[sc:graybox ]With the launch of his new book, HonestReporting spoke exclusively to Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld about the delegitimization of Israel and the role of the media.
HonestReporting: Your recently published book, The War of a Million Cuts is the first book to analyze the entire delegitimization process of Israel. What are its main characteristics?
Manfred Gerstenfeld: The War of a Million Cuts is not limited to a description and analysis of the essence of the entire delegitimization process and its impact. It also presents a practical plan of action to fight this process. The book begins with an explanation of how contemporary anti-Israelism and the two classic types of anti-Semitism, religious and ethnic, overlap, especially insofar as similar motifs are concerned.
The core hate theme of all three types of anti-Semitism is that Jews, and nowadays Israel, represent absolute evil. In our times, ‘absolute evil’ in a country or a people is commonly portrayed as Nazi-like behavior. Over 40% of the European Union’s adult population think that Israel is Nazi-like in its attitude toward the Palestinians. This finding of many polls is a well-hidden secret in both Europe and Israel.
My book furthermore describes and analyzes the main hate messages against Israel. It presents a breakdown of the main perpetrator groups including media, academics, the extreme left and right, NGOs, social democrats, certain church leaders, trade unions etc.
This is followed by a description of how the anti-Israeli hatemongers get their messages to the public and how much damage they have already done to the Jews and Israel. The greatest innovation of the book, however, is that there is a long chapter on how to fight anti-Israelism.
HR: Our interest at HonestReporting is mainly in the analysis of media hostility against Israel. What are the main elements of your book’s chapter about the media?
MG: Media bias has caused huge damage to Israel in many ways. This has been expressed both through omission of essential facts placing Israel in a favorable light, and through editorial articles and op-eds attacking Israel. Simultaneously Palestinian crimes are ignored, whitewashed, or misrepresented in their favor.
The War of a Million Cuts presents many examples of media dishonesty or bias against Israel taken from a variety of countries, offering a comprehensive view of the problems Israel faces with journalists. The range of this presentation is much more useful than a narrow focus on one country or one language only. The reader thus can get an overview on what is inherent in the anti-Israel media bias, and what is typical of certain countries.
Some elements of bias indeed vary from country to country. For instance, Shmuel Trigano, a very important French Jewish thinker and experienced analyst of anti-Semitism has pointed out the uniformity of the French newspapers’ bias against Israel. This is far less the case in countries such as the UK. Despite the activities of notoriously anti-Israel UK media, such as the BBC, The Guardian and the Independent, not all UK media show similar bias. The Telegraph, for example, an important daily, is not driven by anti-Israelism.
HR: How have pro-Israeli media watchers contributed to the fight against anti-Israel bias?
MG: The contribution of the pro-Israeli media watchers in highlighting the media’s transgressions with respect to Israel is huge. HonestReporting is one of the major players here. The pro-Israel media watchers are in fact at the forefront of exposing a much larger phenomenon, the prejudice and unfairness of media in a much broader sense through the analysis they make of the bias against Israel.
Over the past decades, many media have made the most of a unique situation. Whereas they have the power to criticize others relentlessly and sometimes brutally, there are few ways to take them to task. The work of their staff is only subject to the specific media’s self-regulation. Except in extreme cases, journalists are not accountable to anybody outside their profession.
Reporters can choose the facts they will mention or omit, even if this leads to major distortions of their readers’ perceptions. The 2014 Gaza war is one of the most extreme examples. There we have seen that the means of slanting information, if reporters wish to do so, are almost unlimited. Media also rarely criticize each other, even though that would create much greater accountability among journalists.
When in future the Israeli government finally gets its act together and begins to expose some of the media crooks, the importance of the work of the pro-Israel media watchers will become much clearer. I am intentionally saying ‘when’ and not ‘if’ because there will come a day when the Israeli government will no longer be able to close its eyes to the problems extreme media bias causes for this country.
HR: Could the Israeli government fight biased media better than the non-governmental media watchers?
MG: It could add much additional force to what the non-governmental media-watchers do. The Israeli government has largely neglected the fight against the media which attack the country. A central message of my book is that Israel needs to establish a counter-propaganda agency.
This is not difficult to understand. When Israel was initially threatened and afterwards attacked by foreign armies, it put up its own military – the Israel Defense Forces. Similarly when Israel was attacked by intelligence services, it invested heavily in building up its three intelligence services, the Mossad, the domestic security service Shabak, and the military intelligence service Aman.
Over the decades all these bodies acquired experience, learned from their mistakes, invented new methods and approaches and improved their operations. Every major new event and the methods used to deal with it adds to their experience. Similarly in view of the many cyber-attacks, Israel is investing much money and training people to build up cyber defense. Soon Israel will be an international leader in the cyber defense field, if it has not already achieved that status.
For many years now Israel has been and is being attacked with the most extreme hate propaganda. Yet no organization currently exists to monitor and study the major attacks, and collect and make use of the experience acquired in this field. Thus Israel does not learn from the past and its enemies enjoy what one might call a free anti-Semitic lunch.
This anti-Semitic free lunch is another key characteristic of the media bias. Hostile reporters know that they can write — without any risk — the most negative things about Israel, even if some of these are entirely untrue. Media crooks and their editors have nothing to fear from the Israelis. These reporters will be readmitted to the country. They will be able to interview Israeli authorities or at least attend press conferences.
However, in order to work with Palestinians, journalists need the collaboration of the Palestinian Authority. If PA leaders are not willing to receive a particular journalist, that person will lose his job as he will be unable to continue reporting on both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Several classic cases show that the bias has been going on for a long time. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times disclosed — many years later — that Western correspondents stationed in Beirut before 1982 did not write at all about the well-known corruption of the local PLO leadership. He also remarked that these correspondents had presented the PLO’s activities much more positively than those of Phalangists, Israelis, or Americans. He furthermore mentioned that it had been essential for journalists to stay on good terms with the PLO. Otherwise, their foreign editor would not have been granted the desired interview with Yasser Arafat.
Another classic case of media bias was when Ricardo Christiano, correspondent of the Italian state network RAI, wrote a letter in 2000 in the Palestinian daily, Al-Hayat al-Jadida. It concerned the lynching of two Israeli reserve soldiers by Palestinians in Ramallah. He disclosed that another Italian network MediaSet had filmed the lynching and smuggled the pictures abroad adding that he, of course would not have published the pictures if they were in his possession. Thereafter the MediaSet journalist could no longer work in the area.
HR: What do you think of the work of the pro-Israel media watchers?
MG: There are two main categories of pro-Israel media watchers, organizations and individuals. There are larger organizations which follow a number of media on an ongoing basis, such as HonestReporting and Camera, and some smaller ones for other languages. As far as HonestReporting is concerned, I in particular like the Dishonest Reporter awards. One was awarded to Sidsel Wold, the Norwegian correspondent in Israel of the State Broadcaster NRK who broadcast a radio interview with me, she had invented.
Then there are individuals, some of whom write on issues from time to time – Tom Gross is an example. Others write books or reports on specific issues. Sergio Minerbi, one of the forerunners in this field, wrote about Belgian media bias. Recently, Joel Kotek published a report on the bias of French-speaking Belgian media. Trevor Asserson did some profound analysis on the BBC’s bias in the previous decade. All these media watchers, organizations and individuals alike, have brought together a wealth of information, which, together with methodologies they have developed, form a foundation for further action. Both Israel and the Jewish people should be grateful to them.
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