- POINT 1: The "New Historians" revealed that the Zionist national narrative is a fabrication.
- COUNTERPOINT: The new historians have not revealed that the "Zionist national narrative" is a fabrication. Instead, they are fabricating an anti-Zionist narrative in which Israel is always powerful and evil. Their work is severely criticized by mainstream, respected scholars who charge that the 'new historians' work violates scholarly standards of research and analysis, and is driven by a political-ideological agenda.
- Supporting Evidence: "The revisionist historians have indeed generated a questionable revision of the accepted standards of presenting the war of 1948 and its aftermath….Supposing the revisionists' posture to be impartial and free from ideological bias is equally unwarranted….Pappe and, to a lesser extent, [Avi] Shlaim have rendered the Palestinians' charge that Israel 'was conceived in sin' a valuable service….This simplicity appears unconvincing to anyone familiar with the sources-unless the reader is utterly prejudiced. In his recent writings Pappe has relinquished the academic mask, joining the Palestinian propagandists openly and wholeheartedly." Historian Yoav Gelber [1]
- Supporting Evidence: ""[S]uch is the politicization of modern Middle Eastern studies, especially in relation to the Arab-Israeli conflict, that partisan rewriting of history in line with contemporary political agendas has not only become the norm, its practitioners are even applauded as courageous revisionists….Far from unearthing new facts or offering fresh interpretations that would transform the general understanding of events, the new historians were effectively reiterating the standard Arab narrative of the conflict, in an attempt to give it academic respectability." Historian Efraim Karsh [2]
- Supporting Evidence: The 'new historians' have "a political-ideological axe to grind." "It would be erroneous to call this 'myth debunking'. The work done before our eyes is merely the rewriting of the one-hundred-year Zionist history in the spirit of its enemies and opponents." Aharon Megged. Ha'aretz Weekly Magazine [3]
- Supporting Evidence: "Since the advent of the 'new historians,'…a new polarization has set in. For the 'new historians' dismissed all previous historiography as aplogogetic. Whoever dares to oppose or criticize the pronouncements of these self-styled iconoclasts is savagely maligned…..[T]hey sought to undermine the state's moral and philosophical foundations, to dismantle the Jewish identity of the state and reconfigure it as a state of 'all its citizens.'" Historian Anita Shapira [4]
- Supporting Evidence: "[T]he new historians' main contribution to the debate over Zionist history is not one of facts, but of perspective…. They have argued that their authority to rewrite Zionist and Israeli history was based in large part on the opening of Israel's state archives…. [and on this basis]…raised the possibility that Israel "was besmirched by original sin" due to the manner in which the Jewish state had come into being. These are not "facts" that one discovers in recently opened archives. They are indicative of profound moral evaluations…It is such evaluations which have allowed [Benny] Morris and others to write a sweeping new narrative of Zionist history that goes far beyond anything suggested by the revelations of recently declassified documents." Daniel Polisar, PhD [5]
- Supporting Evidence: "If [new historian Tom] Segev's claims were based on compelling evidence, they would constitute an important challenge to long-held beliefs which have been adopted by the Israeli public and affirmed so many times by historians. This, however, is not the case. For as with his other books on the history of Israel, one comes away from Days of the Anemones with the impression that Segev knew, even before he approached the material, just what conclusions best suited his iconoclastic proclivities, and that his research was no more than a search for confirmation of these conclusions. In part, this effect is created by his slipshod research methods, which at times border on wanton dereliction of his duties as a historian." Historian Yehoshua Porath [6]
- Supporting Evidence: "The revisionist historians have indeed generated a questionable revision of the accepted standards of presenting the war of 1948 and its aftermath….Supposing the revisionists' posture to be impartial and free from ideological bias is equally unwarranted….Pappe and, to a lesser extent, [Avi] Shlaim have rendered the Palestinians' charge that Israel 'was conceived in sin' a valuable service….This simplicity appears unconvincing to anyone familiar with the sources-unless the reader is utterly prejudiced. In his recent writings Pappe has relinquished the academic mask, joining the Palestinian propagandists openly and wholeheartedly." Historian Yoav Gelber [1]
- COUNTERPOINT: The new historians have not revealed that the Zionist narrative is a fabrication. Respected scholars have severely criticized their work for shoddy scholarship, for selective use of evidence and for misinterpreting and distorting that evidence.
- Supporting Evidence: Ilan Pappe's academic credibility was seriously challenged in 2000, when one of his students at Haifa University was forced to retract libelous and falsified accusations in his Masters thesis about an alleged 1948 Israeli massacre on Palestinians no evidence could substantiate. The student, Theodore Katz, was forced to retract his claims and was found by the University to have falsified testimony "gravely and severely" in 14 different places in his thesis. The university ultimately denied his research M.A. In spite of the seriousness of the academic fraud perpetrated, Pappe continued to support Katz's original findings, nearly costing him his job at the university in the process. [7]
- Supporting Evidence: Benny Morris claimed that Zionists always intended to "transfer" Arabs out of the future Jewish state but: "[T[here is not a shred of evidence that Zionist ideology changed in the 1930s; not a shred of evidence that the transfer idea supplanted the idea of immigration as a means to achieve a Jewish majority in Palestine. But still Morris claims that, starting with the Peel Commission, the idea of transfer enjoyed a general consensus in virtually all the Zionist bodies. His book lacks any notes indicating which deliberations (and how many deliberations) he is referring to…" Historian Anita Shapira [8]
- Supporting Evidence: Benny Morris falsely claimed that the Zionists set up a Transfer Committee in 1948 to realize their goal of expelling Arabs from the future Jewish state. But he bases his entire argument on the diaries of Joseph Weitz, a minor Zionist official, whose efforts to convince the leadership to set up a plan for transfer were rejected--but who did preside over a Transfer Study Committee that existed for only two months. Its purpose was not to expel Arabs, but to examine historical precedents for dealing with refugees so that a policy could be found for dealing with the hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees entering Israel and the Arab refugees fleeing from Israel. [9]
- Supporting Evidence: Benny Morris falsified evidence through omission to be able to prove his argument that Ben-Gurion always planned to transfer Arabs out of the future Jewish state. Morris quotes from Ben Gurion's speech of December 13 1947 in which he said, "There can be no stable and strong Jewish State so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60%." Morris suggests that Ben Gurion meant that Arabs would have to be expelled to maintain that ratio. In fact, Morris failed to present the rest of Ben Gurion's statement which explicitly stated that this problem was to be solved by Jewish immigration, not expulsion of Arabs: "[w]e must bring a million and a half Jews to the country and root them there." [10]
- Supporting Evidence: Avi Shlaim argues that Jabotinsky's radical ideas about erecting an "Iron Wall" deeply influenced Zionist policy: Yet "In its time, "On the Iron Wall" was considered a little mad, and divorced from reality; but Shlaim believes that Jabotinsky's essay reads today like a very clear-eyed view of future Jewish-Arab relations. Contrary to what he claims, Jabotinsky and his ideas had only a marginal influence on the ideas of the political elite in the Yishuv generally, and on Ben-Gurion in particular. But Shlaim nonetheless seizes on the concept of the "iron wall" as an organizing paradigm to explain the evolution of the politics of the Yishuv and the state of Israel from the 1920s to the 1980s" Historian Anita Shapira [11]
- Supporting Evidence: Tom Segev's "emphasis on a unique, developed and independent Palestinian movement, at the expense of the pan-Arab national movement, also finds expression in Segev's description of George Antonius' famous book, The Arab Awakening, published in 1938. Segev describes this as "the most important book written until that time on the history of the Arab national movement in Palestine." But here too, the truth is the opposite of what he claims: Antonius' book is a history of the Arab national awakening throughout the Arab world. The struggle of the Arab Palestinian national movement only appears in the final chapter of the book, as part of a wider description of Arab nationalist movements throughout the Fertile Crescent. That all these efforts were part of an overarching movement for the independence of a single, unified Arab nation is a fundamental premise of Antonius' book. A small error on our author's part, perhaps - but with Segev, the the little mistakes always seem to fall in the same direction." Historian Yehoshua Porath [12]
- Supporting Evidence: Ilan Pappe's academic credibility was seriously challenged in 2000, when one of his students at Haifa University was forced to retract libelous and falsified accusations in his Masters thesis about an alleged 1948 Israeli massacre on Palestinians no evidence could substantiate. The student, Theodore Katz, was forced to retract his claims and was found by the University to have falsified testimony "gravely and severely" in 14 different places in his thesis. The university ultimately denied his research M.A. In spite of the seriousness of the academic fraud perpetrated, Pappe continued to support Katz's original findings, nearly costing him his job at the university in the process. [7]
- COUNTERPOINT: The 'new historians did not reveal that the Zionist narrative is a fabrication. Scholars who are experts in their fields have effectively refuted many of the claims of these 'new historians.'
- Supporting Evidence: "The claim that Israel's recalcitrance was mainly to blame for the failure to make peace at the end of the 1947-49 War and in it its aftermath was debunked by Itamar Rabinovitch" in The Road Not Taken: Early Arab-Israeli Negotiations," 1991. [13]
- Supporting Evidence: Benny Morris: "Benny Morris' account of the birth of the Palestinian refugee problem has been seriously challenged by Shabati Teveth, David Ben-Gurion's foremost biographer" in "The Palestine Arab Refugee Problem and Its Origins," Middle Eastern Studies April 1990. [14]
- Supporting Evidence: Benny Morris: Morris' own research refutes his claims that Israel committed 'ethnic cleansing' during the 1948 War: "If we consider the facts Morris presents, it is reasonably clear that the flight of much of the Arab population from the territory that became Israel stemmed from battles between Arab and Jewish forces, and from the fears of Arab civilians of getting caught in the fighting. The Zionist leadership, Morris' research shows, correctly understood the danger that the Palestinian Arabs posed to the nascent Jewish state, and therefore did little to prevent their departure, at times encouraging or even precipitating it through political or military actions. In fact, Morris' own research does much to disprove the claims of his recent writings that what happened during the War of Independence was "ethnic cleansing." Daniel Polisar, PhD [15]
- Supporting Evidence: Avi Shlaim: "[T]he new historigraphical allegation [of Avi Shlaim] that Israel and Transjordan [colluded] in advance of [the 1948] war to limit their war operations so as to avoid an all-out confrontation between their forces was demolished by Avraham Sela of the Hebrew University." [16]
- Supporting Evidence: Avi Shlaim argues that Jabotinsky's radical ideas about erecting an "Iron Wall" deeply influenced Zionist policy: Yet "In its time, "On the Iron Wall" was considered a little mad, and divorced from reality; but Shlaim believes that Jabotinsky's essay reads today like a very clear-eyed view of future Jewish-Arab relations. Contrary to what he claims, Jabotinsky and his ideas had only a marginal influence on the ideas of the political elite in the Yishuv generally, and on Ben-Gurion in particular. But Shlaim nonetheless seizes on the concept of the "iron wall" as an organizing paradigm to explain the evolution of the politics of the Yishuv and the state of Israel from the 1920s to the 1980s" Historian Anita Shapira [17]
- Supporting Evidence: Tom Segev'seffort to prove there was an active, developed Palestinian national movement from World War I through the Mandate years defies the facts. Segev's contention that Palestinian Arab resistance, not Jewish resistance, forced the British out of Palestine "is totally false" and does not have a "shred of supporting evidence." Historian Yehoshua Porath [18]
- Supporting Evidence: "The claim that Israel's recalcitrance was mainly to blame for the failure to make peace at the end of the 1947-49 War and in it its aftermath was debunked by Itamar Rabinovitch" in The Road Not Taken: Early Arab-Israeli Negotiations," 1991. [13]
- COUNTERPOINT: The 'new historians' have not revealed that the Zionist narrative is a fabrication. Indeed, the new historians vehemently criticize each other for shoddy scholarship, falsifications and factual errors and for biased conclusions that serve their political agendas.
- Supporting Evidence: 'New historian' Benny Morris excoriated 'new historian' Ilan Pappe and his most recent book: "In the case of Pappe and myself, there was always methodological discord….Pappe regarded history through the prism of contemporary politics and consciously wrote history with an eye to serving political ends…Pappe, too, is mortally ignorant of the basic facts of the Israeli-Arab conflict….This book is awash with errors of a quantity and a quality that are not found in serious historiography…. the book is inundated with mistakes that stem from the ideological preferences of the writer…[much of what Pappe] tries to sell his readers is complete fabrication." Benny Morris, March 17 2004 [19]
- Supporting Evidence: 'New historian' Ilan Pappe criticized 'new historian' Benny Morris for scholarship that simply shifted with prevailing political winds: "Morris, [Pappe] says, is an opportunist. [Morris] has now issued a revised edition of his book on the Palestinian problem, not because of any new material that motivated him to do so, as Morris writes in the preface to the book, but because "our charlatan" found out, upon the outbreak of the second intifada, "that the bon ton in Israel has shifted to the right." His original book about the refugee problem, claims Pappe, "was written at a time when it was bon ton to be a `peacenik' and his version of history was that the ethnic cleansing in Palestine was not the result of a master plan. But after Netanyahu's victory in the 1996 elections, argues Pappe, "it was difficult to get a professorship in an Israeli university. This is when the shift began. " Ilan Pappe, Interview in Ha'aretz, May 3 2004 [20]
- Supporting Evidence: American 'new historian' Joel Beinin criticized Benny Morris for the "racism" which purportedly affected his scholarship: "The racism Morris has openly expressed during the second intifada is prefigured by his historical method, beginning with his earliest publications during the first intifada. All his work is characterized by the near total exclusion of Arab testimony." Joel Beinin [21]
- Supporting Evidence: 'New historian' Benny Morris excoriated 'new historian' Ilan Pappe and his most recent book: "In the case of Pappe and myself, there was always methodological discord….Pappe regarded history through the prism of contemporary politics and consciously wrote history with an eye to serving political ends…Pappe, too, is mortally ignorant of the basic facts of the Israeli-Arab conflict….This book is awash with errors of a quantity and a quality that are not found in serious historiography…. the book is inundated with mistakes that stem from the ideological preferences of the writer…[much of what Pappe] tries to sell his readers is complete fabrication." Benny Morris, March 17 2004 [19]
- COUNTERPOINT: The 'new historians' have not revealed that the Zionist national narrative is a fabrication. In fact, the 'new historians' have not revealed many new facts to justify their reinterpretation of Israel's history. Much of what they claimed was 'new archival evidence' had already been known and written about by previous historians. The main difference between them and these former historians is in their interpretation of these facts: They always condemn Israel.
