Sometimes basic facts get blurred in a fierce, image-filled conflict such as the one spawned by Hezbollah's July 12 cross-border attack in which Israeli soldiers were killed and others kidnapped while a rain of rockets descended on homes and fields. What does Hezbollah, with some 10,000 katyushas and other long-range missiles, really want?
Early media coverage of Hizbullah's aggression against Israel presented a generally sound picture of cause and effect, of the terrorist group's agenda and of Israel's right to remove the menace to its people. The BBC, however, is a frequent exception.
Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, authors of "The Israel Lobby and American Foreign Policy," the academic study widely faulted for shoddy scholarship and bias in its charge that supporters of Israel undermine American interests, repeated their false allegations on National Public Radio.
Playwright Tony Kushner has responded to questions about his many extreme comments regarding Israel with an outlandish claim in the New York Sun (April 25, 2006) that his "past statements have been taken out of context by groups using "˜McCarthyite' tactics to portray him as an extremist."
A familiar quality of unreality pervades much of the news and commentary about the ascendance of Hamas in recent Palestinian elections. Note is endlessly made of the fact that Hamas, with its clinics and other welfare operations, is less "corrupt" than the old-guard Fatah chieftains. But as to why Palestinians en masse are comfortable choosing a leadership engaged in the defamation and murder of innocent Jews -- including children, teenagers and the elderly -- very little is said.
Word of playwright Tony Kushner's involvement in Steven Spielberg's Munich set off alarms among those familiar with his extreme anti-Israel positions and indifference to facts about the Arab-Israeli conflict. A glance at his statements and affiliations suggests why.
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Written by Tony Kushner, Eric Roth
English, German, Italian, French
163 minutesBriefly, the movie presents, via pulse-pounding scenes of kidnaping, death, stalking and more death, the message that Israel was brutal, bungling and immoral in its reaction to the massacre. True, the hostage-takers were also brutal; but dispossessing Palestinians, we soon learn, lies at the root.
Unlike American journalists who subscribe in principle, if not always practice, to a high-minded code of ethics calling for accuracy, balance and accountability in news coverage, documentary filmmakers of various nationalities often freely blend fact, distortion, ideology and even fiction and defamation without pretense of adherence to any such standards.