Palestinian foreign minister Nasser al-Kidwa told Palestinian television on June 11 that terrorist groups would not be disarmed “as long as the occupation exists.” Such a pronouncement obviously violates the terms of the international “road map” peace plan, which calls on the Palestinians to disarm groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad as a first step towards a peace agreement and Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories.
One would expect such a blatant forsaking of the peace plan by a senior Palestinian official to raise alarm bells in the U.S. media. Certainly, there is precedent for intense media attention to official comment related to the road map.
In October 2004, when the late Yasser Arafat still led the terror war against Israel, an interview published in the Israeli daily Haaretz triggered a firestorm in the American press. Dov Weissglas, a senior adviser to Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, told the newspaper that Israel’s disengagement plan was devised after it became clear there was no partner on the Palestinian side and, as a result, the diplomatic process was stuck. Withdrawing from the Gaza Strip and the northern West Bank, Weissglas said, would take diplomatic pressure off Israel and thus preserve the principle, embraced by the U.S. and Israel, “that eradication of terrorism precedes a political process.” Withdrawing from Gaza would delay the need to negotiate over the West Bank until the Palestinians eliminated anti-Israel violence. Weissglas also reiterated Israel’s desire to keep major settlement blocks as part of any final agreement.
Though nothing in what Weissglas said explicitly veered from the road map, the reaction by the U.S. media was swift and loud. No fewer than four reporters covered the story for the Associated Press, each one suggesting that Weissglas’s comments might contradict the peace plan.
A Boston Globe news story suggested that the comments showed Israel intended to “skirt” the peace plan, and an editorial in the same paper painted the Israeli administration as anti-peace, citing Weissglas’s comments as proof. A 967-word article in the Los Angeles Times similarly claimed that the interview “seemed to contradict Israel’s official position supporting the U.S.-backed peace plan.” The New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and Philadelphia Inquirer all published prominent articles on the story as well.
So when al-Kidwa said that “The dismantling of armed organizations is not on the table”–a clear repudiation of the road map–did the media react in a similar manner? Not even close. The comments were covered in just two Associated Press stories–with only one mentioning the road map.
The Los Angeles Times buried the news under 17 paragraphs of news on a different topic, and the contradiction between al-Kidwa’s words and principles in the road map was completely ignored.
The Boston Globe ran just one paragraph on the topic. Instead of pointing out that the road map demands the disarming of terrorists, the blurb noted only that “Israel has long demanded” a crackdown. Needless to say, no editorial this time criticized the provocative comments. The New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and Philadelphia Inquirer, which devoted headlines to the Weissglas affair, disregarded al-Kidwa’s remarks altogether.
Why focus the media lens on comments that, with some spin, cast Israel in an unfavorable light but look the other way at a Palestinian statement which unequivocally contradicts the road map? One can only speculate on the reasons for this bias; what is certain is that there is a double standard.
This double standard extends beyond the Weissglas/al-Kidwa discrepancy. When Israeli army chief Moshe Yaalon noted that “there is a high probability of a second war of terror” by Palestinians after Israel’s pullout from Gaza, and that any future Palestine “will be a state that will try to undermine Israel,” the comments mostly slipped under the media radar. When Palestinian national-security adviser Jibril Rajoub said that a ceasefire should be maintained until Israel withdraws from the Gaza Strip, at which point Palestinians could “reconsider” the matter, the media reaction was again minimal. A sermon on Palestinian television referring to Jews as a “virus resembling AIDS” was virtually ignored. (Only after a Palestinian minister finally condemned the sermon did the media find the story worthwhile.)
On the other hand, when an Israeli television anchor sharply criticized Israeli policy in a documentary, media headlines again highlighted the comments. When Israel announced plans to remove illegally built houses on archeologically sensitive land in Jerusalem, or build a new neighborhood in Maaleh Adumim, the public was bombarded with critical news coverage.
The first provision of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics calls on the press to “Seek Truth and Report It.” Applying this mandate selectively effectively negates the truth. For the public to have an accurate understanding of the conflict in the Middle East, the media’s responsibility is to “seek and report” just as diligently on news reflecting negatively on the Palestinian side as it does on news suggesting Israeli shortcomings.
–Gilead Ini is a senior research analyst at CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America).