- Supporting Evidence: "[W]hile some of the sources presented by the new historians had previously been untapped, the factual core on which they based their findings was far from original. Avi Shlaim's Collusion Across the Jordan (1988) covered material much of which had been familiar to Israeli historians for over a decade, and whose major components Dan Schueftan had already explored in A Jordanian Option (1986). The depiction of the Zionist leadership's response to the Holocaust in [Tom] Segev's The Seventh Million (1991) likewise added little to the research on which Dina Porat had based her Entangled Leadership (1986). What made the new works highly controversial was therefore not the facts they presented, but the perspective from which they were written, which was characterized by a markedly more negative evaluation of Zionist leaders than that reached by previous Israeli historians." Daniel Polisar, PhD [22]
- Supporting Evidence: "The 'new historians' of Israel have not exactly pioneered fresh critical approaches in Israeli historiography. Already in the 1970s, scholars had begun to develop new and sophisticated views of Jewish-British relations under the Mandate, of Zionism's relation to the Arab problem, of the rise of the Arab national movement, of the nature of Zionism as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. There was a tense and constant dialogue between collective memory and historical scholarship, as the new approaches slowly penetrated into the educational system and public consciousness. Since the advent of the "new historians," however, a new polarization has set in. For the "new historians" dismissed all previous historiography as apologetic. Whoever dares to oppose or to criticize the pronouncements of these self-styled iconoclasts is savagely maligned." Historian Anita Shapira [23]
- Supporting Evidence: Even 'new historian' Avi Shlaim admitted that many of the 'new historians' arguments were not new: "Many of the arguments that are central to the new historiography were advanced long ago by Israeli writers, not to mention Palestinian, Arab and Western writers." Avi Shlaim 1995 [24]
- Supporting Evidence: "[W]hile some of the sources presented by the new historians had previously been untapped, the factual core on which they based their findings was far from original. Avi Shlaim's Collusion Across the Jordan (1988) covered material much of which had been familiar to Israeli historians for over a decade, and whose major components Dan Schueftan had already explored in A Jordanian Option (1986). The depiction of the Zionist leadership's response to the Holocaust in [Tom] Segev's The Seventh Million (1991) likewise added little to the research on which Dina Porat had based her Entangled Leadership (1986). What made the new works highly controversial was therefore not the facts they presented, but the perspective from which they were written, which was characterized by a markedly more negative evaluation of Zionist leaders than that reached by previous Israeli historians." Daniel Polisar, PhD [22]
- COUNTERPOINT: The 'New Historians" have not revealed that the Zionist narrative is a fabrication. Instead, they have peddled a distorted, one-sided , moralistic view in which Israel is always 'sinful' and 'evil.'. They can do so only by practicing flawed history: by ignoring historical context and Arab actions, by selective use of research materials and by setting standards for Israel's conduct that no nation state has ever met.
- Supporting Evidence: They minimize or ignore the Arab/Palestinian threats Israel was reacting to in 1948 and later. "[Benny] Morris and [Avi] Shlaim also ignore essential facts and background material necessary to a proper understanding of the historical scene. It is, for example, impossible to describe Israel's War of Independence and the flight and expulsion of Palestine's Arabs without taking into account the tripartite struggle among Jews, Arabs and British that had racked the country for the previous three decades. The important landmarks in this struggle were the Arab riots of 1929 and 1936-39, the Peel Plan of 1937, the White Paper of May 1939 and the Land Ordinance of early 1941, the efforts of the Yishuv to increase immigration and settlement and, beyond all these, the Holocaust. Yet these matters are invoked by [Benny Morris and Avi Shlaim] and then just barely, as if they were a set of technical specifications. What we have here is not only a case of historical foreshortening, but an attempt to disconnect the birth of the state of Israel from the experience and tribulations of the Jewish people at large." Historian Shabati Teveth [25]
- Supporting Evidence: Even 'new historian' Benny Morris criticized Ilan Pappe for his one-sided views and his ignoring Arab dangers to Israel.: "He sees the "invasion" and the inevitable clash solely from the Arabs' perspective. In Pappe's account, there is no faulting the Palestinians for regularly assaulting the Zionist enterprise--in 1920, 1921, 1929, 1936-39, 1947-48, the late 1960s and early 1970s, 1987, and 2000--as there can be no criticizing them for rejecting the various compromises offered by the British, the Americans, the Jews, and the world community in 1937, 1947, 1977- 1978, and 2000. The Palestinians are forever victims, the Zionists are forever "brutal colonizers."" Benny Morris reviewing Ilan Pappe [26]
- Supporting Evidence: Even 'new historian' Benny Morrist admitted that Israel's actions during the 1948 War must be put into context: "You have to put things in proportion….All told, if we take all the massacres and all the executions of 1948, we come to about 800 who were killed. In comparison to the massacres that were perpetrated in Bosnia, that's peanuts. In comparison to the massacres the Russians perpetrated against the Germans at Stalingrad, that's chicken feed. When you take into account that there was a bloody civil war here and that we lost an entire 1 percent of the population, you find that we behaved very well." Benny Morris, January 2004 [27]
- Supporting Evidence: They ignore larger geopolitical factors affecting the conflict, so they can point the finger of blame at Israel. For example, they accuse Israel of escalating the conflict in the 1950's, ignoring the fact that the Soviet Union and its policies were to blame, "Its worsening from the 1950s on was a by-product of the Soviet Union's penetration of the region beneath the cloak of radical Arab nationalism….Blurring the aspects of superpower rivalry in the Middle East conflict makes it possible to present the conflict in isolation from world politics--that is, to present it moralistically." Historian Anita Shapira [28]
- Supporting Evidence: They distort history by focusing on Israeli sources and neglecting Arab sources: "One of the more serious charges raised against the "new historians" concerned their sparse use of Arab sources…To write the history of relations between Israel and the Arab world almost exclusively on the basis of Israeli documentation results in obvious distortions. Every Israeli contingency plan, every flicker of a far-fetched idea expressed by David Ben-Gurion and other Israeli planners, finds its way into history as conclusive evidence for the Zionist state's plans for expansion. What we know about Nasser's schemes regarding Israel, by contrast, derives solely from secondary and tertiary sources. The same is true for the planning of defense ministers of Syria and their fantasies of a "Greater Syria."…The upshot of all this methodological self-limitation is a history of the conflict in which one side completely disrobes, disclosing all its weaknesses and its flaws, while the other remains conveniently shrouded in the mystery of the veil. " Anita Shapira [29]
- Supporting Evidence: They exaggerate the "sins" Israel committed. ""[Benny Morris] still has this inclination to look for any detail that can show the unsavory side of the Israeli army or politics, and to exaggerate it out of proportion." Historian Anita Shapira [30]
- Supporting Evidence: They set up standards for judging Israel's actions that no other nation meets. The "appropriate perspective from which Israeli history can be understood [must include] first and foremost, a clarification of the moral standards by which the actions undertaken by the Zionist leadership are to be judged. Underlying much of the work of the new historians is the unspoken premise that the wielding of power necessary to found and defend a state is morally problematic in general, and especially so in the case of Israel. This premise leads them to take a magnifying glass to those cases in which the Zionists' use of power led (or may have led) to the suffering of others-both Arab and Jew-while downplaying the circumstances that rendered those actions necessary." Polisar
- Supporting Evidence: They minimize or ignore the Arab/Palestinian threats Israel was reacting to in 1948 and later. "[Benny] Morris and [Avi] Shlaim also ignore essential facts and background material necessary to a proper understanding of the historical scene. It is, for example, impossible to describe Israel's War of Independence and the flight and expulsion of Palestine's Arabs without taking into account the tripartite struggle among Jews, Arabs and British that had racked the country for the previous three decades. The important landmarks in this struggle were the Arab riots of 1929 and 1936-39, the Peel Plan of 1937, the White Paper of May 1939 and the Land Ordinance of early 1941, the efforts of the Yishuv to increase immigration and settlement and, beyond all these, the Holocaust. Yet these matters are invoked by [Benny Morris and Avi Shlaim] and then just barely, as if they were a set of technical specifications. What we have here is not only a case of historical foreshortening, but an attempt to disconnect the birth of the state of Israel from the experience and tribulations of the Jewish people at large." Historian Shabati Teveth [25]
- COUNTERPOINT: The new historians have not revealed that the "Zionist national narrative" is a fabrication. Instead, they are fabricating an anti-Zionist narrative in which Israel is always powerful and evil. Their work is severely criticized by mainstream, respected scholars who charge that the 'new historians' work violates scholarly standards of research and analysis, and is driven by a political-ideological agenda.
- POINT 2: The "New Historians" research is authoritative.
- COUNTERPOINT: The 'new historians' work is controversial and does not represent the mainstream scholarly consensus. Mainstream scholars criticize their findings and methods. Their research doesn't meet scholarly standards.They distort evidence, ignore the larger historical context and, in some cases, fabricate evidence to match their political views:
- Supporting Evidence: The new historians are criticized precisely because of views like those of Ilan Pappe which deny the legitimacy of facts. "Indeed the struggle is about ideology, not about facts. Who knows what facts are? We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truth-seekers." Ilan Pappe, 1999. [31]
- Supporting Evidence: "Violating every tenet of bona fide research, the misrepresentation of the historical record by the 'new historiography' has ranged from the more innocent act of reading into documents what is not there, to tendentious truncation of documents in a way that distorts their original meaning, to 'creative rewriting' of the original texts by putting words in people's mouths and/or giving false descriptions of the contents of these documents." Historian Efraim Karsh [32]
- Supporting Evidence: "The revisionist historians have indeed generated a questionable revision of the accepted standards of presenting the war of 1948 and its aftermath….Supposing the revisionists' posture to be impartial and free from ideological bias is equally unwarranted….Pappe and, to a lesser extent, [Avi] Shlaim have rendered the Palestinians' charge that Israel 'was conceived in sin' a valuable service….This simplicity appears unconvincing to anyone familiar with the sources-unless the reader is utterly prejudiced. In his recent writings Pappe has relinquished the academic mask, joining the Palestinian propagandists openly and wholeheartedly." Historian Yoav Gelber [33]
- Supporting Evidence: "The emergence of this group [revisionist historians] has not brought about a scholarly breakthrough, neither in revealing new horizons nor in methodological originality…..Ilan Pappe poses as a radical relativist, and under cover of his academic position he is merely grinding several personal and political axes and does not let the facts confuse him. Avi Shlaim allows himself an immense freedom of interpretation that far exceeds his documentary basis." Historian Yoav Gelber [34]
- Supporting Evidence: The new historians are criticized precisely because of views like those of Ilan Pappe which deny the legitimacy of facts. "Indeed the struggle is about ideology, not about facts. Who knows what facts are? We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truth-seekers." Ilan Pappe, 1999. [31]
- COUNTERPOINT: The "New Historians" have been systematically refuted as presenting incomplete and skewed accounts of history. They indeed are not discovering new history, but rewriting history. For example, New Historians describe so-called "massacres" of Palestinians by Israeli army units in the 1948 war as calculated atrocities to compel Palestinians to flee the region.
- Supporting Evidence: Ilan Pappe's academic credibility was seriously challenged in 2000, when one of his students at Haifa University was forced to retract libelous and falsified accusations in his Masters thesis about an alleged 1948 Israeli massacre on Palestinians no evidence could substantiate. The student, Theodore Katz, was forced to retract his claims and was found by the University to have falsified testimony "gravely and severely" in 14 different places in his thesis. The university ultimately denied his research M.A. In spite of the seriousness of the academic fraud perpetrated, Pappe continued to support Katz's original findings, nearly costing him his job at the university in the process. [35]
- Supporting Evidence: The Tantura accusation fits the pattern of "new historians" rewriting history to push their political agenda. Revisionists "have fashioned their research precisely to 'suit contemporary political agendas' and have systematically distorted 'the archival evidence to invent an Israeli history in an image of their own making.'" Historian Efraim Karsh [36]
- Supporting Evidence: Ilan Pappe's academic credibility was seriously challenged in 2000, when one of his students at Haifa University was forced to retract libelous and falsified accusations in his Masters thesis about an alleged 1948 Israeli massacre on Palestinians no evidence could substantiate. The student, Theodore Katz, was forced to retract his claims and was found by the University to have falsified testimony "gravely and severely" in 14 different places in his thesis. The university ultimately denied his research M.A. In spite of the seriousness of the academic fraud perpetrated, Pappe continued to support Katz's original findings, nearly costing him his job at the university in the process. [35]
- COUNTERPOINT: The 'new historians' work is hotly contested. Established scholars have severely criticized them for their methods and their conclusions.
- Supporting Evidence: "It would be erroneous to call this [new history] 'myth debunking.' The work done before our eyes is merely the rewriting of the one-hundred-year Zionist history in the spirit of its enemies and opponents." Aharon Megged 1994 [37]
- Supporting Evidence: "The theses of the 'new historians' and their research methods have precisely been questioned by fellow historians… Violating every tenet of bona fide research, the misrepresentation of the historical record by the 'new historians' has ranged from the more 'innocent' act of reading into documents what is not there, to tendentious truncation of documents in a way that distorts their original meaning, to 'creative rewriting' of original texts by putting words in peoples' mouths and/or giving false descriptions of the contents of these documents." Professor Efraim Karsh [38]
- Supporting Evidence: "[A] large number of professors who espouse extremist views have flourished despite a record of minimal academic publishing and performance. In some cases, they publish mainly or exclusively in politicized journals, such as those published by the Palestine Liberation Organization and its affiliates…" Solomon Socrates 2001 [39]
- Supporting Evidence: Bona fide scholars are especially disturbed by comments like the following by Ilan Pappe: "Indeed the struggle is about ideology, not about facts. Who knows what facts are? We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truth-seekers." [40]
- Supporting Evidence: "It would be erroneous to call this [new history] 'myth debunking.' The work done before our eyes is merely the rewriting of the one-hundred-year Zionist history in the spirit of its enemies and opponents." Aharon Megged 1994 [37]
- COUNTERPOINT: Scholars have especially criticized Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe.
- Supporting Evidence: On "the issue of "transfer," Morris has been prepared systematically to falsify evidence in an attempt to create history in an image of his own devising. There is scarcely a single document he has not twisted either by creative rewriting, taking things out of context, truncating texts, or giving a false description of the contents of the documents." [41]
- Supporting Evidence: Pappe"is perhaps the most tendentious of the New Historians. Unlike Morris, who purports to search archives and present facts, Pappe has been the most contemptuous of any necessity to base the charges against Israel on facts and insists that creating some sort of Palestinian narrative suffices." Solomon Socrates, 2001 [42]
- Supporting Evidence: Ilan Pappe's academic credibility was seriously challenged in 2000, when one of his students at Haifa University was forced to retract libelous and falsified accusations in his Masters thesis about an alleged 1948 Israeli massacre on Palestinians no evidence could substantiate. The student, Theodore Katz, was forced to retract his claims and was found by the University to have falsified testimony "gravely and severely" in 14 different places in his thesis. The university ultimately denied his research M.A. In spite of the seriousness of the academic fraud perpetrated, Pappe continued to support Katz's original findings, nearly costing him his job at the university in the process. [43]
- Supporting Evidence: On "the issue of "transfer," Morris has been prepared systematically to falsify evidence in an attempt to create history in an image of his own devising. There is scarcely a single document he has not twisted either by creative rewriting, taking things out of context, truncating texts, or giving a false description of the contents of the documents." [41]
- COUNTERPOINT: The 'new historians' work is controversial and does not represent the mainstream scholarly consensus. Mainstream scholars criticize their findings and methods. Their research doesn't meet scholarly standards.They distort evidence, ignore the larger historical context and, in some cases, fabricate evidence to match their political views:
- POINT 3: Israel silences those who are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, especially the "new historians."
