;.cTIME (Lisa Beyer)
;.l1,6,60,66,1,0,10,75,192,2,15,20,25,127,10,0,
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MEDIA BIAS
TO:    David Bedein, Israel Resource, Bet Agron Press Center
       37 Hillel St., Jerusalem 94581
       Tel:  02--236-368;  FAX:  02--6255-119 Att: DB
       E-Mail:  media@actcom.co.il
FROM:  Steve Amdur, Kibbutz Haon, Jordan Valley, 15170 Israel.
       Telephone:  972-6-6656-572; FAX:  972-6-6656-554
DATE:  
RE:    
REF:   TIME 7 Oct 96 (Lisa Beyer, Ramallah,  with reporting byJamil  Hamad, Gaza Strip; Aharon  Klein, Ramallah, et.  al. )
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The photos and captions do not seem biased; the most shockingphoto is captioned "An Israeli  medic wounded at the Gaza Stripborder; the medic's blood has splashed over a water tower, that heis trying to hold onto.

Byline:  By Lisa Beyer, Ramallah
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COMMENT:  How many hours did she spend in Ramallah?
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"it was only the match thrown into the tinderbox of accumulatedPalestinian fury"

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COMMENT:  Actually, it was a planned and orchestrated set of uprisings, co-ordinated with prior pressure from Arab states, intended, as it did, to force  the USA and enable westernEurope to exert pressure on.  if not destablize, theNetanyahu government.
	But the USA media, which have ignored the USA'srepression and suppression of popular revolutions from theBelgian Congo to Chile and  Guatemala, not to mentionVietnam, is quite adept at trotting out the standardrevolutionary imagry of `socialist realism' where that abetsUSA realpolitik.
	Here, we have a sort of Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck's,not Peres') image of the Noble (Arab) Savage rising in furyto throw off the burdens of military occupation andimperialist oppression. 
	Rather than of pre-teenagers forced out into the streetsas cannon fodder, by a corrupt leaders of  a regime whichuses torture and assassination as basic tools of government.
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"Palestinians were in despair over the paralysis in the peaceprocess..."
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COMMENT:  Again, the Fallacy of Personalization of apolitical struggle.   There's an implicit patronization ofArabs here; nobody would say that the Israelis were  incollective despair; Israelis are regarded as westerners whothink as inidividuals.
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"After allowing the conflagration to burn for a time, [ChairpersonPoopoohead] began to work alongside the Israelis  to damp it down."
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COMMENT:  A terse and accurate account.  
Although disregarding Chairperson Poopoohead's role ininstigating the riots, this does acknowlege, as most mediadid not, that he supported the riots; and notes his"condoning of corruption".                   

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"The inexperienced Netanyau, meanwhile, is clumsily showing astunned Israeli populace  ..."
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COMMENT:   The pre-election media cliche was that Netanyahuwas superficial, no more than a master of the sound-bites [as Ronald Reagan was; the difference being that Netanyahu knowswhat he's saying].  The post-election media-cliche, whichBarak (the general, not the pasty-faced English accountant)is riding hell-for-leather, is that Netanyahu is incompetent-- an amateur, inexperienced, inept.  
	Fact is that Rabin and Peres, for all that they had madea career of machine politics, were continually inept; as wasBarak (if, as some say, it was he who planned the Hamasdeportations).
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"Most of the 491-m-long underpass had been accessible to  touristsfor several years,  but with only one opening -- in the JewishQuarter of Jerusalem's Old  City -- serving as both entrance andexit."
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COMMENT:  Now that's just a simple clear statement of thetruth; which  is more than most media reports were.
So far  I'm not finding blatant bias in TIME nor with LisaBeyer, credited as writer for this article (and henceresponsible for it, for better or worse).
The article also forcefully notes PLO financial corruption,and disregard of human rights, civil liberty, and its ownostensibly democratic institutions. .

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"Because the passage runs  along  ... the plateau on which Islam's holy Dome of the Rock and al-Aksa mosque are built, Muslimauthorities charged that the excavation might endanger thosesites."
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COMMENT:  As Netanyahu pointed out, this is standard mediabias disingenuity.  A preposterous statement is presented,attributed to others, with no editorial suggestion that it isnonsense.
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"Haram al-Sharif, which the Jews call the Temple Mount"
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COMMENT:  Ok fans, which of the 7 reporters/writer wrote thatline? 
	But the Writer and Editor and Publisher must takeresponsibilty for letting it through.
	Like,  it was the Temple Mount about 1000 years before amosque was built on  the ruins of the 2nd Temple.
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"the dispreportion of casualties among the Palestinians"
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COMMENT:  I discussed that as first aired on the CNN 10/27/96Headline news; the ratio of Israeli casualtieis was farhigher than in the riots of IntifadaI; and many of thePalestinian casualties seem to have been from Palestinian fire.   And even this article notes that Palestinians were deliberately provoking Israeli fire. 
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"Netanyahu has taken his first terrible bloodying as PrimeMinister.  It's up to him, more than anyone else,  to decide whichwas the Palestinians will now go."
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COMMENT:   Those are the final lines of  the article, andthey read like a PLO threat crafted in  Ramallah.   
	Note too the hokey-heroic facistic personifiction of thePalestinian masses as a power with a collective mind of itsown (rather than  as cannon-fodder for a few corrupt anddegenerate terrorist warlords.)




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