Palestinian media distortion
Sunday evening we had an excellent talk by Daniel Seaman, the Head of the Israel Govt. Press Office (GPO) in Jerusalem at our Netanya Likud Anglos group. Since he was a civil service employee his talk was deliberately non-partisan. As you know, the PR of the Israel Govt. has come under a lot of criticism, but the GPO is not responsible for that. What they do is register foreign journalists, provide official press releases and spokesmen and provide feedback to journalists and media organizations when they perceive that a mistake has been made, either deliberately or accidentally. Since Israel has the largest number of foreign journalists per capita in the world, usually about 1,000, going up to ca. 2,500 during a crisis, this can be a very time-consuming job.
About 8 years ago, at the start of the so-called intifada, they realized that the Palestinians were engaging in deliberate media distortions, trying to show Israel in a bad light, as a bully and evil occupier and killer of Palestinian women and children. Since they could not beat us on the battlefield they chose another more convenient battlefield for them.
There were three reasons why they were successful, first there had developed a strong negative attitude towards the "militaristic" Israelis, especially in the UK and Europe, which they exploited and fed; second, the various media organizations, press and TV, were dependent on their Palestinian "stringers" (helpers, translators, cameramen), who all regard themselves as fighters in the war against Israel; and third, the Israel Govt. was never focussed or organized to deal with such a concerted program of media distortion.
With regard to the first reason, this resulted from a bias of editors and journalists themselves, so little could be done about this except complain. The basis of any feedback must always be that the journalist or media organization is not adhering to their own code of journalistic ethics, and Daniel said he always quotes from the code of international journalist ethics. The effect of this was marginal, but it did put them on the defensive.
With regard to the second reason, depending on Palestinians themselves, the media organizations were either naieve or deliberately ignored Israeli warnings about Palestinian media distortions and manipulations. There were a slew of them, the "massacre" in Jenin that never was, the explosion on the beach in Gaza that killed a family that had nothing to do with the IDF. But, the prime example is that of Mohammed al-Dura, in which the boy was sheltered behind his father while being shot at, supposedly for 45 mins and supposedly by IDF soldiers, at a junction in Gaza in 2004. The boy was supposedly killed and his father injured. The video and stills of this went all around the world and became a cause celebre in the Arab world, with streets and squares named after the boy. In actuality only one cameraman, for France-2 TV station, caught the action on film, and the narrative was supplied by a leftist Israeli journalist who worked for France-2 in Jerusalem. However, he was not present at the time, so he narrated according to the instructions of the cameraman, who himself was a member of Hamas.
We now know that this incident was entirely faked. The IDF carried out an investigation and within three days reported that the IDF guards had not fired at the boy and in fact could not have done so, since they were all in a guard post that was blocked from their location by a wall. Examination of the shots hitting the wall (and there were many of them) show clearly that the shots came from where the cameraman was standing, not perpendicular as they would have had to if it had been the IDF soldiers firing. But, although the IDF issued a correction, this was entirely discounted by the media, because of course they would not believe anything from that brutal militaristic organization.
Finally, when independent organizations examined the incident in detail they all concluded that it was a fake. The boy was never shot dead and his body was not taken to any hospital in Gaza, only one cameraman present (and there were many) actually recorded this incident, and finally France-2 refused to release the full tape of the incident. When Philip Karsenty claimed in print that France-2 was knowingly lying, they sued him, and were forced to release the rest of the tape (although not all of it), enough to show the boy sitting up at the end of the incident, by which time he had already been declared dead by the narrator. It was all a hoax and Karsenty won the law suit against France-2. Questions arose about why the Israel Govt. did not actively pursue this matter for several years, but left it to private individuals.
There is little the GPO can do about such distortions, they occur under battle conditions, and when a journalist is killed it is usually in a declared battle zone, where they do not have permission of the IDF to be. This has happened several times, but the IDF is always charged by the press with human rights abuses.
Taking up individual incidents and pressing the criticism, especially with public support, has had good results, with CNN, ABC, BBC and even Al Jazeera. When Al Jazeera had a party for the release of the terrorist who had murdered an Israeli child, the GPO threatened to revoke their press credentials in Isael, and although they could have appealed this to the courts, it would taken a long time, so they did an internal investigation, and promise such a thing won't happen again.
