Media Throws Israel Under the Bus
November 16, 2011 14:24 by Simon Plosker
In the battle for public opinion, Israel’s enemies often claim that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is based on racial discrimination, apartheid laws and segregation. The goal is convince the public that Israel is like apartheid South Africa and therefore lacking in legitimacy.
In the latest effort to draw false analogies based on race, a Palestinian media stunt has attempted to twist the spirit of Martin Luther King and the American civil rights movement of the 1960s as six Palestinians boarded an Israeli bus in the West Bank in order to demonstrate Israeli “segregation” of Palestinians.
Judging by the amount of coverage, the international media was only too happy to give this publicity stunt exactly what it craved.
As the BBC acknowledged:
The West Bank Freedom Riders punched above their weight, drawing a lot of publicity for what was a relatively small event, reports the BBC’s Jon Donnison in the West Bank.
The comparison to the Freedom Riders of 1960s America seemed to capture the imagination as dozens of journalists gathered to see the small group board the bus, our correspondent says.
McClatchy mentions nearly 100 journalists waiting at a bus stop with the six Palestinians in the settlement of Kochav Yakov. Others reports refer to a veritable media scrum as the Palestinians boarded the bus.
So who bothered to include some vital context?
- “Israel has no law barring Palestinians from its public transport in the West Bank” – Reuters
- “no specific rule prevents Palestinians from riding the “Israeli” buses” – Associated Press, Daily Telegraph
- “Palestinians are not explicitly barred from riding the Israeli buses” – Christian Science Monitor
- “It is not illegal for Palestinians to travel on Israeli buses in the West Bank” – The Guardian
And who preferred not to challenge the false narrative?
The LA Times, BBC, Washington Post, AFP, The Independent all pointedly failed to make it clear that there is no law banning Palestinians from riding on Israeli buses, omitting this vital context.
Sheera Frenkel, however, went one step further writing for both McClatchy and The Times of London (subscription-only):
- “Six Palestinian activists were arrested Tuesday when they attempted to enter Jerusalem on buses designated for Israelis alone.”
- “Israel operates two bus lines in the West Bank that run through the circuitous mountains and into Jerusalem. Only Israelis, however, are allowed to use the bus system.”
- “Many of the Jewish passengers said they were surprised to learn that Palestinians were not allowed on the Israeli bus system.”
- “For some Jewish passengers it was a surprise to learn that Palestinians were not allowed on the Israeli bus system.”
Perhaps the passengers expressed surprise because Frenkel had told them something that is not actually true.
While there are restrictions on the freedom of movement of Palestinians in the West Bank due to security concerns, which includes access to Israeli settlements and within the Green Line, including Jerusalem, there is nothing to stop Palestinians from riding Israeli buses within the West Bank and from continuing their journeys into Jerusalem if they have a permit to do so.
If further evidence was required to prove that it is not racial discrimination that prevents Palestinians from traveling freely, it can be found in the following from Ha’aretz:
Huwaida Arraf, a lawyer and one of the six Freedom Riders on the bus, offered the officers the “honorary passport” she received from the Palestinians for taking part in the Gaza flotilla last year. They didn’t know they were arresting an Israeli and U.S. citizen.
Of course, to have presented her Israeli ID would have debunked there and then, the racial discrimination charge that the six riders were seeking to promote. Had Arraf, an Arab with Israeli citizenship, presented her ID, she would have passed unimpeded beyond the checkpoint irrespective of whether she was Jewish, Arab or any other ethnicity.
Meanwhile, Getty Images included the following in its photo captions:
While it is not officially forbidden for Palestinians to use Israeli public transportation in the West Bank, these lines are effectively segregated, since many of them pass through Jewish-only settlements, to which Palestinian entry is prohibited by a military decree.
In fact, in one of the conflict’s great ironies, many Palestinians are legally employed on construction projects within the settlements themselves. And as for the term “Jewish-only settlements”, this is deliberately misleading. Israeli Arabs are equally entitled to live in Israeli communities established over the Green Line, including in suburbs of Jerusalem such as Pisgat Ze’ev and French Hill where many Arabs reside.
