sometimes not even that.

Perhaps the only

state in history to do so.
(Note: McGraw-Hill included the false
map in their 2013 textbook, Global Politics:
Engaging a Complex World. Thanks to a
website posting by Elder of Ziyon in March
2016, people complained and shortly

afterward the company said that they would

stop selling the book and all existing inventory would be destroyed, noting that the
map did not meet our academic standards.
Kudos to McGraw-Hill for their honesty and
professionalism, but the question is how
such an egregious mistake could have made

it into one of their textbooks in the first

place.)
Although MSNBC aired a retraction and
apology four days later, the damage was
done. This serves as another example of
how big-time Western media promotes its
anti-Israel bias. They often present false

information and/or outright lies now, only to

apologize later. Ironically, in so doing, they
are guilty of an accusation made by arguably Western civilizations greatest leader
(see Zman 70), Winston Churchill: A lie gets
halfway around the world before the truth
gets a chance to put on its trousers.

It is well documented that the mainstream Western press has

a penchant for slanting the news about Israel in an unfair and
decidedly negative light. When it comes to Israel, the public is not
so much getting the news as the views. In the trenches fighting the
bias stand a handful of media watchdogs: organizations working to
make sure the media reports on events accurately. ZMAN interviewed
the directors at some of the leading watchdogs to gain an inside
look at how they work at the Jews fighting the news.

Yaakov Astor

Theyre in the trenches fighting the bias

Jews Fighting
The News

32 | ZMAN May 2016

livia noticed something strange

about the map accompanying an
article on the NPR News site. In
the place where Israel should have been
listed, it said Palestine.
Rather than just contacting NPR to
complain, she contacted HonestReporting,

an organization which monitors antiIsrael bias in the news, and alerted them
to the map.
Shortly after Olivia submitted her
alert, HonestReporting publicized the
error on its web page, and media outlets
such as The Times of Israel, Jerusalem Post,

ZMAN Iyar 5776 | 33

Israel National News and Breitbart News

picked it up. Suddenly, NPR found itself
the object of unwanted publicity and the
recipient of multiple complaints.
Not long after, they removed the offending map and added an editors note saying
that citing Palestine instead of Israel was
a mistake. In the same note, they offered an
explanation, made an apologyand cited
HonestReportings role in bringing it to the
editors attention. This highlights the need
for organizations like HonestReporting,
which is among a small handful of media
watchdogs monitoring the news.
One of the greatest challenges facing
the Jewish world today is an ever-present
anti-Israel bias in the newsin the
information pumped out every day to
millions and millions of people through the
mainstream news outlets. Evidence for this
bias is so overwhelming (see accompanying article) that it is no exaggeration to say
that, when it comes to Israel, most people
today are not reading the news so much
as the viewsof journalists and editors
with a penchant for slanting the news about
Israel in an unfair and decidedly negative
light (whether by accident, by design or by
default).
No one should fool themselves that this
bias stops at negativity about the State of
Israel. The average reader equates Israel
with Jews. If the news is demonizing Israel,
it is demonizing Jews; it is increasing antiSemitism. Furthermore, sometimes outright
anti-Semitic propaganda (such as Holocaust
denial, Temple denial, stereotyping, etc.)
enters the public domain in the guise of
news.
All this highlights the need for organizations monitoring the news. Of course, when
it comes to finding genuine favor in the eyes
of Hashem and others, nothing compares
to living lives of kiddush Hashem and realizing our full potential in Torah and mitzvos.
Nevertheless, as a form of hishtadlus (normal
efforts), it is good to know that there are
groups like HonestReporting fighting bias.
And it is a fight. The public consciousness
of the average person is assaulted daily with
34 | ZMAN May 2016

This NPR News map replaces Israel with Palestine. When

HonestReporting alerted the public to the map, NPR withdrew it
and offered a public apology.

a stream of disinformation, whether due to

ignorance, journalistic sloppiness or a barely
concealed agenda to demonize Israel and
Jews. Therefore, these media watchdogs
perform a valuable service and have their
work cut out for them. They are Jews literally fighting the news.

Honest Reporting

HonestReporting (HR) was born from

Jewish outrage at the beginning of the
Second Intifada (around the year 2000).
Zman interviewed HRs managing editor,
Simon Plosker, to get an inside look at their
operation. We began by asking how they
started.
A couple of students in northwest
London got fed up about the media-bashing
of Israel in the UK press and elsewhere,
Plosker relates. They started enlisting their
friends and family, and basically sent out
alerts asking people to send letters to the
editor to complain about what was going on
at the BBC, the Guardian and other media
outlets. Eventually, the list grew so large that
HR became an independent organization.
Plosker made aliyah from London shortly
after Muslim terrorists flew planes into
the Twin Towers in 2001. He had previously worked as a public affairs officer for
an organization that represented the Jewish
community in the UK. When he came to Eretz
Yisrael, he worked for other nonprofits, and
spent some time as the IDFs spokesperson.
Then he was offered a job at HonestReporting, where he has worked for the past 10
years.

With its 140,000 email subscribers from

diverse backgrounds and with articles that
influence reporting by the worlds major
news organizations, it is surprising to
discover that HR operates primarily out of
a small Jerusalem office. In terms of size,
were pretty small, Plosker tells us. We
have about fifteen full-time and five parttime staff. Theres about five or six people on
the editorial staff, including a senior editor,
associate editor, senior researcher, a graphic
artist.
Plosker tells us what a typical morning at
HonestReporting looks like:
At the beginning of the day, we get
together and trawl the news for content.
We go through all the major titles in the
English-speaking world. That requires
reading everything in the American,
Canadian, British, Australian presses, just
to name a few. And we also read the wire
feeds as well: AP, AFP and various others.
That will give us a snapshot of whats
going on.

