Jonathan Tobin, editor of Philadelphia’s Jewish Exponent, says journos should be more careful in checking the credibility of Palestinian sources:
Every once in a great while, a journalist can stumble upon something so important that even they themselves don’t understand how crucial it is.
Philadelphia Inquirer staffer Michael Matza seems to have reached just such a point in a dispatch datelined from the Jabaliya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. In an Oct. 6 story titled “In desperation, Palestinians spin tales to rally support,” Matza took on a disturbing angle on the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians that is rarely reported in the mainstream press: The Palestinians lie.
In his piece, Matza described an incident in which official and unofficial Palestinian sources claimed to have killed 47 Israeli soldiers in fighting inside Gaza that occurred in the aftermath of Palestinian missile attacks on Israeli territory.
“The rumor spread like wildfire through this war-ravaged refugee camp. Mosque-mounted loudspeakers fanned the flames … They passed out candy on debris-strewn streets to celebrate,” wrote Matza. Then, he added, “In truth, no Israelis died.”
Why did the Arabs make such a false claim? According to the Inquirer correspondent, “The rumor that 47 soldiers were killed was a ‘lie’ some Palestinians propagated to soothe the psychological suffering of their people against a vastly superior foe.”
As one of his Palestinian sources conceded to him, “Many Palestinians succumb to wishful thinking.”
Though he bends over backward in the piece to rationalize the liars’ behavior, Matza deserves credit for taking on one of the most underreported aspects of this complex and often perplexing war.
If, as California Sen. Hiram Johnson famously said in 1918, “The first casualty when war comes is truth,” the Palestinians have been slaying it nonstop. Indeed, they have been doing so for a while; history tells us of similar “rumors” spread from mosques that led to bloody Arab pogroms against Jews in Jerusalem in 1920 and in Hebron in 1929.
Of course, lies can be spread on mediums other than loudspeakers. Those listening to Arab radio stations during the wars of 1948, 1956 and 1967 were under the impression that Tel Aviv was in flames, and that Arab forces were triumphing over a vanquished Israel.
But contrary to Matza’s sympathetic explanation, the lies told by the Palestinians have purposes other than to boost the morale of the depressed residents of Gaza. They also serve to delegitimize their Israeli opponents and influence world opinion against the Jewish state.
Read the rest here.