- COUNTERPOINT: This is a patently absurd charge. Israel has a boisterous, rambunctious political culture with 17 different political parties. They range from the extreme left Communist parties, the "Peace Now," the five Israeli-Arab parties--who are very sympathetic to the Palestinian cause-- to the right wing religious parties. Israel also has one of the freest and most self-critical presses in the world.
- Supporting Evidence: "Israel has a multi-party political system and a robust public debate, in which the national claims of the Arabs are fully voiced. It has regular elections, in which all adult citizens, irrespective of nationality or religion, participate. Since 1977, it has experienced a number of changes in government. Its court system enjoys a high level of independence, and has made the principle of non-discrimination a central part of its jurisprudence. It has also developed a strong protection of freedom of speech, of association, and of the press. It is thus no surprise that it is counted by scholars among the stable democracies in the world." Professor Ruth Gavison, Legal Scholar on Human Rights [44]
- Supporting Evidence: "No other country in the Middle East and few countries in the world would permit this kind of public self-criticism of its actions. Israel is a vibrant democracy with freedom of the press and a long tradition of self-criticism. Indeed, most of the books published by Israeli writers are deeply critical of Israeli policies and actions. That is why I decided to write "The Case for Israel," since few Israelis ever bother to make the case for the embattled democracy." Alan Dershowitz, 2003 [45]
- Supporting Evidence: "Israel has a multi-party political system and a robust public debate, in which the national claims of the Arabs are fully voiced. It has regular elections, in which all adult citizens, irrespective of nationality or religion, participate. Since 1977, it has experienced a number of changes in government. Its court system enjoys a high level of independence, and has made the principle of non-discrimination a central part of its jurisprudence. It has also developed a strong protection of freedom of speech, of association, and of the press. It is thus no surprise that it is counted by scholars among the stable democracies in the world." Professor Ruth Gavison, Legal Scholar on Human Rights [44]
- COUNTERPOINT: This is a patently absurd charge. Israel not only doesn't silence those who are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, it permits a plethora of human rights groups whose goal is to PROTECT the Palestinians and who bring Palestinian grievances to Israeli courts.
- Supporting Evidence: Ten of Israel's human rights groups that assist Palestinians as listed by a pro-Palestinian web site:
• "B'Tselem Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.
• Gush Shalom the Israeli "Peace Block", one of Israel's most respected Human Rights organizations
• Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, Nonviolent Direct Action group working against the Israeli Army's policy of home demolitions.
• Rabbis for Human Rights, Faith-Based Israeli Direct Action group fighting for justice in the Occupied Territories.
• Yesh G'vul, meaning "There is a Limit," works against Israeli military service in the Occupied Territories.
• Refuser Solidarity Network, a site dedicated to building support for Israelis who refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories.
• Peace Now, one of Israel's largest and most active peace groups.
• The Arab Association for Human Rights: Association addressing Human Rights concerns of the Arab minority in Israel.
• The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, working to protect civil liberties and Human Rights in Israel.
• Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, Community of Jews and Arabs living together and promoting peace and coexistence"
[46]
- Supporting Evidence: Even ISM activist Huwaida Arraf relies on Israeli human rights groups to make sure Palestinian complaints are heard. At the Huwwara checkpoint, Arraf "learned from the two men, Rashed and Ramsy that they had been held for 3 hours by that point (since about 9:30am) and the soldiers had confiscated their ID cards. They weren't told why. I got on the phone with HaMoked, an Israeli human rights organization in Jerusalem that often turns in complaints of abuses to the Military District Coordinating Office, and gave them the names of the young men….[shortly afterward the young man had been released] By now the soldiers were getting pretty annoyed with me (perhaps because the HaMoked calls were working)…" Huwaida Arraf, June 19 2003 [47]
- Supporting Evidence: "One of the most unusual aspects of Israeli law is the rapid access that petitioners, including Palestinians, can gain to Israel's highest court. In April 2002, during the fiercest fighting of the current conflict, in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, the high court was receiving and ruling on petitions almost daily." New York Times May 5 2003 [48]
- Supporting Evidence: Some recent decisions of the Israeli Supreme Court: The Court prohibited the Israeli military from attacking ambulances despite the evidence that Palestinians were using ambulances to transport suicide bombers and ammunition (2002); the Court reversed the Israeli military's expulsion order for petitioner Abed Mustafa Ahmed Asida, who had assisted his brother when he committed terrorist acts, on the grounds that "there was an inadequate basis for determining the petitioner to be sufficiently dangerous for his residence to be assigned." September 3 2002 [49]
- Supporting Evidence: Ten of Israel's human rights groups that assist Palestinians as listed by a pro-Palestinian web site:
- COUNTERPOINT: This is a patently absurd charge with regard to the "new historians." Their own lives contradict these accusations. Most of them are professors in Israel's university system,they have become prominent public figures and their writing and activities are not subject to any kind of censorship or control.
- Supporting Evidence: There is no "state-sponsored persecution" of post-Zionist scholars. "Not only are Israeli universities teeming with academics holding far more extreme views than [Benny] Morris regarding the essence of Zionism and the State of Israel, but they constitute the heart of the academic establishment in the social sciences and the humanities: Ilan Pappe, Benjamin Beit Hallahmi and Uri Ben-Eliezer at the University of Haifa; Joseph Grodzinsky, Yoav Peled, and Tania Reinhardt at Tel Aviv University; Israel Shahak, Baruch Kimmerling, Ze'ev Sternhell, and Moshe Zimermann of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem; Gabriel Pieterberg and Uri Ram from Ben Gurion University-even this far from complete list would easily refute Morris's claim of ideological persecution." Historian Efraim Karsh [50]
- Supporting Evidence: "[M]any of the arguments of the 'new historians' are widely accepted today in liberal Israeli circles." Historian Joel Beinin, Stanford University. [51]
- Supporting Evidence: "And 'new historian' Tom Segev…put a lighter touch on this group's growing popularity. 'We perform at weddings and bar mitzvahs,' he jokingly told an admiring American journalist." [52]
- Supporting Evidence: [53]
- Supporting Evidence: There is no "state-sponsored persecution" of post-Zionist scholars. "Not only are Israeli universities teeming with academics holding far more extreme views than [Benny] Morris regarding the essence of Zionism and the State of Israel, but they constitute the heart of the academic establishment in the social sciences and the humanities: Ilan Pappe, Benjamin Beit Hallahmi and Uri Ben-Eliezer at the University of Haifa; Joseph Grodzinsky, Yoav Peled, and Tania Reinhardt at Tel Aviv University; Israel Shahak, Baruch Kimmerling, Ze'ev Sternhell, and Moshe Zimermann of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem; Gabriel Pieterberg and Uri Ram from Ben Gurion University-even this far from complete list would easily refute Morris's claim of ideological persecution." Historian Efraim Karsh [50]
- COUNTERPOINT: This is a patently absurd charge. Israel has a boisterous, rambunctious political culture with 17 different political parties. They range from the extreme left Communist parties, the "Peace Now," the five Israeli-Arab parties--who are very sympathetic to the Palestinian cause-- to the right wing religious parties. Israel also has one of the freest and most self-critical presses in the world.
- POINT 4: The Western media is biased against the Palestinians.
- COUNTERPOINT: Just the reverse is true. Western journalists are biased against Israel and depict the struggle as David (Palestinians) against Goliath (Israel).
- Supporting Evidence: "The information coming out of Israel these days is heavily influenced by the political imagination of the reporters and columnists and cameramen who have flocked to the scene from the four corners of the earth to cover this latest installment of violence in the ongoing Middle East conflict. They tend-they are expected-to place those clashes within an agreed-upon framework: the framework, roughly, of David (the Palestinians) versus Goliath (the Israelis)." Journalist Fiamma Nirenstein, January 2001. [54]
- Supporting Evidence: "But for most of the…western correspondents there are certain 'given' assumptions that provide the backdrop of all their coverage. Topping the list is the notion that Palestinians are engaged in a noble struggle for independence and Israeli oppressors are using their might and muscle to stand in their way." Journalist Judith Blaint. February 25 2001 [55]
- Supporting Evidence: NBC's Tel Aviv bureau chief Martin Fletcher acknowledged that the Intifada posed a fairness problem. He noted the Palestinians manipulated the Western media by casting themselves as "David" against the Israeli "Goliath," a metaphor used by Fletcher himself in a 1988 report. "The whole uprising was media-oriented [...] It's really a matter of manipulation of the media. [...] We play along because we need the pictures." [56]
- Supporting Evidence: "Most foreign journalists are not fluent in either Arabic or Hebrew, rendering them dependent on a network of local Palestinian "fixers," mostly young, educated Palestinians who speak Arabic, Hebrew and English…An Arabic-speaking journalist…noted that most fixers trumpet the PLO narrative and terminology of the conflict, which frequently collides with established historical facts and international law. Moreover, Palestinian security forces watch carefully what is said by local residents to both foreign and local journalists." [57]
- Supporting Evidence: "The information coming out of Israel these days is heavily influenced by the political imagination of the reporters and columnists and cameramen who have flocked to the scene from the four corners of the earth to cover this latest installment of violence in the ongoing Middle East conflict. They tend-they are expected-to place those clashes within an agreed-upon framework: the framework, roughly, of David (the Palestinians) versus Goliath (the Israelis)." Journalist Fiamma Nirenstein, January 2001. [54]
- COUNTERPOINT: Just the reverse is true. In fact, journalists cannot write freely about what the Palestinians and the PA are doing. While Israel has a free press, journalists are severely censured and kept in line by intimidation, threats and even violence from the PA if they disagree with the PA's public relations agenda.
- Supporting Evidence: After 9/11: "The FPA [Foreign Press Association] expresses deep concern over the harassment of journalists by the Palestinian Authority as police forces and armed gunmen tried to prevent photo and video coverage of Tuesday's rally in Nablus where hundreds of Palestinians celebrated the terror attacks in NY and Washington. We strongly condemn the direct threats made against local videographers by local militia members and the attitude of Palestinian officials who made no effort to counter the threats, control the situation, or to guarantee the safety of the journalists and the freedom of the press." September 13 2001 [58]
- Supporting Evidence: After the murder of two Israeli reservists in Ramallah in October 2000: "According to first hand reports, Palestinian security forces surrounded a Polish television crew who were beaten and relieved of their film of the lynching….Given PA intimidation of Palestinian journalists, it's not surprising that almost all of them, except for one working for the Arabic news channel, Al-Jazeera, and another shooter for the independent Italian station, RTI, meekly handed over their film." [59]
- Supporting Evidence: "PA forces on the scene [in Ramallah] promptly hunted down and confiscated film and videotape of the incident to prevent its being aired-but not before a crew from a private Italian TV channel managed to send a clip of the atrocity to Rome….Thereupon Cristiano published a letter of apology…and reiterated his commitment to 'respect' the 'rules' laid down by the PA-rules that presumably prohibit anti-PA reporting." Journalist Fiamma Nirenstein 2001 [60]
- Supporting Evidence: Palestinian journalists and Palestinians working with foreign journalists received death threats and were warned not to publicize the growing chaos in the Territories and the rallies demanding reform in the PA. "The journalists said they believe that Musa Arafat loyalists were behind the threats. "We were told that any journalist who goes to the rally will meet the same fate as Nabil Amr," said another journalist who works on a regular basis with an international news organization. Amr, a Palestinian legislator, was shot and severely wounded in Ramallah last week shortly after he called for reforms in the PA during a television interview. " Jerusalem Post, July 24 2004 [61]
- Supporting Evidence: After 9/11: "The FPA [Foreign Press Association] expresses deep concern over the harassment of journalists by the Palestinian Authority as police forces and armed gunmen tried to prevent photo and video coverage of Tuesday's rally in Nablus where hundreds of Palestinians celebrated the terror attacks in NY and Washington. We strongly condemn the direct threats made against local videographers by local militia members and the attitude of Palestinian officials who made no effort to counter the threats, control the situation, or to guarantee the safety of the journalists and the freedom of the press." September 13 2001 [58]
- COUNTERPOINT: This claim inverts reality. It is the Palestinian Authority government that does not wish the world to see or know what it is doing in the name of "liberation." The PA enforces strict censorship on journalists, even threatening them with violence when they try to expose Palestinian actions that hurt the Palestinian cause.
