CyberAlert -- 04/09/2002 -- Israel Creating More Bombers
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Israel Creating More Bombers; Israel Treated as Suspect; Gumbel's Last Shots; Lamb's Lament; Banfield's About Face on Osama Interview >>> Photos now online of the MRC's "Dishonor Awards: Roasting the Most Outrageously Biased Liberal Reporters of 2001." MRC Marketing Director Bonnie Langborgh has posted a couple of dozen photos of the event held on January 17 at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, DC. To see pictures of all the participants as well as of many of the prominent attendees, go to: http://www.mrc.org/news/nq/dishonor2002/dishonorphotos1.html <<<
From Jerusalem, after scenes of buildings and homes destroyed or damaged by Israeli troops, Reynolds concluded: "Now those scenes may not help Israel's image abroad, but the fact is that most people really don't care about that here. What they do care about is the fact that since this operation started attacks on Israeli civilians have all but ended." So maybe Israel is effectively rooting out terrorists. The very next story cued up by anchor Peter Jennings focused on how Israeli troops were supposedly abusing Palestinians by preventing medical teams from getting through and by beating up Palestinian men, a theme also stressed on the CBS Evening News by David Hawkins. ABC reporter Gillian Findlay featured audio of
Dr. Ali Jarbawi from Jenin. He charged: "It's almost genocide,
it's extremely sad and extremely frustrating for someone to witness all
that's happening without any intervention from the outside world."
The parody came in the form of a mock memo. An excerpt: To: All Western Correspondents We are so glad you are covering the Israeli invasion of the West Bank for us. Unfortunately, many of you are fresh from covering the U.S. action in Afghanistan. Some of you may be tempted to cover this event the same way you covered that one. This is incorrect. The U.S. action in Afghanistan was an effort to root out a terror organization, which had sponsored suicide attacks on a democratic nation. The Israeli invasion of the West Bank is part of a tragic cycle of violence. The correct emotion in this case is that all violence is bad, whether committed by terrorists or against them. Thus this story should be covered differently: 1) In Afghanistan we paid enormous amounts of attention to whether or not Osama bin Laden or Mullah Omar had been apprehended. You may remember that we ran charts showing the al Qaeda and Taliban leadership, noting which had been captured or killed. In the West Bank, however, we do not care if the terrorist organizers of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or Al Aksa are killed or captured. We will simply not ask that question. To do so would be to imply the Israeli actions might be justified. It is impermissible. 2) In Afghanistan we spent a lot of time detailing the technical wizardry of U.S. forces, and the bravery of American Special Forces soldiers who were involved in hand-to-hand fighting with terrorists. In the West Bank, we shall not do that. Instead we shall dwell almost exclusively on the brutality of the soldiers. In Afghanistan a Taliban soldier killed by U.S. troops was a soldier. In Palestine, a soldier killed by Israelis is a "policeman" or "nurse."... 4) In Afghanistan the members of al Qaeda were treated as moral inferiors to the American troops. In Israel, remember, all are equal. For a model of how to do this, see Joel Greenberg's story in the April 5 New York Times. "2 Girls, Divided by War, Joined in Carnage." As Israeli girl woke up and decided to go shopping. A Palestinian girl decided to commit murder. But they were both lovely bright charming girls caught in this tragedy. Both victims! END of Excerpt The Weekly Standard's Web site: http://www.weeklystandard.com The above article is only available to registered subscribers to the magazine. The April 5 New York Times story from Jerusalem by Joel Greenberg matched the premise suggested by the Weekly Standard. An excerpt: The suicide bomber and her victim look strikingly similar. Two high school seniors in jeans with flowing black hair, the teenage girls walked next to each other up to the entrance of a Jerusalem supermarket last Friday. Ayat al-Akhras, 18, from the Dheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem, was carrying a bomb. Rachel Levy, 17, from a neighborhood nearby, was carrying her mother's shopping list for a Sabbath eve dinner. The vastly different trajectories of their lives intersected for one deadly moment, mirroring the intimate