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Palestinians: Western Media's Ignorance and Bias

(Gatestone Institute) Khaled Abu Toameh - Two Western journalists in Israel at the end of 2015 asked to interview Jewish settlers living in the Gaza Strip. Imagine their embarrassment when it was pointed out to them that Israel had completely pulled out of Gaza ten years ago. A few years ago a Ramallah-based journalist received a request from a correspondent to help arrange an interview with Yasser Arafat, except at that point, Arafat had been dead for several years. I have had journalists assure me that before 1948 there was a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital. They were taken aback to learn that prior to 1967, the West Bank had been under the control of Jordan, while Gaza had been ruled by Egypt. One journalist several years ago asked to visit the "destroyed" city of Jenin, where "thousands of Palestinians had been massacred by Israel in 2002." She was referring to the IDF operation in the Jenin refugee camp where nearly 60 Palestinians, many of them gunmen, and 23 IDF soldiers were killed in a battle. When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for the international media, someone has to be the good guy (the Palestinians), someone has to be the bad guy (the Israelis), and everything gets refracted through that prism. When it comes to the Palestinians, many Western journalists see no evil. They have for years refused to report on the financial corruption and human rights violations that are rife under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas regimes. Thus, the international media's indifference in the face of the current wave of stabbings and car-rammings against Israelis should come as no surprise. International headlines often show more sympathy toward Palestinian attackers than toward the Israelis who were attacked.
2016-01-26 00:00:00
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