Aggressive bias continues at NPR, America's foremost publicly-funded radio network, with lopsided time afforded Israel's detractors. Unsupported and anecdotal charges of Israeli misconduct are routinely aired without any balance or counterpoint. Partisan groups critical of Israel are characterized euphemistically as neutral champions of "peace" and "human rights."
The Boston Globe's H.D.S. Greenway, now retired from editorial posts at the paper, frequently devotes his weekly column to distorted hectoring of Israel. He inveighs against alleged Israeli faults, passes forgivingly over Palestinian rejectionism, and is often slippery with the facts.
As columnist Charles Krauthammer recently observed: "The world is experiencing the worst resurgence of anti- Semitism in 50 years. Its main objective is the demonization and delegitimation of Israel, to the point that the idea of eradicating... the world's only Jewish state becomes respectable, indeed laudable. The psychological grounds for the final solution are being prepared." Party to this grim preparation is one Tony Judt, former Oxford don and now a history professor at New York University.
“POINTERS for Sharon” (editorial, July 29) points in the wrong direction. To say that if Ariel Sharon takes the “measures” of releasing more prisoners, suspending work on a security fence, taking down more checkpoints, and freezing settlements, then “Palestinian action should be to disarm militant groups” disregards completely the basic imperatives of the peace endeavor the Globe has repeatedly praised.
The road map is not a long or difficult document, yet some in the media have an astonishingly hard time keeping its basics straight. Key written provisos, prepared by an international "quartet" of the E.U., UN, Russia and the US, are regularly cast as irritating "demands" laid down by Israel.
Among the stunning side-effects of the past three years of Middle East violence has been the flood of crude, defamatory attacks on Israel in influential European media.