In recent years, some have accused the Guardian of fueling hostility towards the Jewish state through its unbalanced reporting of events in the Middle East. The coverage by Brian Whitaker, who has served as the paper's Middle East Editor since May 1999 and contributes articles for Guardian Unlimited, the internet edition of the Guardian, as well as the Guardian paper, is representative of the paper's perspective.
In the wake of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's serious medical problems, Op-Ed writers and reporters have published numerous retrospective pieces trying to sum-up the Israeli leader's career. Some are nothing but anti-Sharon screeds, while others, though somewhat more responsible, repeat many of the same discredited allegations that have long been used by polemicists to unfairly malign the Israeli leader.
Saree Makdisi, a professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA, and a nephew of Edward Said, has inherited his uncle's political outlook ‑ an opposition to the existence of the state of Israel. Like Said, Makdisi has channeled his animosity into publishing anti‑Israel screeds full of false rhetoric. He has become, for instance, a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times, despite a November 2004 Op‑Ed which was corrected due to factual errors and distortions.
No sooner did Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffer a massive stroke, than Slate posted an error-ridden column by regular contributor Christopher Hitchens, falsely suggesting that Ariel Sharon masterminded the 1982 massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon. Ironically, the article is meant to praise Sharon, albeit grudgingly, for his political transformation from a proponent of the settler movement to a proponent of the creation of a Palestinian state. But to do this, Hitchens demonizes the Israeli leader's past actions, misrepresenting the facts along the way.
Rami Khouri, editor-at-large of Lebanon's Daily Star, and a frequent NPR guest, today on the network actually blamed Ariel Sharon for the rise of Islamism in the Middle East. Perhaps Khouri has never heard of the Wahhabis, or the Saudis and their vast oil wealth, or the Taliban, or Sudan under al-Turabi. That being the case, it's too bad for NPR listeners that the network has heard of Khouri, and invites him on so often.
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.
National Public Radio's Nov. 2, 2005 report, "Jewish Settlements Expand in West Bank," illustrates a recurrent technique in the network's chronic anti-Israel coverage: stacking the deck.
Robert Fisk, the notoriously anti-Israel journalist, wrote a column charging that Israel's friends have successfully influenced the semantics of Middle East coverage by American journalists, supposedly leading to "journalistic obfuscation" to the detriment of the Palestinians. Underlying Fisk's ire about American coverage is the reality that from his perspective as an extreme pro-Palestinian partisan, reporting by U.S. media is insufficiently tilted in the direction he prefers.