conflict of their two peoples. At the door of the supermarket, Ms. Akhras detonated the explosives, killing Ms. Levy and a security guard, along with herself.... The twin images of the girls resonated here, piercing a public consciousness increasingly numbed by more than 18 months of grinding violence. The daughter of a refugee family originally from the Gaza Strip, Ms. Akhras grew up in Dheisheh, a grim warren of alleys and tightly packed dwellings that house 12,000 people on the southern edge of Bethlehem.... Despite the violence and turmoil of the past 18 months, Ms. Akhras stuck to a steady routine, her relatives said. Every morning at 7 o'clock, she would leave home for the half-hour walk to school at the neighboring village of Artas. She would return home in the afternoon and devote herself to homework and housework: cooking, ironing, doing the laundry. A top student with superior grades, she was preparing for graduation exams in a few months and planned to study journalism at a West Bank university, said her father, Muhammad Akhras, a construction foreman. "She studied all the time," said a brother, Fathi Akhras.... Ms. Levy was also preparing for graduation exams. Her specialty in school was photography, and she recently completed a final photo project whose theme was water: pictures of a waterfall, a street puddle, a pond.... END of Excerpt For the entire article, those registered with
the New York Times can go to: Another example of a leading media figure
making no distinction between terrorist killers and the nation victimized
fighting back: Brian Williams on Friday's Today. MRC analyst Ken Shepard
caught this from Williams on the April 5 broadcast: I don't recall Williams ever referring to how the U.S. Army in Afghanistan "keeps on rolling, keeps on flying, and keeps on killing."
Rather announced from Israel: "There is a new indication of what the United States is up against in this part of the world. A poll published today finds widespread hatred of America in a country that says it is and has been a U.S. ally, Saudi Arabia. In the poll, taken by a Saudi newspaper, 60 percent of Saudis said they 'hate' America. [no: 18] You'll recall 15 of the 19 September 11th assassins were Saudi. As for why Saudis say they hate America, 75 percent in this poll cited U.S. policy in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." An April 8 AP story from Riyadh offered more details. An excerpt: ....The poll in the Al Watan daily, owned by the royal family, questioned 2,000 Saudi men and women from 15 Saudi cities a few days before Israel's incursion into the West Bank on March 29. The poll did not give a margin of error. Responding to a question, "Do you hate the West in general?" 49 percent of Saudis said yes, 30 percent said no and 21 percent said they don't care. Asked if they hate America specifically, 60 percent said yes, 18 percent said no and 21 said they don't care.... END of Excerpt For the entire AP story: The AP noted: "Opinion polls are rare in the autocratically run kingdom." Which raises the question of its accuracy, but if you believe it is reflective of Saudi views, then it just reinforces how Israel is our only real friend in the region.
Interviewing William Quandt, an NSC adviser
during the Nixon and Carter presidencies, Gumbel elicited a smirk from him
on Monday morning by contending: As Fred Barnes outlined in the April 15 Weekly
Standard, the Bush administration just may have a consistent strategy:
Jim Romenesko's MediaNews (http://www.poynter.org/medianews) on Monday highlighted an April 4 St. Paul Pioneer Press story by Brian Lambert about Lamb's comments. An excerpt: He says, "The media has only itself to blame for this stupid conversation about bias." The great mistake, he says, is professional journalists constantly advertising themselves as "fair and balanced." "They're not," Lamb says, "and they never have been." He says he loves "nothing more than listening to Rush Limbaugh for three hours or reading (New York Times columnist) Tom Friedman" because "you know where they're coming from and where you fit in." But, he says, "There ought to be more liberal talk on talk radio. That's the big void right now." END of Excerpt They've tried. Remember Mario Cuomo's show? For the article in full:
MRC analyst Brad Wilmouth caught Banfield
expressing her interest in interviewing bin Laden, comments which came on
the March 28 edition of her show, Region in Conflict. As reported in the
April 4 CyberAlert, at the end of the show she read an e-mailed question:
"If given the chance to interview Osama bin Laden, would you?"