If the HR staff finds an article that

displays real bias or factual errorswhich
happens on many occasions, unfortunately,
Plosker interjectsthey write an analysis,
distribute it to their mailing list and publish
it on their website.
In addition to proactively scanning the
news, HR also gets alerts from readers
such as Olivia who discovered the distorted
map at NPR. A similar alert was sent to
HonestReporting in November 2015, when
CNN published an article that included a
map excluding Israel and labeling the region
Palestina. Plosker explains that since the
article was on CNN Money, not their news
page, HR staff would not normally have
looked there. But one of our subscribers
actually saw it and alerted us to it.
(The mainstream media has a penchant
for publishing maps that wipe Israel out
of existence implementing in paper and
electronic form the dreams of the Iranian
leadership and Islamists in general. Besides
NPR and CNN, in March 2015, the Discovery

networks Science Channel displayed a map

that expanded the borders of Jordan to
encompass the entire area of Israel, with no
mention of Israel. At the beginning of 2015,
publishing giant HarperCollins deliberately
wiped Israel off the map to appease ArabMuslim customers [see Zman 69 about Map
Propaganda]. And there have been other
examples.)
When we asked Plosker to share what
he considers HRs greatest successes, he
paused.
Wow I have to admit that, after 10
years, a lot of it becomes one large blur
and its very difficult to think of specific
things. Weve had all sorts of major
successes that stand out.
One that comes to mind a couple
of years ago, CNNs senior Middle East
editor, Octavia Nasr, tweeted how upset
she was about the death of one of Hezbollahs founders, a sheik in Lebanon. We
were appalled that someone at CNN could
be openly sympathizing with a terrorist
organization. We exposed it, and 48 hours
later she was no longer employed by
CNN.
Another interesting one from a couple
of years ago was when the UKs Guardian

An example of the outstanding contribution HonestReportings

graphic department makes to the cause.

Jim Clancy resigned after 34 years at CNN as correspondent and

anchorman when he went on what has been described as a
drunken rant against Zionists Moshe: Please call me avout
this caption

ZMAN Iyar 5776 | 35

newspaper incorrectly referred to Tel Aviv

as Israels capital [because they did not
want to recognize Israeli sovereignty over
Jerusalem ed]. We contacted the Guardian, but they refused to change it. Then
we took it to the UKs Press Complaints
Commission. They also ruled in favor
of the Guardian, which we thought
was incredible! We then launched legal
proceedings.
Eventually, the Press Complaints
Commission was forced to change its
ruling, and that in turn forced the Guardian to change its entire style guide. Now
if we catch any newspaper referring to
Tel Aviv as the capital of Israel, we dont
merely have to appeal to common sense
to get it corrected, but cite an actual legal
precedent as well.
We asked Plosker who some of the worst
offenders of an anti-Israel bias in the British press were. Editorially, the Guardian is
certainly antagonistic toward Israel. The
Independent is also problematic, he replied.
When we asked him about the BBC, he
clarified that their bias is much subtler.
Rather than being openly antagonistic, they
tend to leave out pieces of context. They
also portray Israel as the aggressor through
[distorted] headlines. Its a drip-drip effect.
People still trust the BBC and believe its
information is accurate because it claims
to be impartial, whereas the Guardian and
Independent dont. Unfortunately, since the
BBC has a worldwide reputation and reach,
they make a very big impact.
Plosker doesnt believe in blaming all of
the anti-Israel bias on anti-Semitism:
A lot of times its ignorance. Journalists come here without any understanding
of the history of the region, or anything
else for that matter, and they are taken
in by the prevailing narrative, which, for
a few decades now, has been one of Israeli
occupation and Palestinian victimhood.
That is ignorance.
On the other hand, we see that certain
newspapers allow articles to be published

36 | ZMAN May 2016

which are incredibly anti-Israel and filled

with libels against the country. Then you
start to wonder whats going on behind
the scenes.
As an illustration, he cited the case of a
now-former CNN anchorman:
Weve seen people like Jim Clancy
from CNN, for example. A year ago
February [2015], he went on what looked
like a drunken rant against Zionists.
Sometimes you can tell more about
whats going on in a journalists mind
from 140 characters [the text limit on a
Twitter post, where Clancy expressed his
thoughts] than you can from an article he
wrote.
Journalists [on Twitter] really have
no one editing what they are doing.
Its literally coming straight from their
keyboard. Its what people are really
feeling and we get a pretty good insight
sometimes.

Following avery public shaming, Clancys

tweets were systematically removed,
culminating with the eventual closure of
his entire Twitter account. A few days later,

In November 2015, CNN published an article that included a map

excluding Israel and labeling the region Palestina.

Discovery networks Science Channel erased Israel from its map

on a program originally broadcast in March 2015.

Clancy resigned after 34 years at CNN. Even

though the news giant made no mention of
the scandal when it responded to the sudden
resignation of its long-time correspondent
and anchor, clearly CNN was no longer
comfortable being associated with someone
who expressed views that came awfully
close to outright anti-Semitism.
On one hand, thats a good sign. One the
other hand, the fact that a person with such
a hidden bias could play an integral part of
the organization for so long is not. It makes
one wonder how many people with similar
views are constructing the news that the
public gets.
Even though I cant prove necessarily
that that journalist is an anti-Semite, I
can prove that he or she is not a very
professional journalist. One thing we
make clear is that we hold the journalists
up to journalistic standards. There are
certain categories [of actions that constitute a violation of journalistic standards].
It can be things like distorted facts, lack of
context or a biased headline.
One of the major things that has come
out of the last couple of months of terror
attacks against Israelis, has been the
headlines. Theres a trend whereby the
Palestinian terrorists are portrayed as
the victims. So the headline will always
start with, for example, Palestinian shot
dead by Israeli forcesand as an afterthought, Well, yes, he happened to be
carrying out a stabbing at the time.
Theres very little emphasis on the
Israeli victims themselves. Invariably,
Israel is portrayed as the aggressor in all
thiseven though he [the Israeli] is actually trying to defend himself.
This is actually a very common thing
that goes back over the years. Weve seen
it in numerous operations in Gaza, where
Hamas launches rockets against Israel,
and the headlines are all about the Israeli
response.