- Supporting Evidence: "According to an Arab-Israeli journalists who assists Jerusalem-based foreign media outlets, Abed Rabbo [Minister of Culture and Information of the Palestinian National Authority] views media relations as an extension of the Palestinian cause….Abed Rabbo reportedly told the senior Foreign Press Association representatives in no uncertain terms, "Palestinian national interests would come before freedom of the press." [62]
- Supporting Evidence: "In the nearly seven years since the Palestinian National Authority assumed control over parts of the West Bank and Gaza, Chairman Yasser Arafat and his multi-layered security apparatus have muzzled local press critics via arbitrary arrests, threats, physical abuse, and the closure of media outlets. Over the years, the Arafat regime has managed to frighten most Palestinian journalists into self-censorship." Independent Committee for the Protection of Journalists, 2001 [63]
- Supporting Evidence: "For years, the PNA and its various security apparatuses have routinely harassed the local media by arresting, intimidating, and censoring those who publish dissenting views. However, with the PNA weakened by repeated Israeli military assaults and the IDF's reoccupation of most of the West Bank, the authority's ability to impose control has been greatly reduced." Independent Committee for the Protection of Journalists, 2003 [64]
- Supporting Evidence: "Journalists critical of the PA and its policies, such as Seifeddin Shahin (al-Arabiya Satellite Channel), have been continually subjected to violence, either at the hands of PA officials or by unknowns affiliated with a political splinter group." Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group (PHRMG) Press Release April 2004 [65]
- Supporting Evidence: The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate staged a strike against the Palestinian Authority in February 2004 to protest "a new chapter in the campaign of terror directed against Palestinian journalists." The protest followed "a string of attacks on journalists" including the torching of the car of the Gaza Bureau Chief of Al Hayat Al Jadida, three masked Palestinian gunmen storming the offices of the Ramallah-based Al-Quds Educational Television and beating two staffers with rifle butts and fists, and gunmen braking into the offices of a Gaza City weekly, destroying equipment and furniture. Khaled Abu Toameh, Feb 15, 2004 [66]
- Supporting Evidence: "The PNA controls the official Palestine TV and Voice of Palestine radio, which reflect PNA views." Independent Committee for the Protection of Journalists [67]
- Supporting Evidence: After 9/11: "The FPA [Foreign Press Association] expresses deep concern over the harassment of journalists by the Palestinian Authority as police forces and armed gunmen tried to prevent photo and video coverage of Tuesday's rally in Nablus where hundreds of Palestinians celebrated the terror attacks in NY and Washington. We strongly condemn the direct threats made against local videographers by local militia members and the attitude of Palestinian officials who made no effort to counter the threats, control the situation, or to guarantee the safety of the journalists and the freedom of the press." September 13 2001 [68]
- Supporting Evidence: After the murder of two Israeli reservists in Ramallah in October 2000: "According to first hand reports, Palestinian security forces surrounded a Polish television crew who were beaten and relieved of their film of the lynching….Given PA intimidation of Palestinian journalists, it's not surprising that almost all of them, except for one working for the Arabic news channel, Al-Jazeera, and another shooter for the independent Italian station, RTI, meekly handed over their film." (*)
"PA forces on the scene promptly hunted down and confiscated film and videotape of the incident to prevent its being aired-but not before a crew from a private Italian TV channel managed to send a clip of the atrocity to Rome….Thereupon Cristiano published a letter of apology…and reiterated his commitment his commitment to 'respect' the 'rules' laid down by the PA-rules that presumably prohibit anti-PA reporting." Journalist Fiamma Nirenstein 2001(**)
[69]
- Supporting Evidence: "According to an Arab-Israeli journalists who assists Jerusalem-based foreign media outlets, Abed Rabbo [Minister of Culture and Information of the Palestinian National Authority] views media relations as an extension of the Palestinian cause….Abed Rabbo reportedly told the senior Foreign Press Association representatives in no uncertain terms, "Palestinian national interests would come before freedom of the press." [62]
- COUNTERPOINT: The media reports Palestinian tales of atrocities, even when they are not true.
- Supporting Evidence: The media reported on thousands of Palestinians slain in Jenin, when in fact the number was no more than 56 Palestinians and 23 Israelis killed. They also reported on the total destruction of the Refugee camp when only an area half the size of a football field, measuring 100 meters by 100 meters, was razed.
- Supporting Evidence: "The U.S. and Western European media coverage of the Battle of Jenin last month raises troubling and far-reaching questions about the reliability of the modern mass media and press in conflict situations… the Western European media fell for the "Massacre Myth" in Jenin in a big way. Even though the final Palestinian Authority figure acknowledged only 56 dead in Jenin, media coverage in major Western European nations gave credence to early claims by the PA's top officials that as many as 3,000 civilians had been killed in the fighting there." UPI Report, Part 1 May 4 2002 [70]
- Supporting Evidence: "The only thing massacred at Jenin was the reputation of the European press….. The reasons for the European media's "rush to judgment" over Jenin were many, but one conclusion was inescapable: The "rush to judgment" was an "hour of shame." UPI Report, Part 2, May 23 2004 [71]
- Supporting Evidence: The media reported on thousands of Palestinians slain in Jenin, when in fact the number was no more than 56 Palestinians and 23 Israelis killed. They also reported on the total destruction of the Refugee camp when only an area half the size of a football field, measuring 100 meters by 100 meters, was razed.
- COUNTERPOINT: Even public news outlets in the US have been found to award more coverage - and more sympathetic coverage - to Palestinians.
- Supporting Evidence: National Public Radio awarded Palestinian perspective pieces four times more talk time than Israeli perspective pieces during a two-month study conducted by The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America. How can you claim that Israel controls the discourse in the Western Media with one quarter of the time awarded to Palestinians? [72]
- Supporting Evidence: National Public Radio awarded Palestinian perspective pieces four times more talk time than Israeli perspective pieces during a two-month study conducted by The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America. How can you claim that Israel controls the discourse in the Western Media with one quarter of the time awarded to Palestinians? [72]
- COUNTERPOINT: Just the reverse is true. Western journalists are biased against Israel and depict the struggle as David (Palestinians) against Goliath (Israel).
- POINT 5: Israel and Jews control media reports on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
- COUNTERPOINT: The Western Media has been manipulated and intimidated by the Palestinians.
- Supporting Evidence: The Foreign Press Association (FPA) in Israel expressed "deep concern over the harassment of journalists by the Palestinian Authority as police forces and armed gunmen tried to prevent photo and video coverage of Tuesday's rally in Nablus where hundreds of Palestinians celebrated the terror attacks in New York and Washington." The FPA also condemned the threats against videographers and "the attitude of Palestinian officials who made no effort to counter the threats, control the situation, or to guarantee the safety of the journalists and the freedom of the press." September 13 2001 [73]
- Supporting Evidence: The Paris-based Reporters Without Frontiers issued a scathing protest to the PA. "We fear the Palestinian Authority takes advantage of the focus of international media on the American riposte to restrain more and more the right to free information," said Robert Menard, general secretary of the journalists' organization. [74]
- Supporting Evidence: NBC's Tel Aviv bureau chief Martin Fletcher acknowledged that the Intifada posed a fairness problem. He noted the Palestinians manipulated the Western media by casting themselves as "David" against the Israeli "Goliath," a metaphor used by Fletcher himself in a 1988 report. "The whole uprising was media-oriented [...] It's really a matter of manipulation of the media. [...] We play along because we need the pictures." [75]
- Supporting Evidence: "According to an Arab-Israeli journalists who assists Jerusalem-based foreign media outlets, Abed Rabbo [Minister of Culture and Information of the Palestinian National Authority] views media relations as an extension of the Palestinian cause….Abed Rabbo reportedly told the senior Foreign Press Association representatives in no uncertain terms, "Palestinian national interests would come before freedom of the press." [76]
- Supporting Evidence: The Foreign Press Association (FPA) in Israel expressed "deep concern over the harassment of journalists by the Palestinian Authority as police forces and armed gunmen tried to prevent photo and video coverage of Tuesday's rally in Nablus where hundreds of Palestinians celebrated the terror attacks in New York and Washington." The FPA also condemned the threats against videographers and "the attitude of Palestinian officials who made no effort to counter the threats, control the situation, or to guarantee the safety of the journalists and the freedom of the press." September 13 2001 [73]
- COUNTERPOINT: Israel and the Jews do not control the Western press. In Europe, the press has been virulently hostile to Israel because, many charge, of resurgent anti-Semitism.
- Supporting Evidence: "Since the start of the second intifada, the Spanish press, on the right as well as the left, has taken a particularly aggressive approach toward Israel, an approach that leaves out the reasons for Israel's actions and tends to ignore the Israeli victims in this conflict. In this situation,a small minority of intellectuals, public personalities -- sensitive to the Jewish question in general and to Israel in particular -- felt deeply touched by this problem. Outraged by the return of Judeophobia in Spain, we, each in our own way, began to write some articles, to use the media to condemn this situation." Pilar Rahola, Spanish intellectual and former Parliament member [77]
- Supporting Evidence: "I find it shameful (we're back in Italy) that state-run television stations contribute to the resurgent antisemitism, crying only over Palestinian deaths while playing down Israeli deaths, glossing over them in unwilling tones. I find it shameful that in their debates they host with much deference the scoundrels with turban or kaffiah who yesterday sang hymns to the slaughter at New York and today sing hymns to the slaughters at Jerusalem, at Haifa, at Netanya, at Tel Aviv. I find it shameful that the press does the same, that it is indignant because Israeli tanks surround the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, that it is not indignant because inside that same church two hundred Palestinian terrorists well armed with machine guns and munitions and explosives (among them are various leaders of Hamas and Al-Aqsa) are not unwelcome guests of the monks (who then accept bottles of mineral water and jars of honey from the soldiers of those tanks)….I find it shameful that the Roman Observer, the newspaper of the Pope--a Pope who not long ago left in the Wailing Wall a letter of apology for the Jews--accuses of extermination a people who were exterminated in the millions by Christians. By Europeans. I find it shameful that this newspaper denies to the survivors of that people (survivors who still have numbers tattooed on their arms) the right to react, to defend themselves, to not be exterminated again." Oriana Fallaci, Italian journalist. [78]
- Supporting Evidence: "Since the start of the second intifada, the Spanish press, on the right as well as the left, has taken a particularly aggressive approach toward Israel, an approach that leaves out the reasons for Israel's actions and tends to ignore the Israeli victims in this conflict. In this situation,a small minority of intellectuals, public personalities -- sensitive to the Jewish question in general and to Israel in particular -- felt deeply touched by this problem. Outraged by the return of Judeophobia in Spain, we, each in our own way, began to write some articles, to use the media to condemn this situation." Pilar Rahola, Spanish intellectual and former Parliament member [77]
- COUNTERPOINT: Saudi Arabia can more accurately be said to control media discourse on the Middle East. Its princes own large shares of media outlets throughout the world and hold a virtual monopoly on media in the Middle East.
- Supporting Evidence: Said Aburish chronicles Saudi Arabia's manipulation of the media in his book The Rise, Corruption and Coming Fall of the House of Saud. According to Said, the ruling family of Saudi Arabia has purchased large shares of the Western Media including the whole of United Press International. He also chronicles the physical brutalization of reporters that differ from the Saudi stance on Israel among other issues. [79]
- Supporting Evidence: A Saudi Arabian Prince, Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdul Aziz Alsaud, owns $2.05 billion of AOL stock (parent company of time Warner and CNN). He also holds large portions of Disney (parent of ABC) and the News Corporation (Parent of the New York Post, Fox News, and the London Times). He admitted to the London times that he lodges protests of these publications' reporting directly to the chairmen and chief executives of the papers. This is control of the media. [80]
- Supporting Evidence: Said Aburish chronicles Saudi Arabia's manipulation of the media in his book The Rise, Corruption and Coming Fall of the House of Saud. According to Said, the ruling family of Saudi Arabia has purchased large shares of the Western Media including the whole of United Press International. He also chronicles the physical brutalization of reporters that differ from the Saudi stance on Israel among other issues. [79]
- COUNTERPOINT: The Western Media has been manipulated and intimidated by the Palestinians.
- POINT 6: The US media is pro-Israel because of US oil interests in the Middle East.
- COUNTERPOINT: This is illogical. It is absurd to argue that the US media is pro-Israel because the US government wants Middle Eastern oil. The US media should be pro-Arab if they want to court Arab favor. Europe is far more dependent upon Middle Eastern oil than the US and their press is scathingly anti-Israel.
- Supporting Evidence: "Since the start of the second intifada, the Spanish press, on the right as well as the left, has taken a particularly aggressive approach toward Israel, an approach that leaves out the reasons for Israel's actions and tends to ignore the Israeli victims in this conflict. In this situation,a small minority of intellectuals, public personalities -- sensitive to the Jewish question in general and to Israel in particular -- felt deeply touched by this problem. Outraged by the return of Judeophobia in Spain, we, each in our own way, began to write some articles, to use the media to condemn this situation." Pilar Rahola, Spanish intellectual and former Parliament member [81]
- Supporting Evidence: "I find it shameful (we're back in Italy) that state-run television stations contribute to the resurgent antisemitism, crying only over Palestinian deaths while playing down Israeli deaths, glossing over them in unwilling tones. I find it shameful that in their debates they host with much deference the scoundrels with turban or kaffiah who yesterday sang hymns to the slaughter at New York and today sing hymns to the slaughters at Jerusalem, at Haifa, at Netanya, at Tel Aviv. I find it shameful that the press does the same, that it is indignant because Israeli tanks surround the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, that it is not indignant because inside that same church two hundred Palestinian terrorists well armed with machine guns and munitions and explosives (among them are various leaders of Hamas and Al-Aqsa) are not unwelcome guests of the monks (who then accept bottles of mineral water and jars of honey from the soldiers of those tanks)….I find it shameful that the Roman Observer, the newspaper of the Pope--a Pope who not long ago left in the Wailing Wall a letter of apology for the Jews--accuses of extermination a people who were exterminated in the millions by Christians. By Europeans. I find it shameful that this newspaper denies to the survivors of that people (survivors who still have numbers tattooed on their arms) the right to react, to defend themselves, to not be exterminated again." Oriana Fallaci, Italian journalist. [82]
- Supporting Evidence: "Since the start of the second intifada, the Spanish press, on the right as well as the left, has taken a particularly aggressive approach toward Israel, an approach that leaves out the reasons for Israel's actions and tends to ignore the Israeli victims in this conflict. In this situation,a small minority of intellectuals, public personalities -- sensitive to the Jewish question in general and to Israel in particular -- felt deeply touched by this problem. Outraged by the return of Judeophobia in Spain, we, each in our own way, began to write some articles, to use the media to condemn this situation." Pilar Rahola, Spanish intellectual and former Parliament member [81]
- COUNTERPOINT: This is illogical. It is absurd to argue that the US media is pro-Israel because the US government wants Middle Eastern oil. The US media should be pro-Arab if they want to court Arab favor. Europe is far more dependent upon Middle Eastern oil than the US and their press is scathingly anti-Israel.
- POINT 7: Israel is working hard to dehumanize Palestinians in the international media.
- COUNTERPOINT: Israel has not tried to dehumanize Palestinians in the international media. Rather, it has tried to expose the terrorist infrastructure that is holding moderate Palestinians hostage, inciting them to murder and to suicide bombing and murdering Israelis. If this is dehumanizing, the fault lies with the Palestinians, not Israel.