Her answer: Catching up with her nightly 9pm ET program, Brad on Friday caught her interview on the March 27 show, done as she stood inside the Beirut media center for the Arab summit, with journalist Zaki Chehab of Al Hayat. After Chehab maintained he and other Arab journalists would refuse to interview Ariel Sharon because they don't want to give him a platform while innocent people are being killed by his army, this exchange occurred: Banfield: "If you had an opportunity for
an exclusive interview with Osama bin Laden, would you take that?" Chehab responded with a "no," adding that CNN and ABC have both interviewed bin Laden before. But that was before September 11th.
-- CNN's Judy Woodruff on Comedy Central's Daily Show at 11pm EDT/PDT, repeated Tuesday night/Wednesday morning 1am EDT/PDT and again at both 10am and 7pm EDT/PDT on Wednesday. -- Attorney General John Ashcroft on CBS's Late Show with David Letterman at 11:35pm EDT/PDT, 10:35pm CDT/MDT.
10. Sometimes you catch the lighthouse keeper making shadow puppets 9. As it turns out, salt water plus oil spill equals delicious
vinaigrette 8. Once in a while, during a search-and-rescue, you find a cool-looking
seashell 7. When you're lost in the fog, friendly sea monsters help you find
your way 6. David Hasselhoff keeps showing up to see if we need a hand 5. Kids are always crank-calling you in Morse Code 4. There's nothing sweeter than stopping some snotty jerk driving his
yacht drunk 3. Once I found a piece of driftwood that sort of looked like Freddie
Prinze Jr. 2. Last week I made myself new underpants out of seaweed 1. Pirates! Make up your own "top ten" entries
for Bryant Gumbel and you can win a Late Show T-shirt. This week's
"Top Ten Contest" on the Late Show Web page: "Top Ten
Reasons Bryant Gumbel is Leaving The Early Show." To submit your
entries: If you come up with any good ones, pass them along to me and I'll run them along with the ones picked as winners by the Letterman staff assuming, of course, yours are not selected. Send them to: cybercomment@mrc.org If you haven't seen ABC's The Court yet, the Supreme Court drama starring Sally Field, tonight is your last chance. ABC has already cancelled it and so the 10pm EDT/PDT, 9pm CDT/MDT Tuesday night showing of the third episode will be its last ever. Having seen it, I'd say it's no loss. -- Brent Baker
>>>
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Concluding
a World News Tonight story on Monday night, Dean Reynolds acknowledged
that since Israel sent its military into the West Bank "attacks on
Israeli civilians have all but ended." But concluding the very next
story, Gillian Findlay decided that how Israel is abusing Palestinian
means that it is creating "many more" suicide bombers.
The back
page "Parody" in the April 15 Weekly Standard pretty
insightfully captures, with a bit of humor, how the media treat
Palestinian terrorists differently than the terrorists and their
protectors who attacked the U.S.
Our
friends the Saudis. Dan Rather ended Monday's CBS Evening News by
highlighting how a poll of Saudi citizens determined that most
"hate" the United States and cite U.S. policy toward Israel as
the reason.
Bryant
Gumbel is squeezing in all the bias he can before he leaves CBS's Early
Show, an exact departure date he has yet to announce.
Brian
Lamb thinks that by claiming to be impartial when they are really not,
reporters have no one but themselves to blame for having to answer
accusations of being biased. Lamb, founder of C-SPAN, made his comments
last Tuesday, April 2, during a "Great Conversations" address at
the University of Minnesota.
The two
sides of MSNBC's Ashleigh Banfield: A couple of weeks ago she proclaimed
that she'd love to give Osama bin Laden a forum from which to
pontificate. "Personally, absolutely I would like to interview Osama
bin Laden," she declared on her MSNBC prime time show, since
"I'd be fascinated by anything Osama bin Laden would have to
say." But, it turns out, the night before she scolded an Arab
journalist who told her he'd interview him: "There are millions of
people in America who believe that Osama bin Laden was responsible for the
deaths of 3,000 innocent people on September 11th, but you would not see
this as a platform for a maniac?"
Scheduled
to appear tonight, Tuesday April 9:
From the
April 5 Late Show with David Letterman, as read by members of the U.S.
Coast Guard, the "Top Ten Unusual Things that Happen While Guarding
Coasts." The Late Show Web page: 