One very recent example: On May 5,

2016, HR reported on a classic headline

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ZMAN Iyar 5776 | 37

failure. International Business Times (IBT),

which touts itself as a growing digital global
news publication that delivers international business news to an audience of over
5 million in the UK and 50 million people
worldwide every month, ran a headline that
read: Israeli planes attack four Hamas sites
in Gaza, ending two-year ceasefire. Since
the end of the Gaza war in 2014 (in which
terrorists launched 4,594 rockets into Israel),
Hamas has continued firing rockets at both
civilians and soldiers. Far from breaking
the cease-fire, Israel has shown enormous
restraint. No other country would tolerate
so many rockets fired indiscriminately into
its territory. Furthermore, Hamas has been
digging attack tunnels to commit terror acts.
Yet, none of these facts seem to be within the
purview of IBTs journalists and editors. As
HR concluded, the IBT has irresponsibly and
inaccurately painted Israel as the aggressor
despite air strikes coming as a response to
Palestinian attacks.
Headline error (or fraud) is only one aspect
of media bias. We asked Plosker what he
thought was the most troubling trend within
the medias anti-Israel slant. He replied:
The mainstream medias penchant
for framing violence against Jews in the
context of Israeli settlements, and thereby
justifying terror [a claim made by the
Secretary General of the United Nations,
Ban Ki-moon, as recently as January 2016,
and reiterated by him in a New York Times
op-ed he authored] .
Settlements are certainly a legitimate
political issue to discuss. But it is not the
main driving force behind whats going on
here. The settlements did not exist before
1967. Yet the hatred of Jews and Israelis in
this region goes back far longer than that.
There is no evidence to suggest that,
should Israel evacuate every settlement
and every Jewin Judea and Samaria (the
West Bank), there would be peace.
We know what happened in Gaza when
the settlements were evacuated [in 2005].
Hamas took over and fired thousands of
rockets [into civilian areas of Israel]!

38 | ZMAN May 2016

Plosker pointed out another major feature

of the medias double standard today: At
the same time that the press pretends that
historic Arab-Muslim enmity toward Jews
never existed, it virtually ignores the rampant
incitement emanating from many quarters.
Thanks to technology, that incitement exists
in wider, more potent quantities than ever
before.

Teenagers do not generally go out and

start knifing people unless theyve been
encouraged to do so. The media is not
concentrating on enough on the incitement
to violence going on in the official Palestinian media, on social media as well, and of
course through the terrorist organizations.

Why isnt
incitement?

the

media

covering

the

It doesnt fit the narrative of Palestinians as victims. Many times we see that
Palestinians are no longer treated as
agents of their own destiny. They are just
forced into doing things, as if they bear no
responsibility for their actions. Anything
that happens is blamed on Israel. Any
crimes or terrorism they carry out can be
excused or justified by the fact that they
are under occupation or suffering under
the rule of Israel.

Following Israels resounding military

victory in 1967decimating Soviet-backed
Arab armies massed at her borders, boasting
of driving the Jews into the seashe found
herself controlling lands she never expected
to control and peoples she never wanted to
rule. After the initial shock on both sides,
the Arab residents, by and large, wished to
get on with their lives and take advantage of
the opportunities afforded them by the new
situation. And there were opportunities. In
his article What Occupation?, Israeli-British
historian Efraim Karsh demonstrated how
the post-1967 Arab populations under Israeli
rule made astounding social and economic
progressincluding vastly reduced mortality rates, a sharply increased life expectancy

Simon Plosker, Managing Editor of HonestReporting, at his desk

in his Jerusalem office.

(from 48 to 72 years) and a growing economy

that outpaced such wonders as Singapore,
Hong Kong, and Korea, and substantially
ahead of Israel itself.
Then their political lives were hijacked
by Yasser Arafat and his PLO. The Palestinian narrative today, founded upon PLO
propaganda, is that the occupation is a
catastrophe, Israel is at fault for all wrongs
(real and perceived) and there will be no
peace until Israel is destroyed. Rather than
a future of opportunity, hope, progress and
co-existence, Arafats propaganda created
a self-fulfilling prophecy of belligerence
and misery. Sadlytragically for Jews and
Arabsthe Western media has parroted
much of this narrative and hoisted it upon a
nave and largely ignorant public, including
many Jews in America.

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We asked Plosker to characterize the

impact this anti-Israel bias is having on
American Jews.
Unfortunately, what Israel has to do
to defend itself here doesnt necessarily fit with the liberal Jewish values that
dominate these days. There is no doubt
that large numbers of American Jews do
not identify as strongly with Israel as they
may have done in the past. Thats certainly something that we and many other
organizations here are facing. Obviously,

ZMAN Iyar 5776 | 39

the fact that they are reading The New

York Times influences what they think of
Israel. So we have our job cut out for us.

CAMERA
When a public school teacher got fed
up with the Washington Posts anti-Israel
bias during the Lebanon War in 1982, she
decided to found CAMERA (Committee
for Accuracy for Middle East Reporting in
America). Today, they have an international
staff of over 40, with offices in Jerusalem,
Boston, Florida, Washington DC, New York
and Los Angeles.
Originally monitoring only American
news, they now also scrutinize the British
media through UK Media Watch andBBC
Watch. They likewise have divisions monitoring the press in Hebrew and Spanish, as
well as a Christian department dedicated to
exposing false media coverage about Israel
in the numerous and influential Christian
media outlets in the United States.
Tamar Sternthal started with the organization in 1999 as a senior research analyst
before making aliyah in 2004 and becoming
the director of CAMERAs Israel office. They
opened their Jerusalem office in 2013, and
now employ a staff of nine. We asked her to
describe what they do:
Each [CAMERA] researcher is responsible for specific media outlets which they
monitor on a daily basis. I routinelymonitor The Los Angeles Times, The New
York Times (together with several other
colleagues), wire services such as Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France
Presse, and English-language Israeli
media outlets, among them Haaretz,
Ynet, The Jerusalem Post and Times of
Israel.