- Supporting Evidence: Hanan Ashrawi accused Israel of dehumanizing Palestinians because Israel charged that the PA and terrorist groups recruited children to fight and to become suicide bombers. But those are facts. Palestinian children grow up in a culture that heroicizes suicide bombers,(*) on the Palestinian version of "Sesame Street," children sing songs about wishing to become suicide warriors and spilling their blood in Jerusalem(**) Palestinian children are sent close to Israeli positions with rocks and Molotov cocktails, while the gunmen and snipers fire from positions hundreds of yards back;(***) and the PA encourages children to participate in clashes by offering their families $300 per injury and $2,000 for anyone killed. Palestinian Prime Minister, Abu Mazen, admitted to a Kuwaiti newspaper in June that Palestinian children have been paid 5 shekels (about $1) for every pipe bomb they throw. The New York Times reported that 25,000 children were trained one summer in Palestinian Authority summer camps in the use of firearms, the making of Molotov cocktails, the methods of kidnapping Israeli leaders, and conducting ambushes.(****) [83]
- Supporting Evidence: HAMAS' policy of suicide bombing is "irrational nihilist behavior [that] has a name: worst-case nihilistic policy. It is nihilist because it effectively negates all values and norms underpinning the international community…" Liberal Tunisian columnist, Al-Afif Al-Akhdhar, July 14 2002 [84]
- Supporting Evidence: "The majority of those who carried out suicide operations against buses, schools, houses, and buildings around the world in the last ten years are also Muslims. What a terrible record. Does this not say something about us, about our society and our culture?…Islam has suffered an injustice at the hands of the new Muslims... We will only be able to clear our reputation once we have admitted the clear and shameful fact that most of the terrorist acts in the world today are carried out by Muslims. We have to realize that we cannot correct the condition of our youth who carry out these disgraceful operations until we have treated the minds of our sheikhs who have turned themselves into pulpit revolutionaries who send the children of others to fight while they send their own children to European schools." Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, former editor of the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, September 4 2004 [85]
- Supporting Evidence: "The propagandists of Jihad succeeded in the span of a few years in distorting the image of Islam, while the enemies of Islam did not succeed in doing this [even] in the course of hundreds of years. They turned today's Islam into something having to do with decapitations, the slashing of throats, abducting innocent civilians and exploding people. They have fixed the image of Muslims in the eyes of the world as barbarians and savages who are not good for anything except slaughtering people..." Khaled Hamad Al-Suleiman in the Saudi government daily Okaz September 5 2004 [86]
- Supporting Evidence: ""There is a deep problem in Islam. It's a world whose values are different. A world in which human life doesn't have the same value as it does in the West, in which freedom, democracy, openness and creativity are alien. A world that makes those who are not part of the camp of Islam fair game. Revenge is also important here. Revenge plays a central part in the Arab tribal culture. Therefore, the people we are fighting and the society that sends them have no moral inhibitions. If it obtains chemical or biological or atomic weapons, it will use them. If it is able, it will also commit genocide." Historian Benny Morris [87]
- Supporting Evidence: Hanan Ashrawi accused Israel of dehumanizing Palestinians because Israel charged that the PA and terrorist groups recruited children to fight and to become suicide bombers. But those are facts. Palestinian children grow up in a culture that heroicizes suicide bombers,(*) on the Palestinian version of "Sesame Street," children sing songs about wishing to become suicide warriors and spilling their blood in Jerusalem(**) Palestinian children are sent close to Israeli positions with rocks and Molotov cocktails, while the gunmen and snipers fire from positions hundreds of yards back;(***) and the PA encourages children to participate in clashes by offering their families $300 per injury and $2,000 for anyone killed. Palestinian Prime Minister, Abu Mazen, admitted to a Kuwaiti newspaper in June that Palestinian children have been paid 5 shekels (about $1) for every pipe bomb they throw. The New York Times reported that 25,000 children were trained one summer in Palestinian Authority summer camps in the use of firearms, the making of Molotov cocktails, the methods of kidnapping Israeli leaders, and conducting ambushes.(****) [83]
- COUNTERPOINT: The Palestinian Press Agency forbids photographers from taking footage of children with weapons, threatens reporters for showing unfavorable footage of Palestinians, and forbade the filming of Palestinians celebrating in the wake of the World Trade Center bombings.(*) The Palestinian Authority is working hard to prevent dehumanizing footage of Palestinians from being released, but the truth is, Palestinians terrorists are blowing themselves up to kill civilians and the Palestinian public cheers them on. In light of these actions would Israel have to attempt to dehumanize Palestinians?
- COUNTERPOINT: Israel has not tried to dehumanize Palestinians in the international media. Rather, it has tried to expose the terrorist infrastructure that is holding moderate Palestinians hostage, inciting them to murder and to suicide bombing and murdering Israelis. If this is dehumanizing, the fault lies with the Palestinians, not Israel.
- POINT 8: Israeli peace activists and the Israeli left are not covered by the Western media.
- COUNTERPOINT: It is not true that the US does not hear from Israeli peace activists. Television networks, radio stations, and newspapers are notorious for interviewing extreme left wing Israelis who differ with the policies of their government and presenting them as mainstream, witness Jeff Halper, Ilan Pape, Tanya Reinhart all of whom are opponents of the Israeli government and frequently cited individuals. There have also been many stories on or concerning Gush Shalom, Yesh Gvul, Peace Now, and B'Tselem.
- Supporting Evidence: A CAMERA study found that between March 27 and April 2 2002, at the height of the suicide bombing, NPR interviewed 62 Palestinians vs 32 Israelis about the situation, including "Adam Shapiro, notorious for defending Yasir Arafat in his Ramallah compound,… and Jeff Halper, who advocates the end of Israel as a Jewish state, was heard. Not a single Jewish victim of the terrorist onslaught was mentioned by name, not one bereaved family was interviewed and not one injured survivor was the focus of a story." [88]
- Supporting Evidence: A CAMERA study found that between March 27 and April 2 2002, at the height of the suicide bombing, NPR interviewed 62 Palestinians vs 32 Israelis about the situation, including "Adam Shapiro, notorious for defending Yasir Arafat in his Ramallah compound,… and Jeff Halper, who advocates the end of Israel as a Jewish state, was heard. Not a single Jewish victim of the terrorist onslaught was mentioned by name, not one bereaved family was interviewed and not one injured survivor was the focus of a story." [88]
- COUNTERPOINT: It is not true that the US does not hear from Israeli peace activists. Television networks, radio stations, and newspapers are notorious for interviewing extreme left wing Israelis who differ with the policies of their government and presenting them as mainstream, witness Jeff Halper, Ilan Pape, Tanya Reinhart all of whom are opponents of the Israeli government and frequently cited individuals. There have also been many stories on or concerning Gush Shalom, Yesh Gvul, Peace Now, and B'Tselem.
- POINT 9: Israel has systematically covered up evidence illustrating its true racist intentions and sordid past that the "new historians" have now uncovered.
- COUNTERPOINT: This is a preposterous claim. Israel has not tried to hide a "sordid past." Israel is a free society and anti-Zionists have been free to publish their works-and have published them-since before the state was even founded. Their voices could be heard, but they remained a fringe element.
- Supporting Evidence: "An anti-narrative of Zionism, counterposed to the Zionist (and Israeli) narrative…had existed since the very inception of the Zionist movement. Opponents of the movement, Jewish and non-Jewish, had created an entire literature explaining what was foul in Zionism and why…Israel was an illegitimate and unjust construct that had to be resisted. The Soviet propaganda machine excelled in developing this anti-narrative, and in proliferating it. Arab propaganda also did its work. And at the margins of the Israeli left, there had always been groups and currents that doubted the right of Israel to exist and stressed the wrongs that were perpetrated against the Arabs. Yet those heretical elements remained marginal in Israeli politics and culture, and failed to gain wide public support." Historian Anita Shapira [89]
- Supporting Evidence: This anti-Zionist narrative "is as old as Zionism itself….It has also been the staple of intra-Jewish politics since the beginning of the century, when it was raised by the anti-Zionist Bund." Historian Shabtai Teveth [90]
- Supporting Evidence: Israel can hardly be accused of trying to hide its past or present policies. It has one of the most rambunctious, free and diverse political cultures in the world and one of the freest presses. Its hallmark has been heated political debate with government policies carefully scrutinized and open to severe criticism. [91]
- Supporting Evidence: Israel "Israel's press and broadcasters are many and varied, and account for differences in language, political viewpoint and religious outlook….Most Israeli households subscribe to cable or satellite TV packages. Commercial radio arrived in 1995, but faces competition from a proliferation of pirate radio stations; some 150 were said to be on the air in early 2003….All Israeli newspapers are privately-owned and several are available on the internet. Media watchdog Reporters Without Frontiers reported in 2002 that although the Israeli government respected the freedom of expression of the domestic media, press freedoms had been limited during army operations in the West Bank and Gaza.
- Supporting Evidence: "An anti-narrative of Zionism, counterposed to the Zionist (and Israeli) narrative…had existed since the very inception of the Zionist movement. Opponents of the movement, Jewish and non-Jewish, had created an entire literature explaining what was foul in Zionism and why…Israel was an illegitimate and unjust construct that had to be resisted. The Soviet propaganda machine excelled in developing this anti-narrative, and in proliferating it. Arab propaganda also did its work. And at the margins of the Israeli left, there had always been groups and currents that doubted the right of Israel to exist and stressed the wrongs that were perpetrated against the Arabs. Yet those heretical elements remained marginal in Israeli politics and culture, and failed to gain wide public support." Historian Anita Shapira [89]
- COUNTERPOINT: This is a preposterous claim. Israel has not tried to hide a "sordid past." The archives the 'new historians' used had not been closed for Israel to hide a "sordid past." Like all Western democracies, Israel keeps its archives classified for 30 years, after which they are open to researchers.
- COUNTERPOINT: This is a preposterous claim. The 'new historians' who have been searching for sordid events in Israel's past have hardly been silenced. Quite the reverse is true. Many of these historians have secure positions in Israel's universities; their work has been widely publicized in popular and scholarly outlets and has even been supported by the IDF and the Ministry of Education.
- Supporting Evidence: "At the time [it emerged], the new perspective on Israel's past was generally dismissed as a fringe phenomenon, and only a handful of names were associated with it. Since then, however, scholars openly identified with the new history-and with the similar treatment of Zionism in disciplines such as political science, sociology and philosophy-have grown appreciably in numbers and influence. Many of them have earned coveted tenure-track positions at Israeli universities, while their views have been widely disseminated by the Israeli media, especially in the daily Ha'aretz (Israel's equivalent of The New York Times), and most spectacularly in Tekuma, Israel Television's 1998 documentary miniseries on the Jewish state's first fifty years." Historian Daniel Polisar, PhD [93]
- Supporting Evidence: "In July 1999, the Israel Defense Forces, through its History Division, cosponsored the publication of The Struggle for Israel's Security, a book which the daily Yedi'ot Aharonot described as "shattering a number of the most splendid myths on which we were raised" (August 4, 1999), and which was particularly harsh in assessing Israel's security policy during the formative period of the 1950s. Two months later, the Ministry of Education introduced into ninth-grade classrooms across the country the first three textbooks about Israel that are part of a new curriculum aimed at teaching history from an expressly "universal" (as opposed to "nationalist") perspective. The most radical of these texts is A World of Changes: History for Ninth Grade, [was] edited by Danny Ya'akobi and published by the Ministry's own Curriculum Division." Historian Daniel Polisar, PhD [94]
- Supporting Evidence: "At the time [it emerged], the new perspective on Israel's past was generally dismissed as a fringe phenomenon, and only a handful of names were associated with it. Since then, however, scholars openly identified with the new history-and with the similar treatment of Zionism in disciplines such as political science, sociology and philosophy-have grown appreciably in numbers and influence. Many of them have earned coveted tenure-track positions at Israeli universities, while their views have been widely disseminated by the Israeli media, especially in the daily Ha'aretz (Israel's equivalent of The New York Times), and most spectacularly in Tekuma, Israel Television's 1998 documentary miniseries on the Jewish state's first fifty years." Historian Daniel Polisar, PhD [93]
- COUNTERPOINT: Israel is not trying to hide its "sordid past." In fact, the new historians work purportedly exposing this sordid past is strenuously criticized for peddling a highly politicized view of events, and fabricating a propaganda of its own.
- Supporting Evidence: "[T]he new historians' main contribution to the debate over Zionist history is not one of facts, but of perspective…. They have argued that their authority to rewrite Zionist and Israeli history was based in large part on the opening of Israel's state archives…. [and on this basis]…raised the possibility that Israel "was besmirched by original sin" due to the manner in which the Jewish state had come into being. These are not "facts" that one discovers in recently opened archives. They are indicative of profound moral evaluations…It is such evaluations which have allowed [Benny] Morris and others to write a sweeping new narrative of Zionist history that goes far beyond anything suggested by the revelations of recently declassified documents." Daniel Polisar, PhD [95]
- Supporting Evidence: The 'new historians' have a "a political-ideological axe to grind." "It would be erroneous to call this 'myth debunking'. The work done before our eyes is merely the rewriting of the one-hundred-year Zionist history in the spirit of its enemies and opponents." Aharon Megged. Ha'aretz Weekly Magazine [96]
- Supporting Evidence: "Since the advent of the 'new historians,'…a new polarization has set in. For the 'new historians' dismissed all previous historiography as aplogogetic. Whoever dares to oppose or criticize the pronouncements of these self-styled iconoclasts is savagely maligned…..[T]hey sought to undermine the state's moral and philosophical foundations, to dismantle the Jewish identity of the state and reconfigure it as a state of 'all its citizens.'" Historian Anita Shapira [97]
- Supporting Evidence: "[S]uch is the politicization of modern Middle Eastern studies, especially in relation to the Arab-Israeli conflict, that partisan rewriting of history in line with contemporary political agendas has not only become the norm, its practitioners are even applauded as courageous revisionists…." Historian Efraim Karsh [98]
- Supporting Evidence: "[T]he new historians' main contribution to the debate over Zionist history is not one of facts, but of perspective…. They have argued that their authority to rewrite Zionist and Israeli history was based in large part on the opening of Israel's state archives…. [and on this basis]…raised the possibility that Israel "was besmirched by original sin" due to the manner in which the Jewish state had come into being. These are not "facts" that one discovers in recently opened archives. They are indicative of profound moral evaluations…It is such evaluations which have allowed [Benny] Morris and others to write a sweeping new narrative of Zionist history that goes far beyond anything suggested by the revelations of recently declassified documents." Daniel Polisar, PhD [95]
- COUNTERPOINT: The 'new historians' in fact are not presenting much new so there is not much reason to try to silence them. The 'sordid' events they uncover have been examined by previous historians. What is new is not their information, but their politicized, moralistic interpretation. Mainstream scholars in fact criticize their finds and their methods. Mainstream scholars criticize their findings and methods. Their research doesn't meet scholarly standards, they distort evidence and the larger historical context and, in some cases, fabricate evidence to match their political views.
- Supporting Evidence: "Indeed the struggle is about ideology, not about facts. Who knows what facts are? We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truth-seekers." Ilan Pappe, 1999. [99]
- Supporting Evidence: "Violating every tenet of bona fide research, the misrepresentation of the historical record by the 'new historiography' has ranged from the more innocent act of reading into documents what is not there, to tendentious truncation of documents in a way that distorts their original meaning, ot 'creative rewriting' of the original texts by putting words in people's mouths and/or giving false descriptions of the contents of these documents." Historian Efraim Karsh [100]
- Supporting Evidence: "Indeed the struggle is about ideology, not about facts. Who knows what facts are? We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truth-seekers." Ilan Pappe, 1999. [99]
- COUNTERPOINT: The 'new historians' work is hotly contested. Established scholars have severely criticized them for their methods and their conclusions.
