said, in a nation of a few hundredmillion people with only tenuous unifying ideals, death isjust a matter of 'body count's.
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The writer goes on to stress the murder as retaliation for theJewish-extremist killing of a cab-driver by "a group of Lapid'sfellow-settlers".
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COMMENT:  That should be challenged, and the matter taken upwith Slater; as the Post noted editorially, Lapid was aleading intellectual/spiritual figure far separated fromJewish terrorism.
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"The sight of Jews killed by Palestinians is always guaranteed toprovoke outrage in Israel.  But many Israelis have little sympathyfor extremist settlers in the occupied territories, a minoritywhose vigilantism has done as much as their fanatical counterpartson the Palestinian side to threaten the peace process."
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COMMENT:
(1) There's an implied or erased sub-clause here:  thatIsraelis (or "Jews") are not outraged by the Jewish-terroristkilling of Palestinians.

(2) 'many Israelis' is the Phantom Taxi-Driver disguised as atruism.  Many is anything more than 3; and you can assume 3people agree with anything you please.

(3) 'extremist settlers' is a tendentious epithet veiled insyntactic ambiguity as an adjectival phrase:  i.e., theimplication is that all settlers are extremist, but thegramatically correct meaning is 'the extremist sub-class ofthe class of settlers'

(4) False equivalence disguised as even-handedness:  anassumption that settler extremism -- with which phrase thewriter 
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(WHO FROM HIS DESK IN NEW YORK PROBABLY HAS PRACTICALLYNO AWARENESS OF WHAT'S GOING ON HERE, 
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nor even time, as it were, to read our daily papers)
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lumps everything for burning a few used tires in the middleof a highway, to pre-meditated murder by Jewish extremistsfrom the USA criminal fringe -- is as much a threat to the'peace process' as is Palestinian irredentist andfactionalist terrorism

(5)  A simplistic lion-lamb(chops) view of the 'peaceprocess':  
a nice yuppie image that peace is a matter of folks stoppinghating and living nicely side by side --
No acknowlegement of the competing foreign influences in thePalestinian nationalist movemment (Iran/Hamas, Syria/PFLP, etal.), nor of the Tunis/Territories split, nor of the split ofTunis into armed competing cliques busy assassinating eachother, etc. etc.
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(II):  Delegitimizing the settlers:
The argument will run:  the settlers are an obstacle to the peaceprocess, and to the security of the nation.
It is clear that Rabin wants the settlers out, even though heprefers to keep the army in.  That is simple military thinking;fixed civilians are always an obstacle to military efficiency.
He and his henchmen have lately argued that settler extremism hasforced him to divert large numbers of troops into the territoriesas police.
TIME -- presumably Slater -- here echos Rabin's line:  "five daysbefore Israel was scheduled to begin pulling its forcesout...Rabin wa forced to pour 5000 more sodliders into the regionto control the cycle of murder and reprisal that has killed 41Palestinians and 14 Israelis since ....Sept. 13
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COMMENT:  The Phony Scoreboard Trick
In the USA, they like their political theory simple:
the Bad Guys are the one who kill the most people.
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("They think we killed their god -- it's very strange,but that's what they think.")
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I assume that figure lumps Palestinian terrorists killed bythe IDF in the Palestinian total, and Palestinians killed byPalestinian terrorists vs. Jewish civilians killed byPalestinian terrorists.
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"an estimated 30,000 [settlers] own rifles and handguns, andseveral settlements boast depots stocked with mines and handgrenades."
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COMMENT:  Davy Crockett had a rifle, and a lot of Americansown 'em, but I don't think you can get an M-16 etc. withIsracard; they're issued via the IDF.
No doubt there are settlements in the USA and South Africawith private stocks of hand grenades etc., but if any suchweaponry is held in settlements here, there is probably astraightforward explanation that has nothing to do withvigilantism.
AGAIN, YOU CAN'T HAVE ARTICLES REWRITTEN BY SOMEONE IN THEUSA; there's no safeguard against distortion and error.

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"Israeli television showed 
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A disingenous trick:  the writer does not say it happened,only that it was 'shown' (which might imply that it didhappen, but could be taken to imply that it appeared tohappen) -- on Israeli TV.

So far, that's just epistemology; but with a quickapplication:  as I noted in a previous memo, both TV andphoto-journalism can, intentionally or not, use telo-photoforeshortening of perspective, and framing/cropping of detailfrom context, to create misleading impressions.  
In those TV photos, as settlers pointed out, one saw thecivillian  firing level (which would be illegal in anythingbut a life-threatening situation), but did not see what hewas firing at.
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 pictures of his [Levinger's] compatirots swaggering {emph. added}through the streets [of Hebron] firing their weapons into a crowdof stone-throwing Palestinians {and inexplicably missing almostall of them?} while Israeli soldiers declined to intervene.
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As I recall, the Post reported the next day that the IDF unitwas new in that position, and had mis-understood itsresponsiblity in that situation -- which apparently wasrather different and more ambiguous than what the writerdescribes.

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"On Tuesday night, as the Lapids' cross-country funeral woundthrough Bethlehem en route to Hebron, mourers called for revengeand rebellion {emph. added}
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 -- the intifada was a rebellion against the civiladministration of military law in occupied territory; and theUS "Revolution" of 1775+ was a rebellion by colonists; andcitizens of regime that respects human rights and civilliberty are free to disregard government directives; but itis not clear what 'rebellion' would mean in this context,apart from Sharon ringing the Knesset with his tractors.
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against the government.  When Palestinians began throwing rocks,the settlers retalliated by smashing the windows of Arab homesalong the road.  As the cortege neared Hebron's Jewish cemetery,Palestinians gain pelted the procession with rocks {emph added}
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In usual journalistic jargon, 'pelted' is what one does withover-age tomatoes to over-aged comedians in a burlesquehouse; rocks cause brain concussion and coma
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and the mourners responded, this time with machine-gun fire
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COMMENT:  The weapon described here as a 'machine-gun' wadescribed above as a 'rifle'; ie, a semi-automatic 'assaultrifle.'  Regulations permit firing a weapon in the air inresponse to life-threatening situations, and apparently thtwas what occurred in this situation; though the writerconjurs up, for a USA audience, images of feeding an endlessstring of bullets into a Gatling gun; and clearly impliesthat the settlers' response was dispreportionate.

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"Yechiel Leiter, a Pennsylvania-born spokesman for the settlers"
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COMMENT:  True enough, but the insinuation here (in thecontext of a phrase earlier in this article:  
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("Among the most ardent [settlers] are thousands ofAmericans, many of whom have found solace for thedilocatin that plagued them in the U.S. in theuncompromising faith of the settler movement")is thatthis is not a real Israeli, just a USA trouble-maker   
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And note that the insinuation gains force by beinghard to identify; that way the ordinary carelessreader
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Because TIME ain't Shakespeare; nobody normalreads an article more than once through, andas quickly as possible
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is apt to come to the conclusion intended by thewriter without recognizing how he was steered to it
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again, one might start an analysis of mediabias with a study of the techniques ofsubliminal advertising; since what we'redealing with is simply political advertising.
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The last word in the article is given to an extreme settler:
"If I can't live in Hebron,' ssays settler David Yisraeli, 'youcan't have peace.'"
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COMMENT:  An article never ends with the last word; it endswith the echo in the reader's mind -- the impression that thereader takes away.  By deliberately putting last aprovocative remark representing the postion he opposes, thewriter steers the ordinary reader into an opinion inagreement with his (the writer's).