Whereas staffers at HonestReporting

typically begin their work day reading
everything they can get their hands onan
enormous undertaking by any reckoning
CAMERA also relies on what Sternthal calls
systematic monitoring. This includes using
40 | ZMAN May 2016

news databases like Lexis-Nexis and Shadow

TV, which employ algorithms to identify
specific content and themes. These are especially helpful with false media claims that
appear repeatedly, such as the inaccuracy
that the Western Wall, and not the Temple
Mount, is Judaisms holiest site.
The nuance may sound semantic to some,
but it is important due to the increasing prevalence of Temple denial propaganda slipping
into the news, implying that Jews have no
historical connection to the Temple Mount,
the Har HaBayis, cv. Zman readers need no
prompting to realize how absurd (and antiSemitic) that is, but the historically-illiterate
reader can easily be influenced, especially
when this notion is presented as a matter of
fact. CAMERA has prompted corrections on
this issue at multiple media outlets.
CAMERA has over 17,000 members on
what Sternthal calls a letter-writing team.
These are volunteers who receive regular
alerts from CAMERA staff about misinformation in the media and important stories
ignored by the media.
Their contribution is essential, she
emphasizes, both for the compelling letters
they publish in leading national newspapers,
as well as local papers around the country
where they can be particularly effective.
They also write directly to editors, together
with CAMERA staff, prompting change and
improvement.
Citing an example illustrating the role
these volunteers play, she refers to the
summer 2014 war between Hamas and
Israel in Gaza:
We noted a Los Angeles Times photo
gallery of the conflict. Out of some 100
photographs, not one depicted any Hamas
combatants or other Palestinian fighters
in the Gaza Strip. Nor was there a single
photograph of Hamas weaponrynot
even a rocket flying through the air
toward Israel, though such images were
readily available. Perhaps even more
unbelievable was the fact thatthe word
Hamas didnt appear even once in a
single caption!

Even though an MSNBC cameraman caught the Arab attacker on

video wielding a knife (shown) and charging at Israelis, The New
York Times declined to let readers know of the video.

We documented just how skewed and

misleading the photo essay was; they literally left Hamas out of the picture. Our staff
wrote directly to editors at The Los Angeles
Times, and we sent alerts to our volunteers.
They, in turn, also wrote The Times. As
a result, only because of the intervention
of CAMERA staff and volunteers, The Los
Angeles Times finally included images of
Hamas fighters and weapons.
CAMERA calls out many media outlets
for bias and inaccuracy, but pays particular
attention to The New York Times since its
stories carry greater weight than arguably
any other Western news source. This is due
to its daily circulation of about 1.6 million,
the reputation it has built over its 165-year
history and its consequent influence on
other publications. CAMERA has an entire
page on its site with links to articles it has
written since 1992 detailing the unending
stream of journalistic violations committed
by The New York Times.
On October 27, 2015, for instance, The
Times characterized a knife attack against
Israelis as an instance of dueling narratives,
even quoting a witness who testified that
the attacker was not carrying a knife. After
reading the article, the average person could
very well ask: Was he an attacker holding

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ZMAN Iyar 5776 | 41

a knife or was he a defenseless man shot in

cold blood? According to The New York Times,
there was no objective way to know the truth;
it was a matter of he said/she said.
However, as CAMERA pointed out, what
really happened was a matter of empirical
truth. The man was actually caught on video
by an MSNBC cameraman while wielding the
knife and charging at Israelis. Yet, The New
York Times declined to let readers know of
the video.
While some bad journalism can be
attributed to mistaken judgment and deadline-induced sloppiness, examples like this
cannot be so easily dismissed. The MSNBC
video was widely publicized. Furthermore,
in three separate articles, The Times
described the weapon in the attackers hand
as nothing more than an Israeli claim, and
in two separate articles they gave blanket
credence to an Arab witness that the knife
was planted.
This article was just one example of a
pattern demonstrating how The Times is
obsessed with a narrative that tries to show
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a cycle of
violence with both sides equally guilty of
continuing the conflict.
A further nuance of journalistic bias was
exposed when CAMERA emailed the author
of the article, Jodi Rudorenformer bureau
chief for The New York Timesand asked her
to comment on the blatant skewing of facts.
Rudoren replied that her article reported
the incident not for the facts of the matter,
but as an example of the story Palestinians
told themselves and each other about. In
other words, a top-ranking editor for The
New York Times admitted she published an
account in the Middle East news section not
for the facts.
That is what Sternthal calls a case of
advocacy journalism gone awry. Traditionally, opinions in newspapers were
restricted to editorial and op-ed pages,
which are clearly distinguished in the publication. By contrast, advocacy journalists
incorporate their opinions into the story
they are writing. That is what Rudoren did;
by placing a piece of advocacy journalism in
42 | ZMAN May 2016

a news section, The New York Times deceptively tried to manipulate public opinion by
masking advocacy as journalism. Sternthal
cites this as a prime example of the erosion
of traditional journalistic values.
Sometimes that erosion comes in the
form of hiring journalists with an outright
political-ideological agenda aimed at libeling
Israel. The New York Times is guilty of this,
as well, in its hiring of Diaa Hadid. Before
becoming a Times journalist, Hadid worked
for a radical anti-Israel NGO, contributed to
the extremist website Electronic Intifada
and openly expressed her hate for Israel.
In the year or more since Hadid began
working for The New York Times, CAMERA
has exposed several articles she wrote that
represent shocking violations of basic journalistic standards.
For instance, in January 2016, The New
York Times published an extensive feature by
Hadid about evictions of Arabs from Jerusalems Old City. CAMERA was skeptical from
the outset for several reasons, including
the articles claim that a Palestinian family
might lose their home only because they
replaced a rusting door. Furthermore, while
Hadid quoted the Palestinians who were
facing eviction, she conspicuously failed
to
quote anyone
representing the Israeli
owners of the properties in question.All
this prompted CAMERA to undertake legal
research.
What they found makes it hard to understand how The New York Times could have
ever printed the article to begin with. First,
Hadid claims that the attempted eviction
was based on arcane violations of lease
agreements. CAMERAs research unearthed
that, in actuality, the arcane violation was
the failure to pay rent. Indeed, the resident
facing eviction had not been paying rent
for many years! That arcane fact was not
mentioned at all in the article.
After CAMERA located the relevant court
documents, they handed them over to The
New York Times foreign desk, which subsequently published a remarkable315-word
editors note upholding all of CAMERAs
points and calling the reporter to task for

