Getting the Story Straight
Thomas E. Ambrogi

The current edition of "Media Report," from CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, is a remarkable example of outrageous pleading on behalf of Israeli righteousness. The glossy journal, published in Boston since 1982, is so rabidly reactionary that it is difficult to take it seriously. And that may well be a serious mistake.

It lashes out against "the alarmingly distorted news coverage," and the table of contents gives a taste of its concerns. "Hanan Ashrawi’s Propaganda Unchallenged by Indulgent Media." "New York Times Covers Up PA Anti-Semitism." "NPR and Terror: Soft-pedalling Murder of Israelis." "At ABC, Bias As Usual." Their spleen spills over beyond U.S. coverage to include "Lying about Israel in the London Review of Books."

Another group aiming to set the record straight is FLAME (Facts and Logic about the Middle East), published in San Francisco. Its ads indicate that it is, remarkably, a "501(c)(3) educational institution." One of its pieces breathlessly argues that the U.S. gets its money’s worth in its aid to Israel: "Aid to Israel is America’s greatest defense bargain... It would be more in line with reality if military aid to Israel were classified as part of the defense budget, rather than as ‘aid.’ Israel is truly America’s unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Middle East."

Dubiously tax-exempt "educational institutions" are not very subtle, but their obvious political spin creates a climate which effectively blocks much of the U.S. media from honestly evaluating any other than Israeli perspectives on the issues.

Such dubiously tax-exempt "educational institutions" are not very subtle, but their obvious political spin creates a climate which effectively blocks much of the U.S. media from honestly evaluating any other than Israeli perspectives on the issues.

It is hard to know where to start in responding to the thesis that Israel does not get a fair hearing in the media. One place would be to study the emails which I receive regularly from a friend on the West Bank, Rev. Sandra Olewine. Sandra is an American doctoral student in biblical studies, and she is the United Methodist Liaison in Jerusalem. She used to live in Beit Jala but has recently moved to Bethlehem because of the IDF tank and Apache gunship shelling in Beit Jala. Now she’s not at all sure the move has improved either her security or her sleep.

Her email of last April 18 could serve as an outstanding contribution to Accuracy in Middle East Reporting. During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, my wife and I lived at Tantur, the International Ecumenical Institute on the road between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and I retain vivid memories of the nearby towns of Beit Jala and Beit Sahour from which Sandra reports here:

"Tonight, I fly out of Tel Aviv for a 10-day trip to the States. I've been invited to speak to the Board of Directors of the General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church about the situation here in Israel/Palestine. The invitation is an honor, and I am eager to share with these leaders of our denomination. But I must admit that leaving now, even for a short time, is a difficult thing to do.

"Israeli PM Ariel Sharon promised Palestinians action after the Passover holidays. True to his word, we've seen massive destruction in Gaza these last days. While Gaza has made the news, there has been almost complete silence about the Bethlehem area. Easter Sunday night a firefight broke out in Beit Jala below the Talitha Cumi School around 9:30 p.m. and lasted about an hour. On Monday night Beit Sahour, El Khader, Beit Jala and Bethlehem all were hit with machine gun fire and tank shells on and off for a couple of hours. Last night, the same cities were hit as we endured shelling and heavy machine gun fire on and off from 7:30pm until 4am this morning... I tried to memorize the scenery as I left this morning, because I don't know what will be gone when I get back."

She signs her letter: "God forbid that we forget... Sandra."

Then she attaches an editorial, "A Demolished House for Every Bullet," signed by Israeli journalist Gideon Levy in the April 15, 2001 issue of the Jerusalem daily Ha’aretz:

By dawn, the mission was accomplished. About 30 homes in Khan Yunis refugee camp were ‘shaved’ off the face of the earth. The entire first row of houses that threatened the Neveh Dekalim industrial zone was entirely destroyed - as an inevitable side effect two Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded.

In the Israeli lexicon this is an ‘initiated defensive’ operation, strictly kosher. The fact that it is the most flagrant violation so far of the Oslo agreements - even if the prime minister of Israel has bragged that Israel enters Area A "almost every day" -did not halt the operation. The question of what is the difference between an operation like this and acts of terrorism was not even asked…

Why, then, is the demolishing of dozens of civilian homes not an act of terror? Why is the causing of distress to hundreds of children whose homes are destroyed as they sleep not terror? Is the question of who shot first the only relevant moral and political question, or should it also be asked how much force each side uses and what means it employs? Within three days Israel demolished the homes of 42 families in the Gaza Strip, most of them on purpose and maybe a few of them just possibly by mistake. About 500 people have been left without anything, a Palestinian civilian and an officer were killed and several dozen civilians were injured, among them at least one child who was wounded in the head.

The red line of the Oslo agreement has been brutally crossed - and everything is legitimate, moral and inevitable in Israel's view. Terror belongs only to the Palestinians, and self-defense only to Israel.

The red line of the Oslo agreement has been brutally crossed - and everything is legitimate, moral and inevitable in Israel's view. Terror belongs only to the Palestinians, and self-defense only to Israel.

And perhaps, it must be asked honestly, the firing of mortars by the Palestinians is an act of self-defense against the occupation that has no end, and against the Jewish settlements beyond the 1967 borders that are just growing larger and larger before their exhausted eyes?...

What do we expect the world will think of Israel when it is behaving this way? What kind of state is it whose army enters the heart of a residential neighborhood in the middle of the night, demolishes dozens of homes belonging to innocent civilians, and then leaves?...

A demolished home for every bullet? Who determines this chilling index? Now, when the first row of houses in Khan Yunis has become rubble, the Palestinians will fire from the second row. And then what? Will Israel also shave that? And maybe we will destroy this entire noxious refugee camp from which they fire on Neveh Dekalim?

Gideon Levy was writing before the IDF escalated its terror by using American-supplied F-16s to bomb "strategic" targets in the Palestinian neighborhoods of Nablus and Ramallah, with the inevitable "collateral damage" which went unreported in the international media. His point about terrorism, and its noxious support of "the occupation which has no end," is urgently worth hearing, if it can find a place in the tendentious din of both the Israeli and the American media. And Sandra Olewine’s very immediate, and very accurate, reporting only confirms his point.

In her call to get the story straight, Olewine said of Levy’s courageous Jewish editorial: "He again raises the difficult questions about perceptions of violence -Palestinians always seen as terrorists and Israel always as only defending itself -and provokes us to face difficult realities. Almost seven months into this current situation, the underlying factor of Israeli occupation being the first layer of violence is almost erased from the story whenever it is told. But to forget that reality, to not demand that Israeli settlement construction, land confiscation and house demolitions stop, is to ensure that more Palestinians and more Israelis will die or be injured in the coming weeks...God forbid that we forget."

Thomas E. Ambrogi is an ecumenical theologian and human rights advocate who lives at Pilgrim Place in Claremont, California. He has an earlier history as a Jesuit priest and university professor, and is a member of All Saints Church, Pasadena. He can be reached at Tambrogi@aol.com

Related Links:

• Electronic Intifada, "a resource for countering myth, distortion and spin from the Israeli media war machine," at: www.electronicintifada.net
• Kolisrael.com, which provides access to a broad collection of media from Israel/Palestine in both Hebrew and English, at: www.kolisrael.com
• Middle East Realities, an alternative media source, at: www.middleeast.org