The World Media Blaming Israel is Scary

 

World Media Blames Israel for US Striking Iran

Full article at https://tinyurl.com/2txttyvj

Taking 66 Americans hostage at the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979. Killing 258 Americans in three separate Beirut bombings in 1983. Killing 19 U.S. Air Force servicemen in Saudi Arabia in 1996. Killing 603 U.S. service members in Iraq between 2003 and 2011. Killing three Americans in Jordan in January 2024. Attempting to assassinate U.S. President Donald Trump last year. Damaging the U.S. embassy branch in Tel Aviv last week.

This is just a partial list of what the Islamic Republic of Iran has done to the United States since the regime came to power 46 years ago.

Nevertheless, since Trump ordered strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities Saturday night, leading media outlets in the U.S. and around the world have reported that the U.S. had no reason to get involved, other than to help Israel.

That’s factually false–not only because of the long history of Iranian aggression listed above, but because a nuclear Iran would pose a direct future threat not just to the so-called “Little Satan” in Israel, but also to “the Middle Satan” (Europe) and “the Big Satan,” the United States.

This narrative is dangerous. When Iran retaliates against the U.S., any American casualties will likely be blamed on Israel by those misled by a media that is reporting inaccurately and irresponsibly.

·        The New York Times headline reads, “With Decision to Bomb Iran, Trump Injects US Into Middle East Conflict.” The truth is the Iranian regime injected the U.S. into the conflict immediately when it took power, and it had nothing to do with Israel. The sub-head is even worse, with its claim that “the US has joined Israel’s war against the country.” Why does The New York Times get to decide that only Israel can be involved in stopping a maniacal regime from getting nukes?

·        The Associated Press headline is no better: “US Inserts Itself Into War Between Israel and Iran.” Foundation for Defense of Democracies CEO Mark Dubowitz said: “Most people don’t get this: Khamenei gave his nuclear weapons scientists permission — for the first time — to creep toward a warhead DURING talks with Trump & Witkoff. That was the tripwire. Crossed. Detected. Understood. The reason Israeli strikes began.”

·        Reuters described “Trump’s decision to join Israel’s military campaign against its major rival Iran [as] a major escalation of the conflict [that also] risks opening a new era of instability in the Middle East.” Keep in mind, this was in a news article, not an analysis–this is the view of journalists Phil Stewart and Steve Holland who think the move will cause instability in the same Middle East that has been through 625 days of war on seven fronts. Perhaps stopping a nuclear-armed regime whose proxies have destabilized the region for decades might actually increase stability, Phil and Steve?

·        MSNBC columnist Nayyera Haq described “the volatile leaders of Iran or Israel” in speculating what might come next. But the democratically elected leaders of Israel are not morally or politically equivalent to the oppressive clerics and unelected strongmen of Iran. As Trump himself has noted, Iran had plenty of chances to avoid war.

·        BBC’s Middle East bureau chief Jo Floto wrote: “If Netanyahu’s tone was triumphant, and the smile barely suppressed, it is hardly surprising. He has spent most of his political career obsessed with the threat he believes Iran poses to Israel.” But it isn’t just Netanyahu. Stopping Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon is a consensus issue in Israel, not a personal “obsession.” Calling it that implies irrationality when the threat is existential. Floto also credited Netanyahu with “changing the mind of a U.S. president who campaigned against overseas military adventures,” ignoring Trump’s repeated public declarations that he would take any necessary action to stop Iran’s nuclearization.

These examples reflect a broader pattern of dishonest reporting on the U.S. strike on Fordow. If this trend continues, there’s a serious risk that antisemites and anti-Israel extremists in the U.S. will respond with violence, targeting American Jews for what was a legitimate decision by the president to defend his own country.

It’s not too late for the international press to course-correct–to report accurately, and place the attacks in their proper historical context–before false narratives ignite a wave of anti-Israel or antisemitic backlash at home.

 

BLACKLISTING OF PRO-ISRAEL ORGANIZATION BY ASSOCIATED PRESS

By David Bernstein 2/12/2014

For the full article see; http://tinyurl.com/nllnlz7  

Former AP journalist Matti Friedman wrote an article this past Summerabout how the media frames the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians for an online magazine called Tablet. To his surprise, it went viral, with almost one hundred thousand Facebook shares. It was recommended at the VC by David Post and me. Many people think it’s the single best article ever written on the topic, in part because it provides a rare insider perspective, from someone who actually worked for a major media company’s Jerusalem bureau.

Friedman is back with an even longer and, I think, even more revealing article on the same topic, this time in The Atlantic. Among other things, he ruminates about how many Israel correspondents act not as objective journalists, but as part of class of mostly foreign elites who live in Israel or the territories and have taken up the Palestinian cause. This class includes the employees of international organizations based in the Palestinians territories, and several left-wing Israeli NGOs.

Friedman points out that these highly influential organizations are almost never subjected to any real scrutiny by the reporters who rely on them as objective sources. And indeed, the Associated Press, according to Friedman, actually banned its journalists from interviewing Gerald Steinberg, an American-Israeli professor who runs the watchdog organization NGO Monitor out of Jerusalem. Here’s the relevant paragraph:

Around this time, a Jerusalem-based group called NGO Monitor was battling the international organizations condemning Israel after the Gaza conflict, and though the group was very much a pro-Israel outfit and by no means an objective observer, it could have offered some partisan counterpoint in our articles to charges by NGOs that Israel had committed “war crimes.” But the bureau’s explicit orders to reporters were to never quote the group or its director, an American-raised professor named Gerald Steinberg. In my time as an AP writer moving through the local conflict, with its myriad lunatics, bigots, and killers, the only person I ever saw subjected to an interview ban was this professor.

Long-time readers will recall that I’ve relied on NGO Monitor’s work in the past. Indeed, one of the most consequential “scoops” I’ve had as a blogger, that Human Rights Watch Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson fundraised among rich Saudi Arabians with a pledge to use the money to counter pro-Israel forces in the West, came from NGO Monitor. My blog post on this, reprinted at the Wall Street Journal’s website, set off a controversy about HRW’s anti-Israel bias that has yet to fully recede (and assuredly won’t until someone less maniacally anti-Israel than Whitson and her boss Kenneth Roth is in charge).