A CAMERA billboard on a building opposite the newspapers Midtown headquarters. Moshe: Please change caption to plural

failing to reach out to the Jewish landlords

or their lawyers.
Perhaps the height of journalistic gall
took place on February 9, 2016, when a
Knesset subcommittee convened to discuss
the foreign medias coverage of the current
wave of Arab terror. Foreign correspondents
in Israel were invited to the meeting. So was
Sternthal.
Even before the event convened, Luke
Baker, Reuters bureau chief in Israel and
head of the countrys Foreign Press Association, slammed it as a witch hunt. He
insisted that Reuters hadrun (and subsequently corrected) only one problematic
headline out of 700 it published since the
wave of violence began.
CAMERA demonstrated how false his
claim was in an article written by Sternthals
colleague, Gilead Ini. In fact, just prior to the
event, Reuters had published several biased
headlines. For instance, on October 15, 2015,
a Reuters headline stated: Israeli Forces
Shoot Dead Five Palestinians as Violence
Rages On. The headline made it sound as
if the Palestinians were the victims, not the
perpetrators. In actuality, one of the Palestinians was killed after stabbing two Jewish
civilians; another was shot after stabbing
an Israeli soldier; another was killed while

shooting at an Israeli police officer; and

two were killed during violent riots targeting soldiers who were defending the fence
between Israel and the Hamas-ruled Gaza
Strip.
CAMERA cited other examples of problematic Reuters headlines. (Note: When
Zman emailed Baker to comment on the
slanted headlines he failed to respond. Also
of note is that, shortly after the Knesset
meeting, Israel detained a Washington Post
journalist who had possible information
about an impending terror attack. At that
time, Baker said that the brief detention and questioning still seems wholly
unacceptable. Ironically, just over a week
later Baker himself was briefly detained
by Hamas security and, far from calling it
wholly unacceptable, he now downplayed
the entire event, saying he was asked polite
questions over a cup of tea. [You cant
make this stuff up!] He completely avoided
characterizing it as detention, wholly
unacceptable, or harassment in any way.
Yet, he insists there is no bias.)
CAMERA has noted that when it comes
to non-Israelis, the media has no
problem writing in plain
English. They cited a
recent CBS headline

ZMAN Iyar 5776 | 43

as an example: New York City Cop Attacked

with Hatchet, Suspect Killed. The headline
made it clear that the person killed was not
a victim, but an attacker attempting murder.
For some reason, it seems that otherwise
seasoned journalists lose their ability to
write in plain English when Israelis are the
victims of Arab violence.
CBS and Reuters journalists, of course,
are not the only professional writers butchering the English language when it comes
to reporting violence against Israelis. The
New York Times compulsively avoids any
mention of Palestinian incitement. So do
The Associated Press, The Washington Post,
The Los Angeles Times, PBS, NPR and others,
CAMERA pointed out.

Elder of Ziyon

Unlike HonestReporting and CAMERA,

the next watchdog, Elder of Ziyon (EoZ), is
basically a one-man show. And he works
anonymously; he did not even divulge his
real name for our phone interview.
When we asked him what he could tell
us about his true identity, he responded, I
live in the New York area, I have at least two
married kids, Mrs. Elder has been contributing to my [news summary] videos lately
and we are shomer Shabbos.
Why the anonymity? I prefer to stay
anonymous mostly for career reasons. I
have a full-time job in a high-tech field, so
I dont want potential employers to see my
thousands of articles about the Middle East.
Given the fact that he has published a
staggering 23,000 articles in 11 years on his
website, it boggles the mind to think he has
a full-time job and only works on watchdogging part-time.
The name Elder of Ziyon is meant to be
ironic, he explains, cynically poking fun at
rabid anti-Semites who have long used the
term as a reference to the canard that a small
cabal of Jews controls the world. Indeed, one
of the ways he combats the bias and hatred
is with his very sharp wit and wry sense of
humor. For instance, when Arabs, Islamists
and ultra-leftists began calling Gaza a
44 | ZMAN May 2016

concentration camp, EoZ posted a series

of photographs and videos showing a Gazan
luxury mall, an exclusive nightclub, markets
teeming with food, throngs of Gazans relaxing on beaches, etc.and described the
photos with captions such as:
On Saturday night, the starving people of
Gaza opened up a luxury mall.
Thousands of Gazans were forced to search
desperately for sales and specials.
We are forced to squirt Zionist ketchup onto
our French fries, showing that we are still
under colonial occupation.
Our children suffer the most. Here they are
playing video games that are over three
years old!
Hamas dignitaries and other Gazans suffering at the Roots Club in the heart of the
Gaza concentration camp.
Caution: Viewer discretion is advised due
to graphic scenes of indulgence in gourmet
food and similar types of exotic experiences
and ambiance.