- Supporting Evidence: "It would be erroneous to call this [new history] 'myth debunking.' The work done before our eyes is merely the rewriting of the one-hundred-year Zionist history in the spirit of its enemies and opponents." Aharon Megged 1994 [101]
- Supporting Evidence: "The theses of the 'new historians' and their research methods have precisely been questioned by fellow historians…Violating every tenet of bona fide research, the misrepresentation of the historical record by the 'new historians' has ranged from the more 'innocent' act of reading into documents what is not there, to tendentious truncation of documents in a way that distorts their original meaning, to 'creative rewriting' of original texts by putting words in peoples' mouths and/or giving false descriptions of the contents of these documents." Professor Efraim Karsh [102]
- Supporting Evidence: "[A] large number of professors who espouse extremist views have flourished despite a record of minimal academic publishing and performance. In some cases, they publish mainly or exclusively in politicized journals, such as those published by the Palestine Liberation Organization and its affiliates…" Solomon Socrates 2001 [103]
- Supporting Evidence: Bona fide scholars are especially disturbed by comments like the following by Ilan Pappe: "Indeed the struggle is about ideology, not about facts. Who knows what facts are? We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truth-seekers." [104]
- Supporting Evidence: "It would be erroneous to call this [new history] 'myth debunking.' The work done before our eyes is merely the rewriting of the one-hundred-year Zionist history in the spirit of its enemies and opponents." Aharon Megged 1994 [101]
- COUNTERPOINT: Scholars have especially criticized Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe.
- Supporting Evidence: On "the issue of "transfer," Morris has been prepared systematically to falsify evidence in an attempt to create history in an image of his own devising. There is scarcely a single document he has not twisted either by creative rewriting, taking things out of context, truncating texts, or giving a false description of the contents of the documents." [105]
- Supporting Evidence: Pappe"is perhaps the most tendentious of the New Historians. Unlike Morris, who purports to search archives and present facts, Pappe has been the most contemptuous of any necessity to base the charges against Israel on facts and insists that creating some sort of Palestinian narrative suffices." Solomon Socrates, 2001 [106]
- Supporting Evidence: Ilan Pappe's academic credibility was seriously challenged in 2000, when one of his students at Haifa University was forced to retract libelous and falsified accusations in his Masters thesis about an alleged 1948 Israeli massacre on Palestinians no evidence could substantiate. The student, Theodore Katz, was forced to retract his claims and was found by the University to have falsified testimony "gravely and severely" in 14 different places in his thesis. The university ultimately denied his research M.A. In spite of the seriousness of the academic fraud perpetrated, Pappe continued to support Katz's original findings, nearly costing him his job at the university in the process. [107]
- Supporting Evidence: On "the issue of "transfer," Morris has been prepared systematically to falsify evidence in an attempt to create history in an image of his own devising. There is scarcely a single document he has not twisted either by creative rewriting, taking things out of context, truncating texts, or giving a false description of the contents of the documents." [105]
- COUNTERPOINT: The 'new historians' have not revealed many new facts to justify their reinterpretation of Israel's history. Much of what they claimed was 'new archival evidence' had already been known and written about by previous historians. The main difference between them and these former historians is in their interpretation of these facts: They always condemn Israel.
- Supporting Evidence: "[W]hile some of the sources presented by the new historians had previously been untapped, the factual core on which they based their findings was far from original. Avi Shlaim's Collusion Across the Jordan (1988) covered material much of which had been familiar to Israeli historians for over a decade, and whose major components Dan Schueftan had already explored in A Jordanian Option (1986). The depiction of the Zionist leadership's response to the Holocaust in [Tom] Segev's The Seventh Million (1991) likewise added little to the research on which Dina Porat had based her Entangled Leadership (1986). What made the new works highly controversial was therefore not the facts they presented, but the perspective from which they were written, which was characterized by a markedly more negative evaluation of Zionist leaders than that reached by previous Israeli historians." Historian Daniel Polisar, PhD [108]
- Supporting Evidence: "The 'new historians' of Israel have not exactly pioneered fresh critical approaches in Israeli historiography. Already in the 1970s, scholars had begun to develop new and sophisticated views of Jewish-British relations under the Mandate, of Zionism's relation to the Arab problem, of the rise of the Arab national movement, of the nature of Zionism as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. There was a tense and constant dialogue between collective memory and historical scholarship, as the new approaches slowly penetrated into the educational system and public consciousness. Since the advent of the "new historians," however, a new polarization has set in. For the "new historians" dismissed all previous historiography as apologetic. Whoever dares to oppose or to criticize the pronouncements of these self-styled iconoclasts is savagely maligned." Historian Anita Shapira [109]
- Supporting Evidence: Even 'new historian' Avi Shlaim admitted that many of the 'new historians' arguments were not new: "Many of the arguments that are central to the new historiography were advanced long ago by Israeli writers, not to mention Palestinian, Arab and Western writers." Avi Shlaim 1995 [110]
- Supporting Evidence: "[W]hile some of the sources presented by the new historians had previously been untapped, the factual core on which they based their findings was far from original. Avi Shlaim's Collusion Across the Jordan (1988) covered material much of which had been familiar to Israeli historians for over a decade, and whose major components Dan Schueftan had already explored in A Jordanian Option (1986). The depiction of the Zionist leadership's response to the Holocaust in [Tom] Segev's The Seventh Million (1991) likewise added little to the research on which Dina Porat had based her Entangled Leadership (1986). What made the new works highly controversial was therefore not the facts they presented, but the perspective from which they were written, which was characterized by a markedly more negative evaluation of Zionist leaders than that reached by previous Israeli historians." Historian Daniel Polisar, PhD [108]
- COUNTERPOINT: This is a preposterous claim. Israel has not tried to hide a "sordid past." Israel is a free society and anti-Zionists have been free to publish their works-and have published them-since before the state was even founded. Their voices could be heard, but they remained a fringe element.
- POINT 10: The government of Israel does not wish the world to see or know what its forces are doing in the name of occupation-for silence is the greatest asset of oppression.
- COUNTERPOINT: This claim inverts reality. Israel has no reason or desire to hide what it is doing to fight terrorism. Israel is one of the world's most open societies and its press is one of the freest. The conflict and what Israeli forces do is arguably one of the most widely covered stories in the world. Rarely a day goes by that local or international media don't carry a headline or front-page story about it. That news is frequently presented from the Palestinians' point of view.
- Supporting Evidence: "The Palestinian-Israeli conflict routinely gets headline billing in international media outlets over even more newsworthy and important nations like Russia, China and Great Britain, and American news organizations usually have more correspondents in Israel than in any country except Great Britain." Historian Mitchell Bard [111]
- Supporting Evidence: "In the last year, thousands of journalists have passed through Jerusalem and the territories to cover the intifada and report on its violent twists and turns. It is one of the most covered international stories today." Joel Campagna, Committee to Protect Journalists, March 31 2003 [112]
- Supporting Evidence: "Home to one of the largest contingents of foreign journalists in the world, Israel all too often finds itself under the media's magnifying glass…." Jerusalem Post March 2 2002. [113]
- Supporting Evidence: The "Jerusalem-based press corps" has "several hundred reporters….After the first week of the violence [September 2000], many media outlets reassigned journalists from other posts to assist their colleagues in Jerusalem." Journalist Judy Lash Balint, February 25 2001 [114]
- Supporting Evidence: "The Palestinian-Israeli conflict routinely gets headline billing in international media outlets over even more newsworthy and important nations like Russia, China and Great Britain, and American news organizations usually have more correspondents in Israel than in any country except Great Britain." Historian Mitchell Bard [111]
- COUNTERPOINT: Israel has no reason to hide its counter-terrorism measures, and it doesn't. The thousands of reporters who cover the conflict are not censored in any way, even though the 'news' they write is usually biased toward the Palestinians' point of view
- Supporting Evidence: "The information coming out of Israel these days is heavily influenced by the political imagination of the reporters and columnists and cameramen who have flocked to the scene from the four corners of the earth to cover this latest installment of violence in the ongoing Middle East conflict. They tend-they are expected-to place those clashes within an agreed-upon framework: the framework, roughly, of David (the Palestinians) versus Goliath (the Israelis)." Journalist Fiamma Nirenstein, January 2001. [115]
- Supporting Evidence: "But for most of the…western correspondents there are certain 'given' assumptions that provide the backdrop of all their coverage. Topping the list is the notion that Palestinians are engaged in a noble struggle for independence and Israeli oppressors are using their might and muscle to stand in their way." Journalist Judith Blaint. February 25 2001 [116]
- Supporting Evidence: NBC's Tel Aviv bureau chief Martin Fletcher acknowledged that the Intifada posed a fairness problem. He noted the Palestinians manipulated the Western media by casting themselves as "David" against the Israeli "Goliath," a metaphor used by Fletcher himself in a 1988 report. "The whole uprising was media-oriented [...] It's really a matter of manipulation of the media. [...] We play along because we need the pictures." [117]
- Supporting Evidence: "Most foreign journalists are not fluent in either Arabic or Hebrew, rendering them dependent on a network of local Palestinian "fixers," mostly young, educated Palestinians who speak Arabic, Hebrew and English…An Arabic-speaking journalist…noted that most fixers trumpet the PLO narrative and terminology of the conflict, which frequently collides with established historical facts and international law. Moreover, Palestinian security forces watch carefully what is said by local residents to both foreign and local journalists." [118]
- Supporting Evidence: "The information coming out of Israel these days is heavily influenced by the political imagination of the reporters and columnists and cameramen who have flocked to the scene from the four corners of the earth to cover this latest installment of violence in the ongoing Middle East conflict. They tend-they are expected-to place those clashes within an agreed-upon framework: the framework, roughly, of David (the Palestinians) versus Goliath (the Israelis)." Journalist Fiamma Nirenstein, January 2001. [115]
- COUNTERPOINT: Israel in no way imposes silence about its counter-terrorism measures. The only time it imposes any restrictions on journalists is for security reasons, and these are either temporary measures or can be brought before Israel's Courts.
- Supporting Evidence: Even the very liberal Committee to Protect Journalists acknowledged that Israel's press is free and that the few security restrictions can be appealed. "Although Israel's Hebrew-, Arabic-, and English-language press are mostly free, government and military officials can censor media outlets if authorities deem certain news-such as troop buildups and death counts-harmful to the country's security interests. Journalists, however, have the option of appealing to the High Court of Justice. Most media can circumvent the restrictions by attributing sensitive stories to foreign news outlets." Committee to Protect Journalists, "Attacks on the Press," 2003 [119]
- Supporting Evidence: Even foreign journalists admitted that when Israel launched Defensive Shield and made the area "off-limits" to the foreign press, this was temporary and unusual and was done for safety. "When Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield… the country's largest military offensive in the West Bank since 1967,…in the initial days of the six-week operation, ….[it] declared nearly all of the West Bank's main cities "closed military areas" and off-limits to the press. Israeli officials maintained that the ban was instituted for safety reasons." But journalists underscored that the IDF's enforcement of those bans was unusal. "Foreign journalists who covered the events said that they had never witnessed such harsh treatment from Israeli government forces." Committee to Protect Journalists, "Attacks on the Press," 2003 [120]
- Supporting Evidence: The journalists who are restricted are almost exclusively Palestinian stringers whose accreditation is not in order or who are suspected of ties to terrorists.(*) " Many international media outlets employ Palestinian stringers or fixers, who serve as essential, front-line personnel at foreign news organizations. But only a handful of these media workers have received their accreditation, or GPO card, which facilitates movement through checkpoints." Committee to Protect Journalists, "Attacks on the Press," 2003(**) [121]
- Supporting Evidence: The few international journalists that Israel has detained or arrested were Palestinian "stringers" suspected of terrorist ties.(*) " Three of the longest held were [Palestinians] Hossam Abu Alan, a veteran photographer for Agence France-Presse; Youssry al-Jamal, a soundman for Reuters; and Kamel Jbeil, a reporter for the Palestinian daily Al-Quds. IDF troops detained the journalists in April, held them in administrative detention, and accused them of having contacts with armed Palestinian groups. All three were released in the fall…. Committee to Protect Journalists, "Attacks on the Press," 2003(**) [122]
- Supporting Evidence: Even the very liberal Committee to Protect Journalists acknowledged that Israel's press is free and that the few security restrictions can be appealed. "Although Israel's Hebrew-, Arabic-, and English-language press are mostly free, government and military officials can censor media outlets if authorities deem certain news-such as troop buildups and death counts-harmful to the country's security interests. Journalists, however, have the option of appealing to the High Court of Justice. Most media can circumvent the restrictions by attributing sensitive stories to foreign news outlets." Committee to Protect Journalists, "Attacks on the Press," 2003 [119]
- COUNTERPOINT: This claim inverts reality. Israel has no reason or wish to impose silence about how it is fighting terrorism. Israel allows all human rights groups-Israeli, Palestinian and international organizations-to monitor what it is doing. These groups energetically and freely monitor Israel's actions in the Territories and publicize their concerns. Even Palestinian activists, like ISM people, rely on Israel's human rights' groups.
- Supporting Evidence: Even ISM activists rely on Israeli human rights groups to help them. When on June 10 2003, Huwaida Arraf became concerned about how some Palestinians were being treated at the Huwarra checkpoint, she reported that she "got on the phone with HaMoked, an Israeli human rights organization in Jerusalem that often turns in complaints of abuses to the Military District Coordinating Office…." She noticed that the situation was improving and concluded "perhaps because the HaMoked calls were working." Huwaida Arraf report June 19 2003 [123]
- Supporting Evidence: Ten of Israel's human rights groups as listed by a pro-Palestinian web site:(*)
-"B'Tselem Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.
[124]
- Gush Shalom the Israeli "Peace Block", one of Israel's most respected Human Rights organizations
- Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, Nonviolent Direct Action group working against the Israeli Army's policy of home demolitions.
- Rabbis for Human Rights, Faith-Based Israeli Direct Action group fighting for justice in the Occupied Territories.
- Yesh G'vul, meaning "There is a Limit," works against Israeli military service in the Occupied Territories.
- Refuser Solidarity Network, a site dedicated to building support for Israelis who refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories.
- Peace Now, one of Israel's largest and most active peace groups.
- The Arab Association for Human Rights: Association addressing Human Rights concerns of the Arab minority in Israel.
- The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, working to protect civil liberties and Human Rights in Israel.
- Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, Community of Jews and Arabs living together and promoting peace and coexistence"
- Question: It is wonderful that you are concerned about human rights abuses and are taking time out of your life to fight for justice. But Palestinian voices are already well-represented by Israeli human rights groups, in the UN and elsewhere, and Palestinians are dealing with a democratic country as free as the USA-which is precisely why groups like ISM are free to travel, live in and openly criticize Israel. Don't you think your efforts to protect Palestinians would be better served by trying to encourage reform of the corrupt PA which is terrorizing Palestinians, denying legal recourse to them, stealing their money, prohibiting a free press and calling out racist slogans for killing Jews? Wouldn't the Palestinian people be better off if their own leadership served them instead of serving Arafat and his cronies?
