No doubt the control of information–a critical tool in psychological warfare–is part of any combatant's war arsenal. But when a July 22 ABC "World News Saturday" report on the Israeli bombing of television transmitters accuses Israel of controlling information "to sway public opinion," it is ABC which is controlling – and withholding – information.
A few days after Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote on July 18 that Israel is a "mistake" because "the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism," the newspaper published CAMERA's response.
On July 22, the Philadelphia Inquirer published an unsigned editorial that, with unabashed moral equivalency, obscures the differences between Israel and its neighbors in terms of hate education, and erases the asymmetry between Israel and Hezbollah.
Boston Globe editorials have displayed a disturbing double standard in their use of the term "collective punishment." The term is reserved almost exclusively for reference to Israeli military operations.
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.
Henry Siegman has a history of dishonesty when writing about the Arab-Israeli conflict. So it is perhaps no surprise that the Los Angeles Times found it necessary to publish a correction to demonstrably false assertions in Siegman's June 18, 2006 Op-Ed.
On May 8, 2006, MIT Professor Noam Chomsky began an eight-day visit to Lebanon, receiving a hero's wecome. He met with Hezbollah leaders, embraced them and repeated their rhetoric, publicly rejecting their disarming (contrary to UNSC Resolution 1559). Now that the terrorist group has launched a war, he mildly rebukes them as "irresponsible" but continues to wish them well.
Washington Post syndicated columnist Richard Cohen asserts in his July 18 commentary "Hunker Down With History" that "Israel itself is a mistake." Historical ignorance and an appeasement mentality underlie such an assertion.
As Israel began responding to Hezbollahí¢â‚¬™s cross-border assault, the Associated Press was rewriting the history of conflict between Lebanon and Israelwith a skewed timeline entitled "A look at key events in Lebanon-Israel conflict." Update: A piece dispatched by AP less than a week later does a better job.