As for the charges of discrimination and segregation, the six Palestinian protesters were able to sit without fear of the Israeli passengers on the bus until they reached the Hizma checkpoint. Unlike Palestinian terrorists, Israelis have not boarded public buses in order to blow them up or attack the passengers. These six Palestinians were able to board the Israeli bus while most Israelis would avoid a Palestinian bus out of fear for their lives.
Indeed, the media should be asking why they bought into a Palestinian publicity stunt that focused on buses. After all, it wasn’t an attempt to ride on a bus that these Palestinians had been barred from. The six bought tickets and sat down like any other passengers.
The real issue should have been the denial of entry into Jerusalem and Israel proper. The freedom of movement for a million Arab citizens of Israel, Palestinian residents of eastern Jerusalem and West Bank Palestinians with the correct permits should be enough to put paid to the notion that racism rather than security governs Israeli policy.
Many Israelis remember a time in the early 1990s and before, when both sides moved relatively freely between Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It was only with the outbreak of the Palestinian terror campaign, including the use of suicide bombers, that restrictions on Palestinian movement reached their current level. The media should ask themselves how much culpability Palestinians have for creating this situation where the real victims were Israelis murdered by Palestinian terrorists.
Such restrictions, whether one sympathizes with them or not, are prompted primarily by security concerns. To present them as based on racism and to invoke the memory of Martin Luther King is simply false and an insult to the memory of the US civil rights movement.
That so many media outlets deemed this to be a story worth covering says much about the framework through which they view Israel and the conflict.
Please send your considered comments to the media outlets above and to your local media if this story appears there:
- LA Times – letters@latimes.com
- BBC – www.bbc.co.uk/complaints
- Washington Post – letters@washpost.com
- The Independent – letters@independent.co.uk
- The Times of London – letters@thetimes.co.uk
Remember to include your postal address and daytime telephone number to stand a chance of being published.
Josephine Bacon
4:23 pm
Nov 16, 2011
Similarly, there is no law preventing Israelis boarding Palestinian buses, I used to travel on Palestinian buses in the West Bank when I went to Ramallah and if the bus was stopped I had to show my identity card like everyone else.
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Jona
9:00 pm
Nov 16, 2011
that may be true, but you would have to worry about exiting the Palestinian bus with your life. The Palestinians do not have that same fear, unless they are afraid of their fellow Palestinians attempting to blow up the bus.
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Jeff Rockland
5:14 pm
Nov 16, 2011
The Palestinians never fail to miss an opportunity to move themselves forward. If they honestly came from a position of love for their own people instead of destruction Israel, they might stand a chance to progress. Also, if Jordan, Syria and Egypt would actually make efforts to give land and support to the Palestinians, rather than their blaming Israel for displacement this would also help.
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jacob
5:21 pm
Nov 16, 2011
I wouldn’t waste my time writting to any of those publications, knowing ad nauseam which foot do they limp of and I blame the readers and subscriptors for not boycotting them, s hitting them where it hurts, that is in the pocket, will assure their objective and hokn est reporting or else…
The LA Times for instance, is the same piece of used toilet paper the NY Times is and I dare
say the same NY Jews who subscribe it are the same who maintain the LA’s one…
Unfortunately, Israeli PR is as useless as tits on a bull, as otherwise, the malls, automobiles
and the way the poor GAZA “refugees” live should be shown on any wide circulation papers
in the West but….I guess whoever is good for nothing is good for this kind of job in Israel…
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Media Throws Israel Under the Bus | To Know Him is to Love Him!
5:42 pm
Nov 16, 2011
[...] Read More [...]
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leon
6:20 pm
Nov 16, 2011
ISREAL SHOULD GIVE NOTICE TO THESE JOURNALISTS THAT REPORTING FALSE INFORMATION WILL GET THEM EXPELLED FROM ISREAL. IN TOUGH TIMES WE NEED TO GET TOUGH. ISREAL ALWAYS BENDS OVER BACKWARDS FOR APPROVAL .WHY DON’T
WE SHOW PALISTANIANS WORKING IN ISREAL AND HOW GOOD THEY HAVE IT .
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Larry Breindel
6:24 pm
Nov 16, 2011
Are Israelis guilty of Antisemitism?
The last time I looked both Jews and Palestinians are Semitic people.
While there are those who accuse some Jews of self-hatred I don’t think
this is what they had in mind.
Are Jews racist?