- Supporting Evidence: Eight Palestinian Human Rights Groups listed on a pro-Palestinian website:(*)
-Al Haq, one of Palestine's oldest and most respected Human Rights orgs.
[125]
- Palestinian Center for Human Rights, dedicated to promoting Human Rights in Gaza.
- Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Envirionment (LAW), reporting on Human Rights and Environmental issues in the Occupied Territories.
- The Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees, promoting health and justice in the Occupied Territories.
- Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between Peoples, , working nonviolently to achieve a just and lasting peace.
- The Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, Organization of Palestinian Journalists and others monitoring Human Rights abuses in the Occupied Territories.
- BADIL, Resource Center for Palestinian residency and refugee rights.
- Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees, supporting agriculture and health in the Occupied Territories.
- Supporting Evidence: Even ISM activists rely on Israeli human rights groups to help them. When on June 10 2003, Huwaida Arraf became concerned about how some Palestinians were being treated at the Huwarra checkpoint, she reported that she "got on the phone with HaMoked, an Israeli human rights organization in Jerusalem that often turns in complaints of abuses to the Military District Coordinating Office…." She noticed that the situation was improving and concluded "perhaps because the HaMoked calls were working." Huwaida Arraf report June 19 2003 [123]
- COUNTERPOINT: This claim inverts reality. Israel does not try to hide what its troops are doing to fight terrorism. To the contrary, Israel is so open that its courts regularly adjudicate complaints about military action that are brought by Palestinians and human rights groups. The High Court frequently decides in favor of the complainant and requires the military to change its procedures.
- Supporting Evidence: "The Israeli Supreme Court, by all accounts one of the finest in the world, has played a far greater role in controlling the Israeli military than any court in history has ever played in the conduct of military affairs, including in the United States." Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz [126]
- Supporting Evidence: "One of the most unusual aspects of Israeli law is the rapid access that petitioners, including Palestinians, can gain to Israel's highest court. In April 2002, during the fiercest fighting of the current conflict, in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, the high court was receiving and ruling on petitions almost daily." New York Times May 5 2003 [127]
- Supporting Evidence: I am "constantly amazed by the high standards of the [Israeli] legal systems." Raji Sourani, director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza. New York Times May 5 2003 [128]
- Supporting Evidence: Some recent decisions of the Israeli Supreme Court: The Court prohibited the Israeli military from attacking ambulances despite the evidence that Palestinians were using ambulances to transport suicide bombers and ammunition (2002); the Court reversed the Israeli military's expulsion order for petitioner Abed Mustafa Ahmed Asida, who had assisted his brother when he committed terrorist acts, on the grounds that "there was an inadequate basis for determining the petitioner to be sufficiently dangerous for his residence to be assigned." September 3 2002 [129]
- Supporting Evidence: "The Israeli Supreme Court, by all accounts one of the finest in the world, has played a far greater role in controlling the Israeli military than any court in history has ever played in the conduct of military affairs, including in the United States." Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz [126]
- COUNTERPOINT: This claim inverts reality. It is the Palestinian Authority government that does not wish the world to see or know what it is doing in the name of "liberation." The PA enforces strict censorship on journalists, even threatening them with violence when they try to expose Palestinian actions that hurt the Palestinian cause.
- Supporting Evidence: "According to an Arab-Israeli journalists who assists Jerusalem-based foreign media outlets, Abed Rabbo [Minister of Culture and Information of the Palestinian National Authority] views media relations as an extension of the Palestinian cause….Abed Rabbo reportedly told the senior Foreign Press Association representatives in no uncertain terms, "Palestinian national interests would come before freedom of the press." [130]
- Supporting Evidence: "In the nearly seven years since the Palestinian National Authority assumed control over parts of the West Bank and Gaza, Chairman Yasser Arafat and his multi-layered security apparatus have muzzled local press critics via arbitrary arrests, threats, physical abuse, and the closure of media outlets. Over the years, the Arafat regime has managed to frighten most Palestinian journalists into self-censorship." Independent Committee for the Protection of Journalists, 2001 [131]
- Supporting Evidence: "For years, the PNA and its various security apparatuses have routinely harassed the local media by arresting, intimidating, and censoring those who publish dissenting views. However, with the PNA weakened by repeated Israeli military assaults and the IDF's reoccupation of most of the West Bank, the authority's ability to impose control has been greatly reduced." Independent Committee for the Protection of Journalists, 2003 [132]
- Supporting Evidence: "Journalists critical of the PA and its policies, such as Seifeddin Shahin (al-Arabiya Satellite Channel), have been continually subjected to violence, either at the hands of PA officials or by unknowns affiliated with a political splinter group." Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group (PHRMG) Press Release April 2004 [133]
- Supporting Evidence: The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate staged a strike against the Palestinian Authority in February 2004 to protest "a new chapter in the campaign of terror directed against Palestinian journalists." The protest followed "a string of attacks on journalists" including the torching of the car of the Gaza Bureau Chief of Al Hayat Al Jadida, three masked Palestinian gunmen storming the offices of the Ramallah-based Al-Quds Educational Television and beating two staffers with rifle butts and fists, and gunmen braking into the offices of a Gaza City weekly, destroying equipment and furniture. Khaled Abu Toameh, Feb 15, 2004 [134]
- Supporting Evidence: "The PNA controls the official Palestine TV and Voice of Palestine radio, which reflect PNA views." Independent Committee for the Protection of Journalists [135]
- Supporting Evidence: After 9/11: "The FPA [Foreign Press Association] expresses deep concern over the harassment of journalists by the Palestinian Authority as police forces and armed gunmen tried to prevent photo and video coverage of Tuesday's rally in Nablus where hundreds of Palestinians celebrated the terror attacks in NY and Washington. We strongly condemn the direct threats made against local videographers by local militia members and the attitude of Palestinian officials who made no effort to counter the threats, control the situation, or to guarantee the safety of the journalists and the freedom of the press." September 13 2001 [136]
- Supporting Evidence: After the murder of two Israeli reservists in Ramallah in October 2000: "According to first hand reports, Palestinian security forces surrounded a Polish television crew who were beaten and relieved of their film of the lynching….Given PA intimidation of Palestinian journalists, it's not surprising that almost all of them, except for one working for the Arabic news channel, Al-Jazeera, and another shooter for the independent Italian station, RTI, meekly handed over their film."(*)
"PA forces on the scene promptly hunted down and confiscated film and videotape of the incident to prevent its being aired-but not before a crew from a private Italian TV channel managed to send a clip of the atrocity to Rome….Thereupon Cristiano published a letter of apology…and reiterated his commitment his commitment to 'respect' the 'rules' laid down by the PA-rules that presumably prohibit anti-PA reporting." Journalist Fiamma Nirenstein 2001(**)
[137]
- Supporting Evidence: "PA forces on the scene promptly hunted down and confiscated film and videotape of the incident to prevent its being aired-but not before a crew from a private Italian TV channel managed to send a clip of the atrocity to Rome….Thereupon Cristiano published a letter of apology…and reiterated his commitment his commitment to 'respect' the 'rules' laid down by the PA-rules that presumably prohibit anti-PA reporting." Journalist Fiamma Nirenstein 2001 [138]
- Supporting Evidence: Palestinian journalists and Palestinians working with foreign journalists received death threats and were warned not to publicize the growing chaos in the Territories and the rallies demanding reform in the PA. "The journalists said they believe that Musa Arafat loyalists were behind the threats. "We were told that any journalist who goes to the rally will meet the same fate as Nabil Amr," said another journalist who works on a regular basis with an international news organization. Amr, a Palestinian legislator, was shot and severely wounded in Ramallah last week shortly after he called for reforms in the PA during a television interview. " Jerusalem Post, July 24 2004 [139]
- Supporting Evidence: "According to an Arab-Israeli journalists who assists Jerusalem-based foreign media outlets, Abed Rabbo [Minister of Culture and Information of the Palestinian National Authority] views media relations as an extension of the Palestinian cause….Abed Rabbo reportedly told the senior Foreign Press Association representatives in no uncertain terms, "Palestinian national interests would come before freedom of the press." [130]
- COUNTERPOINT: This claim inverts reality. Israel has no reason or desire to hide what it is doing to fight terrorism. Israel is one of the world's most open societies and its press is one of the freest. The conflict and what Israeli forces do is arguably one of the most widely covered stories in the world. Rarely a day goes by that local or international media don't carry a headline or front-page story about it. That news is frequently presented from the Palestinians' point of view.
- POINT 11: Israel makes it difficult for journalists to get into the Territories, and soldiers often prohibit them from entering.
- COUNTERPOINT: It isn't difficult for journalists to get into the Territories. Israel has one of the freest and most open presses in the world, and since the outbreak of the Intifada, there have been more foreign journalists in Israel and the Territories than in almost any other country of the world.
- Supporting Evidence: "The Palestinian-Israeli conflict routinely gets headline billing in international media outlets over even more newsworthy and important nations like Russia, China and Great Britain, and American news organizations usually have more correspondents in Israel than in any country except Great Britain." Historian Mitchell Bard [140]
- Supporting Evidence: "In the last year, thousands of journalists have passed through Jerusalem and the territories to cover the intifada and report on its violent twists and turns. It is one of the most covered international stories today." Joel Campagna, Committee to Protect Journalists, March 31 2003 [141]
- Supporting Evidence: "Home to one of the largest contingents of foreign journalists in the world, Israel all too often finds itself under the media's magnifying glass…." Jerusalem Post March 2 2002. [142]
- Supporting Evidence: The "Jerusalem-based press corps" has "several hundred reporters….After the first week of the violence [September 2000], many media outlets reassigned journalists from other posts to assist their colleagues in Jerusalem." Journalist Judy Lash Balint, February 25 2001 [143]
- Supporting Evidence: "The information coming out of Israel these days is heavily influenced by the political imagination of the reporters and columnists and cameramen who have flocked to the scene from the four corners of the earth to cover this latest installment of violence in the ongoing Middle East conflict." Journalist Fiamma Nirenstein, January 2001. [144]
- Supporting Evidence: "The Palestinian-Israeli conflict routinely gets headline billing in international media outlets over even more newsworthy and important nations like Russia, China and Great Britain, and American news organizations usually have more correspondents in Israel than in any country except Great Britain." Historian Mitchell Bard [140]
- COUNTERPOINT: Palestinian leaders essentially declared war on Israel on September 29 2000. Israel is fighting that war. In the few instances when the IDF has restricted journalists' movement, it has been to protect them from danger or because foreign journalists use Palestinian stringers who must be checked for terrorist ties before being allowed to enter Israeli areas.
- Supporting Evidence: "Most foreign journalists are not fluent in either Arabic or Hebrew, rendering them dependent on a network of local Palestinian "fixers," mostly young, educated Palestinians who speak Arabic, Hebrew and English…" [145]
- Supporting Evidence: The journalists who are restricted are almost exclusively Palestinian stringers whose accreditation is not in order or who are suspected of ties to terrorists. " Many international media outlets employ Palestinian stringers or fixers, who serve as essential, front-line personnel at foreign news organizations. But only a handful of these media workers have received their accreditation, or GPO card, which facilitates movement through checkpoints." Committee to Protect Journalists, "Attacks on the Press," 2003 [146]
- Supporting Evidence: Even foreign journalists admitted that when Israel launched Defensive Shield and made the Territories "off-limits" to the foreign press, this was temporary and unusual and was done for safety. "When Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield… the country's largest military offensive in the West Bank since 1967,…in the initial days of the six-week operation, ….[it] declared nearly all of the West Bank's main cities "closed military areas" and off-limits to the press. Israeli officials maintained that the ban was instituted for safety reasons." But journalists underscored that the IDF's enforcement of those bans was unusal. "Foreign journalists who covered the events said that they had never witnessed such harsh treatment from Israeli government forces." Committee to Protect Journalists, "Attacks on the Press," 2003 [147]
- Supporting Evidence: In the weeks after Operation Defensive Shield, journalists were again free to enter the military zones. Entry was barred only intermittently for security reasons. "The Israeli army intermittently imposed the closed military zones, shutting out the press, during brief incursions into Palestinian areas." Committee to Protect Journalists, "Attacks on the Press," 2003 [148]
- Supporting Evidence: The few international journalists that Israel has detained or arrested were Palestinian "stringers" suspected of terrorist ties.(*) " Three of the longest held were [Palestinians] Hossam Abu Alan, a veteran photographer for Agence France-Presse; Youssry al-Jamal, a soundman for Reuters; and Kamel Jbeil, a reporter for the Palestinian daily Al-Quds. IDF troops detained the journalists in April, held them in administrative detention, and accused them of having contacts with armed Palestinian groups. All three were released in the fall…." Committee to Protect Journalists, "Attacks on the Press," 2003(**) [149]
- Supporting Evidence: "The journalists claim to know exactly what they're doing. But when they go into a closed military area (and then) are eventually shot or injured as a result of the combat going on, who do they turn around and accuse? The Israelis. The moment they're shot -- and most times they're not shot by Israelis -- they turn around and accuse the state of Israel. They're sort of playing this game that they have to be allowed access. All right. They're allowed access." Danny Seaman, Director of Israel's Government Press Office, 2002 [150]
- Supporting Evidence: "Most foreign journalists are not fluent in either Arabic or Hebrew, rendering them dependent on a network of local Palestinian "fixers," mostly young, educated Palestinians who speak Arabic, Hebrew and English…" [145]
- COUNTERPOINT: Journalists in the Territories are endangered not by Israel, but by Palestinian forces and policies which have manipulated, intimidated and endangered journalists who do not cast the Palestinians in a good light.
