The MSM Bias Against Israel

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Good editorial at YNet today in which the writer exposes the MSM bias against Israel by giving the example of the "Jenin Massacre": (h/t Little Green Footballs)

After a lot of hesitancy and a short-lived attempt to take balanced positions, the worldwide left-wing has returned in full force to the "Jenin massacre syndrome."

To remind: Many of the worlds leading journalists described the fighting in Jenin during the spring of 2002 as a cold-blooded massacre of thousands of Palestinians by the brutal IDF. TV screens around the world featured Palestinian "eyewitnesses," who gave exact details of blood-curdling actions by IDF soldiers that never happened. TV reporters reported against a background of destroyed buildings as "evidence" from the field that Israel had mercilessly flattened an entire city and the refugee camp next to it.

It took months for human rights organizations, even the United Nations, to issue their reports refuting Palestinian claims. There was no massacre in Jenin, no ethnic cleansing, no intentional destruction of hospitals. There was a bloody battle in which soldiers died on each side.

[…]But in other cases, no lessons were learned from the blood libel of the Jenin massacre. During the second week of fighting, Israel's military campaign in Lebanon is currently being portrayed as the total destruction of Lebanon, of essential civilian infrastructure, as a human tragedy on the level of the 2004 tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands of people in Southeast Asia.

Reading reports from left-leaning field reporters, one gets a picture that Beirut has been destroyed at least as badly as Dresden was during the Second World War. Foreign television channels use one section of footage over and over, showing the destruction of one neighborhood in south Beirut, to "show" what has happened throughout the city.

[…]And where is the truth in all this? The air force's bombing of Lebanon have caused, as always happens in war, damage and destruction, but this damage has been extremely limited. Israel has not "kicked Lebanon's ass," nor is there any intention to do so.

[…]The situation in south Lebanon is worse because of the planned civilian flight. But Hizbullah has turned the whole of south Lebanon into a war zone, by blurring the distinction between military and civilian areas. The organization also aims its rockets at Israel's civilian population. Thus, civilians were forced to flee both southern Lebanon and northern Israel.

Still, talk of a "Lebanese nakba," a humanitarian disaster that any honest person would feel revulsion about, fails to reflect reality. It is no more than horror propaganda that many prefer to believe, including many Israeli journalists. Analysts repeat the claims without verifying the facts, and preach moral lessons and philosophies based on these claims.

[…]As of this writing, some 360 Lebanese have been killed by Israeli military action, about half of them Hizbullah fighters (as opposed to official Lebanese statistics). After two weeks of bombing, these numbers tell the story of low-level war. There is no "destruction of Lebanon," just like there was no "Jenin massacre." 

Everyday you can read this bias.  Take a look at this article today:

U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland, meanwhile, inspected the destruction wrought by Israeli air raids on south Beirut as he began a relief mission to Lebanon.

Israeli bombing of a Beirut neighborhood where Hezbollah had its headquarters has breached humanitarian law, Egeland said.

"It is horrific. I did not know it was block after block of houses," Egeland, the U.N. emergency relief coordinator, told reporters as he toured the shattered Haret Hreik district. "It makes it a violation of humanitarian law."

How about this one:

Two rockets hit Haifa in northern Israel on Sunday, punching a hole in a three-story apartment building, setting it on fire and wounding at least five people, Israeli police said. The attacks came as a series of explosions rocked Beirut in the first daytime Israeli strikes in days on the southern neighborhoods where Hezbollah has its headquarters.

Earlier, Israeli warplanes struck a minibus carrying people fleeing the fighting Sunday in southern Lebanon, killing three people, Lebanese security officials said, and Israel said it would accept a NATO-led international force to keep the peace along the border.

Hezbollah rocket fire killed two civilians in northern Israel, and an Italian member of the U.N. observer team in south Lebanon was seriously wounded by guerrilla fire.

Those security officials wouldn't lie about who was on that bus would they?  Check out the short sentence where the reporter basically says "oh btw a few Israeli civilians were killed also….but onto the real news"

Egeland said that on Monday the United Nations will release and international appeal for aid for Lebanon. "It will be a large appeal. It's got to be more than $100 million," he said.

He told The Associated Press the long-term figure needed to rebuild devastated infrastructure would be "in the billions."

"Its terrible, I see a lot of children wounded, homeless, suffering. This is a war where civilians pay a disproportionate price in Lebanon and northern Israel. I hadn't believed it would be block by block leveled to the ground," he said of south Beirut.

He said the "disproportionate response by Israel is a violation of international humanitarian law."

The article makes no mention of the fact that the rockets fired onto Israel are being fired from those "blocks of houses"….

Love this one

JERUSALEM (AFP) – Top diplomats from France, Germany and Britain converged on Israel on Sunday ahead of a visit by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as world powers moved to try to end the Lebanon conflict.

The Europeans are trying to push the Jewish state into ending its massive blitz on Lebanon, which has killed more than 360 people in 12 days, most of them civilians, and destroyed key infrastructure.

Yeah, it's a massive blitz….sure thing.  I'm sorry but this is not intense bombing campaign.  The Nazi bombing of England was intense, pinpoint bombing of Hezbollah fighters, those who keep or fire rockets into Isreal, and Hezbollah headquarters is not a "blitz"…

UPDATE

Israeli PM Ehud Olmert blasted the bias shown against Israel today: (h/t Seven Stripes)

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert accused the international media Sunday of bias by not properly portraying the "murderous viciousness" of the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah in its war with Israel.

"The massive, brutal and murderous viciousness of Hezbollah is unfortunately not represented in its full intensity on television screens outside of Israel," Olmert told reporters.

"A twisted image is presented, where the victim is presented as an aggressor."

On Sunday, Olmert asked Vice Premier Shimon Peres to leave on an urgent tour of the United States and European countries to present Israel's stance.

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Seems like just a refinement of tactics used by the left, according to John Kerry in his speech to the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs on 22 Apr 1971.
´´´´ They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.´´´´´´
If leftists can’t blame the US, they will blame one of its allies.