Along with his own writings and graphics, he posts articles authored by selected
columnists. In addition, twice a day he
excerpts and links dozens of articles about
Israel published in media outlets around
the globe. The rigorous job of finding all
those articles and posting them is done
by someone he identifies only as Ian from
Australia.
How does he choose the topics of his own
articles? I try to be as original as possible.
Either I try to dig up stories in English that
most people would have missed, or I find
stories in Arabic that everybody would have
missed.
Arabic?! Do you know Arabic? No, but
I use Google Translate and verify it with
experts if there is something Im not sure
about.
When asked why he goes to Arabic
sources, he explains that Arab leaders typically have two faces: that which they show
the Western press in their official statements and that which they show their own
people. For instance, at the same time the

pronouncements on the Facebook page

of Fatah, Mahmoud Abbas party, are so
much worse by any objective measure.
Yet, they are never reported. These crimes
of omission are widespread, and are
the clearest indication that the media is
hugely biased against Israel.

Elder of Ziyon translates Arabic sources to show how Arab

leaders typically have two faces: one they show the Western
press and one they show their own people.

media was claiming that Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas was condemning
the recent wave of violence, the organization
he heads was bragging on its Arabic Facebook page that he was inspiring the murders
of Jews. Translating these sources exposes
the truth of their intentions, something the
Western press avoids. (There is an entire
media watchdog, The Middle East Media
Research Institute [MEMRI], which devotes
its resources to monitoring and translating
Arabic media, schoolbooks and religious
sermons.)
Elder of Ziyon elaborates for us:
One of my pet peeves is not so much
media bias in reporting; what kills me and
drives me nuts is what they dont report
on. The crimes of omissio of the media.
Thats where the bias is.
Quotes from Palestinian leaders that
would generate world headlineshad
an Israeli politician said something similarare completely ignored. The official

The irony is that these omissions take

place even though the number of Western
journalists in Israel is absurdly disproportionate to the number of those covering
events in other parts of the Middle East, and
even the world. As Matti Friedman, former
editor for the Associated Press Jerusalem
bureau, said: The agency had more than 40
staffers covering Israel and the Palestinian
territories. That was significantly more
news staff than the AP had in China, Russia,
or India, or in all of the 50 countries of subSaharan Africa combined! It was higher than
the total number of news-gathering employees in all the countries where the uprisings
of the Arab Spring eventually erupted!
EoZ commented:
All of the reporters who are over
thereand there are more reporters per
square kilometer in Israel than there are
anywhere elseact like sheep. They just
follow the leader, which is usually The
New York Times, sometimes Reuters, and
file almost identical stories with identical
pictures. They travel around in packs and
cover the same stories and take the same
pictures. But they dont go anywhere
beyond the standard, politically correct
stories that they want to write, and they
all have to adhere to the same meme: that
Likud is an extremist, rightist party; Israel
isnt interested in peace; the occupation
and settlements are the main obstacle
to peace; Fatah is a moderate party and
Abbas is a moderate leader.
Theyre not trying to be objective.
This is provable by what they are not
saying. There is so much obsession and analysis of every
word spoken or
written by any

ZMAN Iyar 5776 | 45

Israeli official, but there is nothing on

what comes from Abbas and the like.
There are terror groups literally
operating under the Fatah partythe
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, and a few
offshootsand the media doesnt even
mention that they exist. And theyre not
only in Gaza. Theyre also in the West
Bank. And they will sometimes parade
around with their guns. They are Fatah.
They are part of Abbas party. He claimed
that he had dismantled them, but he lied.
Yet, nobody in the press asks, Hey, whats
going on here? Why is moderate Abbas
allowing this?

according to international law, UNRWA

continued classifying them as refugees!
In effect, the UN bestowed upon them the
status of permanent refugeessomething
unprecedented! (Note: After 1948, more
than 800,000 Jews had to flee Arab lands
due to incitement and expulsion, yet they
soon resettled elsewhere, ending their refugee status.)
Put another way, at some point in the
1950s, UNRWA changed from a humanitarian organization seeking to solve a refugee
problem into a propaganda arm of the Arab
cause, using Arab refugees (originally they
were called Arab refugees; now they are
called Palestinian refugees) as a political
weapon against the State of Israel.

What about the contention these days

in so much of the media that Palestinian
violence is justified because of the Israeli
occupation and the settlements?

Was there peace before 1967? The

[Arab] threats were worse then. With the
establishment of the PLO in 1964, there were
no settlementsso what exactly were the
Palestinians planning to liberate?
It has nothing to do with settlements
or occupation. Now, you can have an
argument over whether its smart to keep
themI dont think its automatically
anti-Israel to say that you think Israel
should withdraw from part or all; reasonable people will have that opinion. But the
settlements are not the real issue.
If you look carefully at all the statements from Mahmoud Abbas, or whoever
else, the settlements are only one of their
issues. Jerusalem is another one, even
more important to them.
Yet another [of their issues], which they
mention every time in every forum they
have, is the so-called right of return. And
everybody understands that it is meant to
be the destruction of Israel. The whole
reason there is still a refugee problem is
in order to keep that issue alive, in order
to put pressure on Israel.

To supply a little historical perspective

on his point: In 1948, after the Arabs lost the

46 | ZMAN May 2016

homeland!Thats rightthe Jews were

the original Palestinians of the modern
era. It wasnt until the 1960s that Yasser
Arafatthe father of modern terrorism
absconded the term for political purposes.
Those who use the term Palestinian today
to refer to the Arabs pay homage to Arafat
and his spin on reality.
Elder of Ziyon:
Using the word Palestinians to refer
to Arabs in British Mandate Palestine
pre-1948 is almost always wrong. Jews
were the ones who referred to themselves
that way. The mainstream media did
not refer to Arabs as Palestinians until
roughly 1967 (with a few exceptions).I
dislike using the word Palestinian to

War of the Words

EoZ posted a video of the Roots Club in the heart of the Gaza
concentration camp -- where Hamas dignitaries and other
Gazans suffer by indulging in exotic gourmet food.

