Location: Deconstruction > Archive
Letter to Haaretz
To the Editors of Haaretz,
It’s a sad irony that the single most damaging, inflammatory and reckless media outlet in the global mediascape, where Israel is concerned, is an Israeli newspaper: namely, your own.
On any given day, Haaretz’s front page is dominated by incendiary, mostly anti-Israel rhetoric. Your newspaper speaks only in hyperbole to quite effectively (we are sad to admit) portray Israel as a voracious, territory-eating empire and Israelis as a nation of merciless, cultureless Spartans.
Forgetting the major, irrevocable misconceptions that Haaretz has by its own initiative seeded all this about Israel – such as the fallacy of atrocity-committing Israeli soldiers in the Gaza War (a rumor later shown to be untrue), or the widely circulated report of an Arab man convicted of raping a Jewish woman for having consensual sex with her (the woman was a mentally retarded victim who was in fact raped, we learned after your headlines had been splashed across the word) – any given edition of Haaretz offers a virtual broadsheet of anti-Jewish fodder.
In the edition of March 21, 2011, we are treated to a column decrying not the murder of a settler family in Itamar, but its use as a political symbol in Israel. The columnist, however, himself uses the heinous incident to create a moral equivalence – one of Haaretz’s favorite devices – saying that “both sides [of the conflict] have made children legitimate targets.” Is this in fact true? Has there ever been an Israeli political or military leader, or even a civilian, who has called for the death of Palestinian children? Have we in fact targeted civilians, using terrorism, or have we risked the lives of our own soldiers in order to avoid harming “the other side” – children or otherwise? Reading your paper, it’s hard to remember.
In a news report, readers learn that a Palestinian man was stabbed in an attack “motivated by Jewish ultra-nationalism.” Apparently, this Jewish ultra-nationalism – which calls to mind nothing less than the fascism of Mussolini Italy and the Third Reich – is so well established that we need not even have a suspect in custody to ascertain the motive. While the non-fatal stabbing was clearly attributed to a Jew, and called a “price-tag” attack, the murder of the family in Itamar (the act putatively being paid for) was mentioned only in passing – and the report doesn’t just omit that it was a Palestinian “ultra-nationalist” who committed it (if we accept the reporter’s own equivalence) but, astonishingly, makes no mention of an assailant at all.
Finally, what would any edition of Haaretz be without a prominently placed item featuring incendiary, blatantly anti-Israel rhetoric from a marginal figure? Today, the public learns from Haaretz’s reporting of an obscure talk that according to the discredited UN investigator Richard Falk, the presence of Jews in East Jerusalem constitutes “ethnic cleansing.” The report makes no mention that the “Human Rights Council” Falk spoke to is peopled by such human rights-loving nations as Saudi Arabia, China, Syria, Cuba, and Pakistan, to name a few. It makes no mention that Israeli Arabs are free to live wherever they want within Israel, and that Israeli Jews might be accorded the same right.
Haaretz evidently believes itself to be on a crusade for justice – pointing out at every turn the innocence of the Palestinians, and in no uncertain terms, the guilt of the Jews. Substituting anti-Jewish rumors for facts and establishing non-existent patterns in the minds of readers, it is evident that very few publications have been able to do so much damage – not only to the State of Israel, but to the world’s image of Jews. It’s a publication, no doubt, that would have made Henry Ford and the Czar of Russia nod heartily with approval.
We would call on you, as citizens of Israel, as Jews, and as journalists, to end the parade of anti-Jewish attacks, but we cannot afford to waste our breath. Rather, we turn to those who recognize the damage you have done, to call out to others that a fire is burning in the Israeli media, and threatens to spread. We call out to those who seek peace for Israel to contain this fire, to try douse it with the one thing that can: truth.
It’s a sad irony that the single most damaging, inflammatory and reckless media outlet in the global mediascape, where Israel is concerned, is an Israeli newspaper: namely, your own.
On any given day, Haaretz’s front page is dominated by incendiary, mostly anti-Israel rhetoric. Your newspaper speaks only in hyperbole to quite effectively (we are sad to admit) portray Israel as a voracious, territory-eating empire and Israelis as a nation of merciless, cultureless Spartans.
Forgetting the major, irrevocable misconceptions that Haaretz has by its own initiative seeded all this about Israel – such as the fallacy of atrocity-committing Israeli soldiers in the Gaza War (a rumor later shown to be untrue), or the widely circulated report of an Arab man convicted of raping a Jewish woman for having consensual sex with her (the woman was a mentally retarded victim who was in fact raped, we learned after your headlines had been splashed across the word) – any given edition of Haaretz offers a virtual broadsheet of anti-Jewish fodder.
In the edition of March 21, 2011, we are treated to a column decrying not the murder of a settler family in Itamar, but its use as a political symbol in Israel. The columnist, however, himself uses the heinous incident to create a moral equivalence – one of Haaretz’s favorite devices – saying that “both sides [of the conflict] have made children legitimate targets.” Is this in fact true? Has there ever been an Israeli political or military leader, or even a civilian, who has called for the death of Palestinian children? Have we in fact targeted civilians, using terrorism, or have we risked the lives of our own soldiers in order to avoid harming “the other side” – children or otherwise? Reading your paper, it’s hard to remember.
In a news report, readers learn that a Palestinian man was stabbed in an attack “motivated by Jewish ultra-nationalism.” Apparently, this Jewish ultra-nationalism – which calls to mind nothing less than the fascism of Mussolini Italy and the Third Reich – is so well established that we need not even have a suspect in custody to ascertain the motive. While the non-fatal stabbing was clearly attributed to a Jew, and called a “price-tag” attack, the murder of the family in Itamar (the act putatively being paid for) was mentioned only in passing – and the report doesn’t just omit that it was a Palestinian “ultra-nationalist” who committed it (if we accept the reporter’s own equivalence) but, astonishingly, makes no mention of an assailant at all.
Finally, what would any edition of Haaretz be without a prominently placed item featuring incendiary, blatantly anti-Israel rhetoric from a marginal figure? Today, the public learns from Haaretz’s reporting of an obscure talk that according to the discredited UN investigator Richard Falk, the presence of Jews in East Jerusalem constitutes “ethnic cleansing.” The report makes no mention that the “Human Rights Council” Falk spoke to is peopled by such human rights-loving nations as Saudi Arabia, China, Syria, Cuba, and Pakistan, to name a few. It makes no mention that Israeli Arabs are free to live wherever they want within Israel, and that Israeli Jews might be accorded the same right.
Haaretz evidently believes itself to be on a crusade for justice – pointing out at every turn the innocence of the Palestinians, and in no uncertain terms, the guilt of the Jews. Substituting anti-Jewish rumors for facts and establishing non-existent patterns in the minds of readers, it is evident that very few publications have been able to do so much damage – not only to the State of Israel, but to the world’s image of Jews. It’s a publication, no doubt, that would have made Henry Ford and the Czar of Russia nod heartily with approval.
We would call on you, as citizens of Israel, as Jews, and as journalists, to end the parade of anti-Jewish attacks, but we cannot afford to waste our breath. Rather, we turn to those who recognize the damage you have done, to call out to others that a fire is burning in the Israeli media, and threatens to spread. We call out to those who seek peace for Israel to contain this fire, to try douse it with the one thing that can: truth.
Related content
Brad Bernstein |
NY Times Editorial 2009 |
Gideon Levy |
Steven Erlanger |
All rights reserved © JNI 2010