- Supporting Evidence: "The escalating Israeli-Palestinian conflict has made the mainstream Palestinian press-already staunchly pro-PNA-more loyalist, while years of physical attacks, arbitrary detentions, threats, newspapers closures, and official censorship have increased self-censorship. The media avoid criticizing Arafat and the security services, as well as reporting news that reflects negatively on PNA leadership. Indirect pressure, such as phone calls, are said to be common. Two of the three main daily newspapers-Al-Ayyam and Al Hayat al-Jadida-have direct or indirect relations with the PNA and its officials, either because the editor is an aide to Arafat or because the PNA finances the paper's payroll. (The third main daily, Al-Quds, is privately owned but avoids criticizing the PNA.) "Committee to Protect Journalists, "Attacks on the Press", 2003 [151]
- Supporting Evidence: "PNA officials also confiscated journalists' film and intimidated reporters covering sensitive news stories. In February [2002], Palestinian police took footage from photojournalists who had filmed a Palestinian mob at a Jenin courthouse killing three defendants who had just been convicted of murder. In June, officers from Arafat's security force seized videotapes from a France 2 television crew of a demonstration led by Hamas spiritual leader Ahmed Yassin, who was supposed to be under PNA house arrest at the time." Committee to Protect Journalists, "Attacks on the Press", 2003 [152]
- Supporting Evidence: "In August, the pro-PNA Palestinian Journalists' Association barred journalists from photographing Palestinian children wearing military uniforms or carrying weapons, arguing that such footage violated children's rights and served "the interests of Israel and its propaganda against the Palestinian people." However, the group has no legal power over the media and did not say what the consequences would be for those who violate the ban. The order was rescinded a few days later amid local and international protest." Committee to Protect Journalists, "Attacks on the Press," 2003 [153]
- Supporting Evidence: NBC's Tel Aviv bureau chief Martin Fletcher acknowledged that the Intifada posed a fairness problem. He noted the Palestinians manipulated the Western media by casting themselves as "David" against the Israeli "Goliath," a metaphor used by Fletcher himself in a 1988 report. "The whole uprising was media-oriented [...] It's really a matter of manipulation of the media. [...] We play along because we need the pictures." [154]
- Supporting Evidence: "According to an Arab-Israeli journalists who assists Jerusalem-based foreign media outlets, Abed Rabbo [Minister of Culture and Information of the Palestinian National Authority] views media relations as an extension of the Palestinian cause….Abed Rabbo reportedly told the senior Foreign Press Association representatives in no uncertain terms, "Palestinian national interests would come before freedom of the press." [155]
- Supporting Evidence: "In the nearly seven years since the Palestinian National Authority assumed control over parts of the West Bank and Gaza, Chairman Yasser Arafat and his multi-layered security apparatus have muzzled local press critics via arbitrary arrests, threats, physical abuse, and the closure of media outlets. Over the years, the Arafat regime has managed to frighten most Palestinian journalists into self-censorship." Independent Committee for the Protection of Journalists, 2001 [156]
- Supporting Evidence: "For years, the PNA and its various security apparatuses have routinely harassed the local media by arresting, intimidating, and censoring those who publish dissenting views. However, with the PNA weakened by repeated Israeli military assaults and the IDF's reoccupation of most of the West Bank, the authority's ability to impose control has been greatly reduced." Independent Committee for the Protection of Journalists, 2003 [157]
- Supporting Evidence: "Journalists critical of the PA and its policies, such as Seifeddin Shahin (al-Arabiya Satellite Channel), have been continually subjected to violence, either at the hands of PA officials or by unknowns affiliated with a political splinter group." Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group (PHRMG) Press Release April 2004 [158]
- Supporting Evidence: The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate staged a strike against the Palestinian Authority in February 2004 to protest "a new chapter in the campaign of terror directed against Palestinian journalists." The protest followed "a string of attacks on journalists" including the torching of the car of the Gaza Bureau Chief of Al Hayat Al Jadida, three masked Palestinian gunmen storming the offices of the Ramallah-based Al-Quds Educational Television and beating two staffers with rifle butts and fists, and gunmen braking into the offices of a Gaza City weekly, destroying equipment and furniture. Khaled Abu Toameh, Feb 15, 2004 [159]
- Supporting Evidence: "The PNA controls the official Palestine TV and Voice of Palestine radio, which reflect PNA views." Independent Committee for the Protection of Journalists [160]
- Supporting Evidence: After 9/11: "The FPA [Foreign Press Association] expresses deep concern over the harassment of journalists by the Palestinian Authority as police forces and armed gunmen tried to prevent photo and video coverage of Tuesday's rally in Nablus where hundreds of Palestinians celebrated the terror attacks in NY and Washington. We strongly condemn the direct threats made against local videographers by local militia members and the attitude of Palestinian officials who made no effort to counter the threats, control the situation, or to guarantee the safety of the journalists and the freedom of the press." September 13 2001 [161]
- Supporting Evidence: After the murder of two Israeli reservists in Ramallah in October 2000: "According to first hand reports, Palestinian security forces surrounded a Polish television crew who were beaten and relieved of their film of the lynching….Given PA intimidation of Palestinian journalists, it's not surprising that almost all of them, except for one working for the Arabic news channel, Al-Jazeera, and another shooter for the independent Italian station, RTI, meekly handed over their film."(*)
"PA forces on the scene promptly hunted down and confiscated film and videotape of the incident to prevent its being aired-but not before a crew from a private Italian TV channel managed to send a clip of the atrocity to Rome….Thereupon Cristiano published a letter of apology…and reiterated his commitment his commitment to 'respect' the 'rules' laid down by the PA-rules that presumably prohibit anti-PA reporting." Journalist Fiamma Nirenstein 2001 (**)
[162]
- Supporting Evidence: Palestinian journalists and Palestinians working with foreign journalists received death threats and were warned not to publicize the growing chaos in the Territories and the rallies demanding reform in the PA. "The journalists said they believe that Musa Arafat loyalists were behind the threats. "We were told that any journalist who goes to the rally will meet the same fate as Nabil Amr," said another journalist who works on a regular basis with an international news organization. Amr, a Palestinian legislator, was shot and severely wounded in Ramallah last week shortly after he called for reforms in the PA during a television interview. " Jerusalem Post, July 24 2004 [163]
- Supporting Evidence: "The escalating Israeli-Palestinian conflict has made the mainstream Palestinian press-already staunchly pro-PNA-more loyalist, while years of physical attacks, arbitrary detentions, threats, newspapers closures, and official censorship have increased self-censorship. The media avoid criticizing Arafat and the security services, as well as reporting news that reflects negatively on PNA leadership. Indirect pressure, such as phone calls, are said to be common. Two of the three main daily newspapers-Al-Ayyam and Al Hayat al-Jadida-have direct or indirect relations with the PNA and its officials, either because the editor is an aide to Arafat or because the PNA finances the paper's payroll. (The third main daily, Al-Quds, is privately owned but avoids criticizing the PNA.) "Committee to Protect Journalists, "Attacks on the Press", 2003 [151]
- COUNTERPOINT: It isn't difficult for journalists to get into the Territories. Israel has one of the freest and most open presses in the world, and since the outbreak of the Intifada, there have been more foreign journalists in Israel and the Territories than in almost any other country of the world.
- POINT 12: Israel shoots journalists.
- COUNTERPOINT: Israel does not target journalists or physically intimidate them. The Palestinian Authority and its security forces do.
- Supporting Evidence: Israeli journalists cannot cover stories in the Territories. "Why can't Israelis work (in Palestinian-controlled territory)? Because the lives of Israelis have been threatened by the Palestinians over the past five years, not only since the violence began. Yet nobody in the foreign press stood up against this ... ." Danny Seaman, Director of Israel's Government Press Office, 2002 [164]
- Supporting Evidence: The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate staged a strike against the Palestinian Authority in February 2004 to protest "a new chapter in the campaign of terror directed against Palestinian journalists." The protest followed "a string of attacks on journalists" including the torching of the car of the Gaza Bureau Chief of Al Hayat Al Jadida, three masked Palestinian gunmen storming the offices of the Ramallah-based Al-Quds Educational Television and beating two staffers with rifle butts and fists, and gunmen braking into the offices of a Gaza City weekly, destroying equipment and furniture. Khaled Abu Toameh, Feb 15, 2004 [165]
- Supporting Evidence: Palestinian journalists and Palestinians working with foreign journalists received death threats and were warned not to publicize the growing chaos in the Territories and the rallies demanding reform in the PA. "The journalists said they believe that Musa Arafat loyalists were behind the threats. "We were told that any journalist who goes to the rally will meet the same fate as Nabil Amr," said another journalist who works on a regular basis with an international news organization. Amr, a Palestinian legislator, was shot and severely wounded in Ramallah last week shortly after he called for reforms in the PA during a television interview. " Jerusalem Post, July 24 2004 [166]
- Supporting Evidence: After 9/11: "The FPA [Foreign Press Association] expresses deep concern over the harassment of journalists by the Palestinian Authority as police forces and armed gunmen tried to prevent photo and video coverage of Tuesday's rally in Nablus where hundreds of Palestinians celebrated the terror attacks in NY and Washington. We strongly condemn the direct threats made against local videographers by local militia members and the attitude of Palestinian officials who made no effort to counter the threats, control the situation, or to guarantee the safety of the journalists and the freedom of the press." September 13 2001 [167]
- Supporting Evidence: "Journalists critical of the PA and its policies, such as Seifeddin Shahin (al-Arabiya Satellite Channel), have been continually subjected to violence, either at the hands of PA officials or by unknowns affiliated with a political splinter group." Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group (PHRMG) Press Release April 2004 [168]
- Supporting Evidence: Israeli journalists cannot cover stories in the Territories. "Why can't Israelis work (in Palestinian-controlled territory)? Because the lives of Israelis have been threatened by the Palestinians over the past five years, not only since the violence began. Yet nobody in the foreign press stood up against this ... ." Danny Seaman, Director of Israel's Government Press Office, 2002 [164]
- COUNTERPOINT: This is a preposterous claim. Israeli forces do not shoot journalists. Given the intensity of the conflict, it is stunning how few journalists have been killed or inured even though they put themselves in zones where military operations are being carried out. The toll in other war zones is much higher.
- Supporting Evidence: No journalists were killed in Israel or the Territories between 1993 and 2001, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists [169]
- Supporting Evidence: Only 6 journalists have been killed between the beginning of the Intifada (October 2000) and December 2003: one in 2001(*); three in 2002(**) and two in 2003,(***) according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. [170]
- Supporting Evidence: There were only 5 incidents of journalists being wounded or harassed in 2003. Between January and September 2004, there were 10 incidents, but six of them-the majority-were caused by Palestinians attacking journalists. [171]
- Supporting Evidence: "In fact, it is remarkable that more have not been killed….In a country like Afghanistan, where eight reporters were murdered in a 16-day period in 2001, there was a greater element of randomness and unpredictability." Joe Campagna, Committee to Protect Journalists, March 31 2003 [172]
- Supporting Evidence: "I'm not saying that there weren't any (incidents), but if you look at the number of points of friction and at the access the journalists have here, compared to other locations in the world, there is more press here per capita than anywhere else in the world. If you go to the cases investigated by the Committee to Protect Journalists or other organizations…until this year, there were about 11[incidents] with members of the foreign press. Eleven cases! And you're talking about tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of locations. I don't want to belittle it. But I think in all fairness you should look at that. If you compare it to other points of friction in the world and you compare this to the number of press here, I think it's really (at a) minimum." Danny Seaman, Director of Israel's Government Press Office, PBS Interview, March 31 2003 [173]
- Supporting Evidence: Israel and the Territories were not even mentioned in a Committee to Protect Journalists' list of the dangerous places in the world for journalists between 1993 and 2003. For good reason. Six deaths over three years is startlingly low for a high conflict area. The list includes:
• Algeria (51 journalists killed)
• Colombia (3 journalists killed)
• Russia (30 journalists killed)
• Rwanda (16 journalists killed)
• Balkans (15 journalists killed)
• India (15 journalists killed)
• Sierrea Leone (10 journalists killed in 1999)
• Iraq (13 journalists killed in 2003)
[174]
- Supporting Evidence: No journalists were killed in Israel or the Territories between 1993 and 2001, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists [169]
- COUNTERPOINT: This is a preposterous claim. Israel did not target any of the journalists who were killed. They were killed during military action. Many in fact had entered military zones that Israel had closed to reporters precisely to protect their safety. Others had joined the fighting against the IDF. Israel investigated each incident.
- Supporting Evidence: The one casualty in 2001, was Al-Bishawi, a reporter for the Nablus-based Palestinian news service Najah Press Office. He was not targeted. " He was killed in an Israeli missile attack that had targeted Hamas leader Jamal Mansour. Israel had accused Mansour of masterminding several suicide bombings. Various sources, including al-Bishawi's Cairo-based editor, reported that at the time of the attack, al-Bishawi was in the Palestinian Center for Studies and Media, a Hamas information office, to interview Mansour for an article he was writing…" [175]
- Supporting Evidence: None of the three casualties in 2002 was targeted although some confusion still surrounds one of the cases.
• Issam Tillwi was killed when he joined the combatants against the IDF. "According to Palestinian sources, Tillawi was both covering and participating in Palestinian demonstrations that had erupted there in protest of the Israeli army's siege of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's headquarters. Journalists and VOP officials said that Tillawi was equipped with a tape recorder and a jacket marked "press." An Israel Defense Forces spokesperson was quoted as saying at the time that Tillawi was among the rioters and was not distinguishable as a reporter." Committee to Protect Journalists (*)
• The case of Abu Zahra is disputed but he was certainly in the line of fire. A Palestinian free-lance photographer who also worked as a fixer and interpreter for foreign journalists, he died after being hit by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) gunfire in the West Bank town of Jenin. He had run into the middle of the street to photograph an Israeli tank that had crashed into an electrical pole. Jenin neighbors claim that the tank initiated firing at Zahra and that general gunfire erupted only after Zahra was wounded. But, "according to an Israeli army spokesperson, after the APC hit the electricity pole… a mob attacked …with Molotov cocktails and rocks, and people in the crowd fired on the tanks. The spokesperson said the soldiers in the tanks responded by firing back at the source of the gunfire." (**)
• The third casualty, the Italian Raefael Cirello, was the first foreign journalist to be killed in the conflict. He, too was caught in cross fire when he followed a group of armed men in Ramallah on March 13 2002. Ramallah was a closed military zone at the time. "The IDF added that journalists who entered the area were "endangering" themselves. In late August, the IDF announced that it had concluded an investigation into the incident and said that there was "no evidence and no knowledge of an [army] force that fired in the direction of the photographer." Committee to Protect Journalists (***)
[176]
- Supporting Evidence: Israel certainly did not target either of the two journalists who were killed in 2003. Both put themselves in harm's way.
• "Nazih Darwazeh, a cameraman for The Associated Press Television News (APTN), was shot and killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank city of Nablus while filming clashes between Palestinian youths and Israeli troops at around 9 a.m., according to Palestinian journalists who witnessed the incident. Video footage of the incident, reviewed by CPJ, appears to corroborate their accounts." The IDF said it is unclear who fired the shots and is still investigating the incident. Committee to Protect Journalists (*)
• The death of James Miller, a British freelance cameraman and director, remains controversial. He was in Rafah to film house demolitions when he was shot. His crew claims Israeli tanks intentionally targeted him. The IDF claims that his bullet wound came from shooting originating behind him, not from the IDF tank in front of him. Committee to Protect Journalists(**)
[177]
- Supporting Evidence: The one casualty in 2001, was Al-Bishawi, a reporter for the Nablus-based Palestinian news service Najah Press Office. He was not targeted. " He was killed in an Israeli missile attack that had targeted Hamas leader Jamal Mansour. Israel had accused Mansour of masterminding several suicide bombings. Various sources, including al-Bishawi's Cairo-based editor, reported that at the time of the attack, al-Bishawi was in the Palestinian Center for Studies and Media, a Hamas information office, to interview Mansour for an article he was writing…" [175]
- COUNTERPOINT: Israel does not target journalists or physically intimidate them. The Palestinian Authority and its security forces do.
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