war they started in the hopes of annihilating

about 600,000 Jews in Eretz Yisrael, there
were many refugees. The United Nations
established UNRWA (United Nations Relief
and Works Agency) as a humanitarian effort
to relieve the plight of the refugees. At the
time, this included both Jewish and Arab
displaced persons living within the Armistice lines in the State of Israel.
By 1952, all of those Jews and Arabs
had been moved to permanent homes and
were taken off the UNRWA list of refugees.
However, all of those Arabs living in territories occupied by Arab states continued
to be defined as refugees. This included the
two largest groups, the refugees in Gaza,
who were living under Egyptian occupation, and those in the West Bank, under
Jordanian occupation. Even after Jordan
extended citizenship to the refugees
there, thereby ending their refugee status

During the interview, we

discussed the war of the words
going on. For instance, the fact that
Palestinian in todays press refers
to non-Jewish Arabs is particularly
painful for anyone familiar with
Jewish history, since it originates
from the Roman Emperor Hadrians
campaign to annihilate the Jews
about 1,900 years ago.
Hadrian was the closest thing
in history to Hitler, committing
the greatest genocide against Jews
until the Holocaust. Not content
merely murdering Jews, he sought to
eliminate the Jewish religion (e.g., it
was his decree outlawing the public
teaching of Torah that led to Rabbi
Akivas martyrdom). As part of his
campaign to wipe out the memory of
the Jewish people he renamed Judea,
the Jewish homeland, Palestine.
Even though the name Palestine is not mentioned even once
in Tanachneither is it mentioned
in the Christian writings or the
Quranthe name was revived in
the modern era by the British
but they used it to describe the
territory intended to be the Jewish

After centuries of general disuse, the name Palestine was revived in the
modern era by the British -- to describe the territory intended to be the Jewish
homeland (which included todays Israel and Jordan)! That's right -- the Jews
were the original Palestinians of the modern era.

Even after the San Remo conference in 1922, when the British gave the Arabs
77% of the land originally reserved for the Jewish homeland, Palestine was
the area of Jewish settlement.

ZMAN Iyar 5776 | 47

refer to Arabs in the region, but unfortunately I have to use it if I want my

writings to be read outside the pro-Israel
echo chamber.
The term West Bank is also a relatively new term, starting after the 1948
war. Up until then, and even in UN documents, the area was always referred to as
Judea and Samaria.
Illegal settlements and illegal occupation are other false phrases. There
are lots of other terms that have gained
currency: apartheid, which is absurd;
genocide in Gaza, which is even more
absurd. The New York Times recently used
the word resistance without scare quotes
to refer to Palestinian Arab terror, fully
accepting the terminology of the terrorists.
Refugee means something completely different when the subject is Palestinian
Arab than any other kind of refugee [see
above]. Calling the Har HaBayit the Al
Aqsa Mosque is another absurd misuse of
language that too many editors allow.
Elder of Ziyons scoops have been quoted
in CNN, The New York Times, Fox News, Jewish
Press, Jerusalem Post, Arutz-7, Algemeiner,
Times of Israel and many more. His reporting
often ends up making a real difference.

enough revulsion to something they

thought was good, they are embarrassed.
Thats the reason you rarely if ever
see Hamas openly bragging about suicide
bombings nowadays. They saw they
were not gaining any respect from the
Western press anymore. They were losing
the moral high ground by doing so. They
dont want to be looked upon as being less
moral than the West.

EoZ poster depicting a stamp from British Mandate Palestine

showing Kever Rachel. Note: In the original, after the Hebrew
Palestine, one can plainly see the letters ()", standing for
Eretz Yisrael.

media showed revulsion at that tactic,

it changed how the Arabs thought about
it. They were shamed by it. They want
to think that a Quranic-based mindset is
morally superior to any Western, JudeoChristian mindset. If the West shows

If Elder of Ziyon writes

something that trickles up
to the mainstream media,
they [the Arab world] will
be embarrassed. They
wont necessarily change
immediately, and deep
down their opinions probably will never change,
but embarrassment over
the immorality of their
cause can sometimes
make a difference.
Ive seen over the
years that things like
suicide bombings used to
be very popular and the EoZ chart showing how UNRWA is not a humanitarian organization seeking to solve a
Arabs were very proud refugee problem but a propaganda tool for the Arab cause by bestowing Arabs with
of it. But as the Western unprecedented permanent refugee status.

48 | ZMAN May 2016

As we were gathering information for

this article, a posting by Elder of Ziyon in
March 2016 about an Arab propaganda map
(see Sidebar: Other Forms of Anti-Israel
Bias) that somehow made it into a 2013
McGraw-Hill textbook triggered a slew of
emails to the publisher (including one from
Zman), and shortly thereafter the company

said that they had stopped selling the book

and that all existing inventory would be
destroyed, noting that the map did not meet
our academic standards. It shows that an
individual can make a difference.
Given his incredible output, it is even
more remarkable to think that Elder of
Ziyon is a regular working guy with a
full-time job and a family. One Jewish newspaper said it very well when it described
him as indefatigable one-man operation,
armed only with a computer, chutzpah and
stamina.
He is, indeed, an unbelievable one-man
army conducting a mostly solitary but
heroic battle in this ongoing war of words
a war that the media perpetuates in many
ways through its ignorance and/or deeply
entrenched biases.

The NY Times & the Holocaust

he State of Israel did not exist before

1948, but slanting the news against Jews
did. Arguably, the most horrendous example
was the way the American pressand
specifically The New York Times, the preeminent newspaper in the countryhandled
the Holocaust.
Many Americans grew up believing that
the average American citizen did not know
and could not have known about the Holocaust while it was happening. The reality is,
however, that almost all the major events of
the Holocaust were reported in the newspapers of the day, including the fact that
millions of people were being murdered in
the most horrible ways. Yet, somehow that
news was not enough to make it a front page
story.
For instance, between 1939 and 1945,
The New York Times published more than
23,000 front-page stories. Of those, 11,500
were about World War II, and 1,186 stories
were about Europes Jews. Twenty-six were
about the Holocaust. Of those, only six identified the Jews as the primary victims on the

front page before the story was continued

inside the paper.
An example of The Timess paltry coverage
of the Holocaust was a story published in the
paper July 29, 1942, about the liquidation
of the Warsaw Ghetto. The story bore the
headline Warsaw Fears Extermination, and

Nazis rounding up Jews in the Warsaw ghetto. In The New York

Times intentionally distorted coverage of the Holocaust, it
relegated the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto to the back pages
and often even ignored the fact that its victims were Jews.

