RAINES OF TERROR:

The New York Times and Israel (Tom Gross, National Review Online, 3/14/2003)

The Times titled its news report "Bombing Kills An American And 20 Others In Philippines." The first seven paragraphs concerned Hyde, who had lived and worked in the Philippines since 1978, and another American, Barbara Stevens, who had been "slightly wounded" in the attack....

On the next day (March 5), another American Baptist, 14-year-old Abigail Litle, was among 16 people killed by a suicide bomber on a bus in Haifa, Israel. The story and photo caption in the March 6 Times, tucked at the bottom corner of page 1, made no mention of Abigail's name....

Less than 5 percent of Palestinian casualties have been female, and even fewer have been pregnant mothers. Yet when one is killed — as happened on March 2 — the Times takes care to let its readers know: in news reports on March 3 (page 6), March 4 (page 1), March 5 (page 3), and March 9. Readers would be forgiven for assuming that Israel killed pregnant mothers every day, but these stories all refer to the same unnamed woman....

This was an accidental death in the course of a legitimate counterterrorist action. But a number of pregnant Israeli mothers were killed deliberately. If their deaths were reported at all, the Times and other media have referred to them merely as "Israelis" or as "settlers." For example, when a pregnant Israeli, her infant child, and other family members were attacked at their family Passover meal at Elon Moreh on March 28, 2002, the only coverage the Times provided was the following sentence buried in an article about Yasser Arafat: "Even as Mr. Arafat made his pledge, a Palestinian gunmen shot and killed four Israelis in a Jewish settlement near the West Bank city of Nablus." No mention of the seven children left orphaned in that attack.

When the Times has sympathetically profiled women who have died in this conflict, it has more often been the suicide bombers than their Israeli victims. Wada Idris — who killed or wounded 150 innocent civilians on Jerusalem's Jaffa Road on January 27, 2002 — had "chestnut hair curling past her shoulders"; she "raised doves and adored children," James Bennet reported in a front-page article for the Times....

The Times has consistently underplayed Arafat's role in orchestrating the ongoing terror against Israel. It has failed to report how the al-Aqsa Brigades, the militia Arafat set up after launching the Intifada, has been responsible for as many Israeli civilian deaths as Hamas. Even when the al-Aqsa Brigades proudly claims responsibility for killing a mother, her 5- and 4-year-old sons, and two other Israelis at a Kibbutz (as it did on November 10 of last year, posting a photo of the perpetrator on it website), a front-page Times report on December 17, 2002, described the gunman merely as "mysterious" ...

For ten years now, ever since Arafat returned to Gaza, moderate Palestinians — outside the earshot of the dozen different security forces Arafat has set up to safeguard his rule — have long whispered to those Western reporters who would listen that they should help to expose the corrupt, dictatorial, and duplicitous ways of Arafat and his clique. Few reporters have done so....

The distortions of the media ... set back the day when there might be peace and coexistence between Israeli and Palestinian.

Truth is the great cleanser; ugly creepy-crawly things thrive in the dark, but the light of day sends them scurrying. In darkness evil flourishes, but the light of truth discourages the wicked:

There are those who are rebels against the light;
they know not its ways;
they abide not in its paths.
When there is no light the murderer rises,
to kill the poor and needy.
The eye of the adulterer watches for the twilight;
he says, "No eye will see me."
In the night the thief roams about,
and he puts a mask over his face;
in the dark he breaks into houses.
By day they shut themselves in;
none of them know the light. (Job 24:14-16)

We must strive to bring the truth about terror and terrorists to light. It is our responsibility to shame the New York Times and like journalists for their bias. Bravo to Mr. Gross, for so thoroughly documenting the Times's deceit. Posted by Paul Jaminet at March 15, 2003 9:30 AM