New Jersey Jewish News
MetroWest Feature
Israeli, American to evaluate Middle East media coverage
Two authorities on Israel and its neighbors will address a thorny issue — What The New York Times Doesn’t Tell You about the Middle East — at a community forum on
Wednesday, June 7, at 8 p.m. at Temple Sinai in Summit.
Speaking from an American-Jewish perspective will be Mitchell G. Bard, executive director of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise in Chevy Chase, Md.
According to its Web site, Bard’s nonpartisan organization works “to strengthen the U.S.-Israel relationship by emphasizing the fundamentals of the alliance [through] social and educational programs in the U.S. based on innovative, successful Israeli models.”
Sharing the podium and injecting an Israeli view will be Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center in Herzliya.
The two men previewed some of their planned talking points in separate telephone interviews with NJ Jewish News.
“We’re not coming for a debate; we’re coming to give different perspectives,” said Bard. “It is not so much a perspective on the Times but a discussion on the analysis of the Middle East that the Times doesn’t get right. Neither of us is specifically trying to critique The New York Times,” he insisted.
“It is a matter of trying to explain a more complete picture of some issue. The Times and other media do not give readers and listeners full coverage of an event, and they frequently miss the bigger picture or the historical background. They may be focused on elements that may not be important to the bigger picture.”
Rubin, an American-born Israeli, spent the past academic year as a visiting professor at American University in his hometown of Washington, DC, where he taught courses in Israeli society and foreign policy.
“We are not making a critique of The New York Times as such,” he said. “It is basically ‘What are the most important things you are not hearing and don’t know?’”
Rubin said his comments will take the form of a broader consideration of the media in general.
“It is not just a matter of what side you are on in terms of criticism or defense of Israel,” he explained. “It is a matter of how accurate your statements are. To me, that is the most important thing. When people say things that are not in accord with easily established facts, that is a very different matter.”
In different ways, both men believe the American media have not conveyed the full reality of the Palestinians’ Hamas-led government.
“There is a tendency to talk about Hamas as if its history began with its election a few months ago and that there is no past history of how it developed and what its views are,” said Bard.
“There is the focus on the immediate claims of Palestinian suffering because of responses to the Hamas government rather than the broader analysis of the relationship between the hardships of the Palestinians and their election of leaders who have brought this upon them — or the failure of Hamas to relieve the suffering within their control,” he added.
“Certain governments have recognized that Hamas is a terrorist organization that shouldn’t be supported. But when you have all these tear-jerking kinds of stories about how the poor Palestinians are suffering because of the sanctions, that also has an impact on policy.”
Rubin said he was troubled more by the Times’ treatment of Hamas on its opinion pages than in its news stories, calling some of the paper’s editorials “absolutely remarkable. Some of the things they’ve written are naive to an incredible extent.” He paraphrased one he recalled as saying, “Of course, Hamas will moderate itself when it takes power.”
But one editorial doesn’t tell the whole story, Rubin acknowledged. For a while the Times “had a very soft line on Hamas, then suddenly, they had this incredibly tough editorial” on the new Palestinian government. “I pictured this fistfight in the editorial room,” he said.
A story that is not being covered very well, said Rubin, is the mindset of Israelis — or Palestinians, for that matter.
“People know Hamas as radical, but they tend not to see there really is not much difference between Hamas and Fatah,” he said. “Their views are not that much different except on the Islamization of Palestinian society, [while] their tactics and goals are virtually identical.”
Questioning the impact
Bard said he does not “particularly worry” about how the Times covers Israel in general.
“I think it is of concern to the Jewish community, because they are always afraid that if a particular story is slanted in one way or the other, it is ultimately going to lead to some downfall for Israel in public-opinion changing or policy changing,” he said. “But even when reporting is biased or inaccurate, it doesn’t have that long-term impact.”
Rubin said the 2000 Camp David talks involving the late Palestinian Authority chair Yasser Arafat, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and former United States President Bill Clinton were not fully reported by most reporters.
“I don’t think they were aware of how much the Palestinians were offered and turned down,” said Rubin. “At this point, the most important thing is what conclusions the Israeli government drew from the experience, that if you don’t need territories for security — because the main threat is no longer Arab armies but terrorist attack — and you don’t need territories for negotiations — because there is nobody to negotiate with — then a lot of people will say you don’t need a lot of them.”
Rubin said such considerations prompted Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert to revamp their strategies for dealing with both Palestinians and Israeli settlers in Gaza and the West Bank.
Rubin said another “myth is that Israel wanted the war in Iraq. In fact, Israelis were very skeptical. You probably don’t know that at one point, several months before the American invasion, Ariel Sharon told the members of his cabinet to stop talking about the Iraqi war because people were so critical of the idea. They were worried that if things didn’t go well Israel would be blamed and a price would be exacted. They worried that Israel itself would be attacked. People who know the Middle East had big doubts about the idea that you are going to easily bring democracy to Iraq.”
The joint appearance by Bard and Rubin is cosponsored by the AJC, Temple Sinai, and United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ. Admission is free; reservations can be made by contacting AJC at 973-379-7844.
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