Page 30 - HaMizrachi # 21 Tisha B'Av 2020 USA

AM, ERETZ, TORAH ISRAEL INSIGHT

Daniel S. Mariaschin

Media Bias Against Israel

Where to Begin?

he media’s treatment of The first patients don’t come until picnicking families and ice cream
Israel has been among the 5:39 PM. They crowd around the vendors. Even after a Hamas offi-
TJewish State’s most vexing ambulance, choking on tear gas. cial boasted that more than 50 of
challenges. Most major media orga- Israeli soldiers, just a few hundred those declared dead in the demon-
nizations have reporters based in yards away on the other side of the strations were Hamas operatives,
Israel, an open society that affords boundary fence, had fired a volley of most media organizations went
journalists – domestic and foreign – hissing canisters at the protesters. with their “mostly peaceful protest”
access to policymakers, the military, stories, rarely mentioning the rev-
and the general citizenry. Israel, The article includes an interview elation about the 50, and playing
with
paramedic,
a
Palestinian
the West Bank, and Gaza are, glob- down Hamas’ central role in the
ally speaking, a very confined area. which included the following – not whole affair, including the torching
a quote, but the reporter’s own
When conflicts arise, hundreds of paraphrase of the interviewee: “It of Israeli farmland and nature pre-
additional journalists flock to Israel doesn’t compare to the stress of the serves by fiery kites and balloons.
and rush to the border, sending back 2014 war, though, when he spent
reports on the fighting in real-time. his days in the ambulance worrying Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran publicly
call for and seek Israel’s destruction.
It should be no mystery to reporters about his family’s safety as Gaza Terrorists can strike anytime at
based in Israel that the Jewish State came under heavy bombardment Israelis, ramming pedestrians with
faces implacable enemies. And yet from Israel and Hamas fired rockets cars and bulldozers, stabbing people
that message rarely gets through. If back.” on the street, or attempting to
it does, it’s done grudgingly. Sim- Wait a minute: wasn’t it Hamas kidnap civilians and soldiers. Isra-
plistic explanations abound, includ- that fired the rockets into Israel el’s right to defend itself and be at
ing the “Palestinians as David, the first, and then Israel that defended peace with its neighbors should not
Israelis as Goliath” underdog argu- itself with airstrikes against Hamas be in question. But many journalists
ment, which translates into “under- targets? don’t report it that way, choosing
standing” of violent “resistance many times to give those who seek
to the occupation.” Or maybe the Playing fast and loose with hear- to destroy Israel a free pass.
media organizations that the report- say and unsubstantiated charges It is our right to call out those who
ers represent hew to an ideological was rife during the Friday protests engage in advancing a tainted nar-
viewpoint – which just happens in Gaza. Casualty numbers were rative and set the record straight
to be identical to those writing or attributed to “Gaza health officials.” – sometimes multiple times a day
broadcasting the stories themselves. Let’s consider an egregious example – when the media does not present
The editors and the headline writers of bias, carried by multiple media the full picture.
back home, far removed from the organizations: the case of Layla
action, seal the deal by summarizing Ghandour, the Palestinian baby said This opinion piece is adapted from an
already biased stories. by the press to have died from tear article appearing in The Algemeiner in
gas inhalation during the demon- August 2018.
The early summer demonstra-
tions in Gaza last year produced a strations. It was later reported that
the baby had actually died due to
Washington Post story headlined
“A day of gas inside a Gaza ambu- a heart condition and Hamas had
paid the family to lie about the cir-
lance,” which focused on Palestinian cumstances. Try to find more than
medics who treated the wounded a few “clarifications” of this story, in
near the border fence separating print or on the air. You won’t.
Gaza from Israel. The opening lines Daniel S. Mariaschin has spent nearly
all of his professional life working on
in this seven-paragraph story tell For days, the press reported on behalf of Jewish organizations and is
you immediately, without reading the carnival-like atmosphere of the Chief Executive Officer of B’nai B’rith
further, where this story is going: the demonstrations, mentioning International

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