As a result of lessons from the Second Lebanon war, the Govt. finally made an organizational response to the situation, by establishing a coordinator of all press in the PM's Office, so that the IDF and other agencies will not be responding alone, but the response can truly be labelled that of the offical Israeli Govt. If this had happened immediately after the al-Dura case it would never have gone so far. So the GPO can do little, and probably too late, but the cumulative effect over time is to let the media organizations know that they are being watched, that they cannot rely on their biased Palestinian stringers and that they should uphold their own stated journalistic code of ethics.
About 8 years ago, at the start of the so-called intifada, they realized that the Palestinians were engaging in deliberate media distortions, trying to show Israel in a bad light, as a bully and evil occupier and killer of Palestinian women and children. Since they could not beat us on the battlefield they chose another more convenient battlefield for them.
There were three reasons why they were successful, first there had developed a strong negative attitude towards the "militaristic" Israelis, especially in the UK and Europe, which they exploited and fed; second, the various media organizations, press and TV, were dependent on their Palestinian "stringers" (helpers, translators, cameramen), who all regard themselves as fighters in the war against Israel; and third, the Israel Govt. was never focussed or organized to deal with such a concerted program of media distortion.
With regard to the first reason, this resulted from a bias of editors and journalists themselves, so little could be done about this except complain. The basis of any feedback must always be that the journalist or media organization is not adhering to their own code of journalistic ethics, and Daniel said he always quotes from the code of international journalist ethics. The effect of this was marginal, but it did put them on the defensive.
With regard to the second reason, depending on Palestinians themselves, the media organizations were either naieve or deliberately ignored Israeli warnings about Palestinian media distortions and manipulations. There were a slew of them, the "massacre" in Jenin that never was, the explosion on the beach in Gaza that killed a family that had nothing to do with the IDF. But, the prime example is that of Mohammed al-Dura, in which the boy was sheltered behind his father while being shot at, supposedly for 45 mins and supposedly by IDF soldiers, at a junction in Gaza in 2004. The boy was supposedly killed and his father injured. The video and stills of this went all around the world and became a cause celebre in the Arab world, with streets and squares named after the boy. In actuality only one cameraman, for France-2 TV station, caught the action on film, and the narrative was supplied by a leftist Israeli journalist who worked for France-2 in Jerusalem. However, he was not present at the time, so he narrated according to the instructions of the cameraman, who himself was a member of Hamas.
We now know that this incident was entirely faked. The IDF carried out an investigation and within three days reported that the IDF guards had not fired at the boy and in fact could not have done so, since they were all in a guard post that was blocked from their location by a wall. Examination of the shots hitting the wall (and there were many of them) show clearly that the shots came from where the cameraman was standing, not perpendicular as they would have had to if it had been the IDF soldiers firing. But, although the IDF issued a correction, this was entirely discounted by the media, because of course they would not believe anything from that brutal militaristic organization.
Finally, when independent organizations examined the incident in detail they all concluded that it was a fake. The boy was never shot dead and his body was not taken to any hospital in Gaza, only one cameraman present (and there were many) actually recorded this incident, and finally France-2 refused to release the full tape of the incident. When Philip Karsenty claimed in print that France-2 was knowingly lying, they sued him, and were forced to release the rest of the tape (although not all of it), enough to show the boy sitting up at the end of the incident, by which time he had already been declared dead by the narrator. It was all a hoax and Karsenty won the law suit against France-2. Questions arose about why the Israel Govt. did not actively pursue this matter for several years, but left it to private individuals.
There is little the GPO can do about such distortions, they occur under battle conditions, and when a journalist is killed it is usually in a declared battle zone, where they do not have permission of the IDF to be. This has happened several times, but the IDF is always charged by the press with human rights abuses.
Taking up individual incidents and pressing the criticism, especially with public support, has had good results, with CNN, ABC, BBC and even Al Jazeera. When Al Jazeera had a party for the release of the terrorist who had murdered an Israeli child, the GPO threatened to revoke their press credentials in Isael, and although they could have appealed this to the courts, it would taken a long time, so they did an internal investigation, and promise such a thing won't happen again.
As a result of lessons from the Second Lebanon war, the Govt. finally made an organizational response to the situation, by establishing a coordinator of all press in the PM's Office, so that the IDF and other agencies will not be responding alone, but the response can truly be labelled that of the offical Israeli Govt. If this had happened immediately after the al-Dura case it would never have gone so far. So the GPO can do little, and probably too late, but the cumulative effect over time is to let the media organizations know that they are being watched, that they cannot rely on their biased Palestinian stringers and that they should uphold their own stated journalistic code of ethics.
posted by Jack Cohen at 8:27 AM
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