ZMAN Iyar 5776 | 49

was published on page 7. Moreover, it was not

even a stand-alone story, instead consisting
of a handful of paragraphs nestled next to
an ad for pianos. When the last of the Jews of
Warsaw were deported on May 14, 1943, the
story appeared at the bottom of page 6.
In November 1942, The New York Times
ran a story about a statement from a member
of the Polish National Council that a million
Polish Jews had already been murdered. It
appeared on page 16, next to a report on
the hijacking of a truckload of coffee in New
Jersey.
Stories about the slaughter of Jews in
Austria and Italy in 1943 appeared on pages
6 and 35 respectively.
Here are other examples of other headlines which did not make it to the front page:
Deliberate Nazi Murder Policy Is Bared
by Allied Official Body; More Than Million
Lives Taken in Campaign to Wipe Out Entire
PeoplesJews and Poles Undergo Severest
Treatment
- New York Times: August 27, 1943; page 7
2,000,000 Jews Murdered
- New York Times: April 20, 1943; page 11

mentioned Europes Jews. When it did run

an editorial, it was consistently in favor of
President Roosevelts decisions to bar European Jews trying to flee the death camps.
Neither did The Times print any letters on
the persecution of Jews in Germany, ensuring that potentially valuable contributions
attacking anti-Semitism were excluded from
public consumption.
In 2006, former journalist Laurel Leff
published Buried by The Times, a groundbreaking book detailing The New York
Times grievously negligent coverage of the
Holocaust and the intentional nature of the
negligence. She documented, for instance,
that many Times reporters had pro-German
biases (including disturbing Nazi and Vichy
attachments of a few European correspondents); that Times editors were hostile
toward Jews (especially the non-Jewish night
editors who decided where to place news
items); how the Times placed inexperienced
reporters in key positions in Europe, etc.
In short, even though reports were
published of the roundups, the gas chambers,

Total Nazi Executions Are Put at 3,400,000;

Poland, with 2,500,000 Victims, Tops List
- New York Times: February 28, 1943; page 12

Even after the war, when the death camps

were liberated, and General Dwight D. Eisenhower summoned the nations top editors and
publishers to join him as eyewitnesses, The
Times account of Buchenwald ran on page 6.
Just as astonishingly, when atrocities
were mentioned, the coverage usually did
not mention that the victims were Jews
specifically. By reading The Times, one would
not have known that Jews were the primary
target of the Nazi extermination efforts.
Sometimes, a paper tries to balance out
allegedly un-opinionated reporting with
editorials and op-ed pieces. During the
war years, however, The Times did not allot
much editorial space to the subject. Out
of more than 17,000 editorials during the
war, the paper ran only five editorials that
50 | ZMAN May 2016

Laurel Leffs Buried by The Times details The New York Times
grievously negligent coverage of the Holocaust.

the death toll, etc., the public did not properly

comprehend that the Jews of Europe were
being selectively and systematically slaughtered because newspapers slanted the full
truth by using techniques such as omitting
facts, selecting stories, reducing major events
to a few sentences placed on inside pages, etc.
The facts didnt speak for themselves,
wrote a former New York Times executive
editor and prize winning journalist in 2001
about The Times coverage of the Holocaust.
The New York Times itself admitted in 1996:
The Times has long been criticized for
grossly underplaying the Holocaust while it
was taking place. Clippings from the paper
show that the criticism is valid.
Worst of all, though, The New York Times
was not merely guilty of a series of unfortunate mistakes. Rather, its scandalous
coverage of the Holocaust was intentional and
driven by policyall overseen by the newspapers publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger.
A Reform Jew, Sulzberger was an assimilationist. His great fear was that his paper be
identified as a Jewish paper (anti-Semites had
already been calling it The Jew York Times).
Admittedly, the world of the 1940s was very
different than the world today. A great many
Americans openly harbored anti-Semitic
views. Father Charles Edward Coughlin, an
influential Roman Catholic priest, would
even issue weekly radio diatribes against
Jews. When we get through with the Jews
in America, theyll think the treatment they
received in Germany was nothing, he said.
The transmissions were broadcast nationally to an estimated 30 million listeners.

Clearly, fear of anti-Semitism played

a role in Sulzbergers decisions. However,
there was arguably an even more pressing
motive. Like many other Jews, he had a troubled relationship with his Jewishness. He
was embarrassed by European JewsJews
who were openly Jewish in look, religion,
ideology and culture. As a result, Sulzbergers own Jewish identity crisis created
and perpetuated a personal ideology that
led him to make journalistic decisions which
blunted the truth about the genocide against
fellow Jews. Rather than telling about the
horrors of the Holocaust in the hard-hitting,
straight-forward manner it warrantedand
that his profession warrantedhis belief
system caused him to effectively bury it.
Perhaps it is nave to imagine that more
stories on the front page of any newspaper
would have changed the course of history or
even have saved many lives. And The New
York Times was not the only paper guilty of
this; it was an industry-wide bias. Indeed,
journalistic bias was merely the mirror of a
larger cultural bias. Nevertheless, The New
York Times failure to cover the Holocaust
with the proper urgency demonstrates that
even the most respected news outlets can
be peddling half-truths and fatally blind to
their own prejudices.
This has great relevance to and can
explain much of what we see in todays
news. Biases always have and still
do exist in the news industry
and specifically in events
related to the State of
Israel.

ZMAN Iyar 5776 | 51