The last time I looked “Palestinian” is not a race. This sort of
nonsense sounds like a geneticist discussing a “WWII Germanic Master Race”.
Is Israel an apartheid state?
If so, why did Israel work so hard to fly in Falashas from Ethiopia?
Admittedly few Israelis want to sit in a circle and sing Kumbaya
with their Palestinian neighbors. Then again, didn’t these kind
agrarian reformers back Hitler – and lost?
Didn’t they reject the UN Mandate that created Israel?
As I remember they attacked – and lost.
Then they attacked again in the Six Day War – and lost.
Israel will not just “go away”. It is high time the Muslim world
made peace with the past and walk forward into a peaceful future
together with Israel.
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Stan Corbett
6:36 pm
Nov 16, 2011
It is quite clear to me as it should be to you that Palestinians do not want peace.
They have had many, many years to do so but have refused.
Therefore do not expect to see peace for the Jewish people in Israel for the foreseeable future.
It is a sad but true situation. There is nothing more that the Israeli government can do.
Unfortunately, we just have to live with that fact.
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Ernesto
7:10 pm
Nov 16, 2011
Stan, completely agree with what you said.
It’s sad, but those are the facts just now. Shall God bless us, and in the future to have PEACE with our neighbors. But it’s not for our days.
HonetReporting, Keep Going !
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Dallas
7:02 pm
Nov 16, 2011
I responded to the Washington Compost article and seriously, the amount of hatred and bias among the responders is a disturbing testimony of the mindset of at least the readers of that media outlet.
The deep and irrational vitriol against Israel makes it impossible to get through with facts and logic. They have an automatic nature typical of all fundamentalists, and, indeed, some twisted combination of ‘human rights’ mixed with anti-West hatred is NOW the “fastest-growing religion in the world”.
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EricD
7:20 pm
Nov 16, 2011
Ridiculous stunt, though better than rock throwing as a protest.
Israel does not owe these individuals any right to movement and there is no violation.
This is wholly different than what occurred in America, where blacks were seeking their constitutional rights to equal protection and substantive due process of law, including the right to vote, as citizens of the USA.
Palestinians are not citizens or nationals of Israel and have no claim to enforce rights of citizenship or residency against the state.
The right to movement is covered by Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights:
(1) Everyone lawfully within the territory of a State shall, within that territory, have the right to liberty of movement and freedom to choose his residence.
(2) Everyone shall be free to leave any country, including his own.
(3) The above-mentioned rights shall not be subject to any restrictions except those provided by law, are necessary to protect national security, public order (ordre public), public health or morals or the rights and freedoms of others, and are consistent with the other rights recognized in the present Covenant.
(4) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country.
So where is the violation of human rights?
This grab for publicity trivializes the fight against one’s own government to ensure all citizens their lawful entitlements from their state.
Palestinians will be fortunate if this mainly passes unnoticed. I believe most people will see the disconnect and it will be detrimental to their cause, itself uncertain to many observers.
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Roger G. Bensman
8:36 pm
Nov 16, 2011
I am advised that in Israel the MSM(Liberal) reins supreme. That is the big problem. That media is aided and abetted by the worldwide MSM(Liberal) operating there. Don’t know how WeThePeople of Israel will solve that. There are efforts.
Here in the States, that has been largely diluted with the emergence in recent decades of the much larger—readership, viewership, listenership, bloggership, revenues—of MSM(Conservative). Specifically, we speak of Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Washington Times newspapers; Weekly Standard, National Review, Commentary mags, Fox NewsTV, Fox Business TV, cNBC Kudlow TV; radio—Ingraham, Limbaugh, Hewitt, Beck; Internet–Drudge, Breitbart, GBTV, PJMedia.com, and so on and so forth. MSM(Conservative) is some three times larger in all respects relating to where it counts: news and editorial coverage.
They scoop, break news, cover stories that the MSM(Liberal) suppress, and are generally fair, balanced, accurate, and focused. They don’t insult you with nonsense and propaganda. MSM(Liberal) does insult.
So, when you say the MEDIA throws Israel under the bus, it means something, I suppose, outside the U.S., but here, it means less and less and finally it means they are merely playing to the congregation, which is the Incredible Shrinking Left here in America.
You may agree or disagree. Merely my research and resultant opinion.
