|
ROM his unique perspective as
a longtime editor and subsequent columnist at the New York Times and
now at the New York Daily News, A.M. Rosenthal has concluded that
the media is biased in its reporting on the Middle East.
|
A.M. Rosenthal
|
At a dinner luncheon of the
Middle East Forum, a think tank headed by distinguished scholar Daniel
Pipes, Rosenthal slammed the press for two major shortcomings.
“They believe that peace in the
Middle East depends on the settlement between Israelis and
Palestinians.”
That is not so, Rosenthal said.
The peace has often been broken not by Israelis versus Muslims, but by
Muslims fighting against Muslims.
“Killing comes about not
because of Israel’s power but because of murderous Muslim dictators,”
he said.
He said that no settlement
between Israel and the Palestinians can bring peace in the region, “not
until the nature of the Muslim governments change.”
The failure of reporters to
discern this is due to their reliance upon government information. Most
journalists in the diplomatic press obtain their information from
governments. They come to believe what they’re told by governments.
“It doesn’t occur to them to dissect what they are told,” Rosenthal
said.
A second mistake the press
makes is believing that the biggest problem for Israel is the bickering
among Jews. “You’d think that the Jew haters do not reside in Baghdad
or Tehran but in government offices in Jerusalem,” Rosenthal said.
Anti-Jewish propaganda, he said,
is coming not only from Arab countries but also from India, Pakistan and
Africa. “They are the servers of hatred and filth.”
He said that in the late ‘50s
he went to a party in Greenwich Village. Someone remarked that it was such
an interesting party. Why so? Rosenthal asked. “Everybody here is a Jew
or a Muslim,” the person observed.
“I don’t think that party
could take place today,” the columnist said.
Rosenthal decried the failure of
the American press to investigate anti-Semitism around the world.
“Why
the silence? It’s a matter of callousness. It’s exactly like the
Christians in the U.S. who live with the knowledge of the persecution of
Christians in China and Sudan. It’s comes from insufficient acuteness
and initiative on the part of the media.”
|