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jim long
8:41 pm
Nov 16, 2011
agree w/larry, yes yes the grand mufti of jeruselem was a big fan, assoc. and supporter of onkle adolf esp in his enthusiasm in murdering jews. but islam’s past/present /future is the same. they want (if memory serves,the grand mufti held the rank of brigadafuhrer/alghemeine SS)
very much to kill all of us,we infidels. the pals. can roam around in complete safety among the jews.the reverse is not true. no, not by a long shot. the beyond remittancs fact is and history dictates that anytime a pal. steps on a bus full of jews their lives are all in danger.random rockets that are “dealt with” instead of retalliated against in the interest of peace.it is never too late for peace,blessed peace but a reasonable and patient world grows weary of palestine and all islamic violence/murder/anarchy. be assured and take comfort in the fact that as long as there is one marine left to pull at the atmosphere,you will remain free
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Phillip
9:36 pm
Nov 16, 2011
I don’t have a problem with the claim that we are being racist: I recall with deep love and affection the words of Rabbi Meir Kahane (H-shem Yinkom Damo) who in an essay to activist DInkins some time prior to his umtimely death wrote the following comment: “…the identification of Jews and Judaism is immensely separatist racist… etc”. In that context Please G-d let the public transport in Israel forbid Arabs or other non – Jews from travelling on the same transport as Jews…
YES YES YES, go for it!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Thoughts on the Palestinian "Freedom Riders" - ScrollPost.com
4:20 am
Nov 17, 2011
[...] and Israel proper. The idea that racism rather than security governs Israeli policy is misplaced. We are reminded: Many Israelis remember a time in the early 1990s and before, when both sides moved relatively [...]
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jim long
7:02 am
Nov 17, 2011
the past? the future? as per larry’s request,they are doing prezackly that. because to islam they are one and the same. islam wants to kill us,all of us,that’s always been their ambition. that is
still their desire and i do not see any evidence of change for the future. their furure is our(ALL
INFIDELS) demise. i see no dissent! the “violent fringe” which our frightened politically correct politicians refer to are just the loud ones. the rest quietly support the murdering cultists among
them and just as quietly (mayhap) hoorah them when they murder innocent and unsuspecting
women and children.
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philip
10:18 am
Nov 17, 2011
Actually, a descent into farce.
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Emes
6:09 pm
Nov 17, 2011
Actually, it should be an insurance for Israelis to have Palestinians on their buses but as the Palestinians themselves hold little regard for life itself, even their own, the Israelis still take a chance in letting them use their transport.
As for the scenario mentioning the similarity of ‘apparteid’ and its association to Martin Luther King, it was a Jew, Stanley Levison, who wrote King’s speeches!
BBC (Bloody Bias Commentaries) – I note recently that they do not let up on how smoking is dangerous for your health, even going along with the latest “not to smoke in a car” laws coming into effect – well Israel should have the same consideration regarding BBC’s and other medias despicable reporting! and, as Phillip mentions, we need all the Rabbi Meir Kahanes’ available in the present climate of anti-Israel, anti-Jew in this world! – he must be spinning to see how bombarded we are from all sides and how Israel’s weak government allows such negative reporting and propaganda to continue, let alone going along with the world’s demands on Israel.
Yes, if we are going to be hated, let us be hated for being strong!
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Steve Egger
6:24 am
Nov 18, 2011
The Palestinians need to go back to Jordan where they belong!
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jim long
7:09 am
Nov 18, 2011
whoa !! no regard for life? even their own ??? widely distributed myth. let’s get to the
“their own life” part. the ones brainwashed into strapping explosives to their person and blowing themselves up no longer care, true ( stupid *&%^ s ) but the ” b r a i n w a s h e r s ” . them?
those ones? figure it out .
islam is big talk.know why they do what they do? cause the words warrior and islam are
mutually exclusive. the whole of islam,the whole. repeatedly attack smal israel and small israel
WIPES UP THE DESERT WITH THEM. so they fell back on something safer,and something
entirely beyond contempt. oh,and good point,mr.egger
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Palestine is Still the Issue | The Question of Palestine: liberation or independence? | Asa Winstanley
1:36 pm
Dec 13, 2011
[...] a large amount of media coverage (a fact that sent the Zionist fanatics at “Honest Reporting” into a rage, much to my [...]
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