This piece is subscription only so I am running the whole thing :
June
2, 2005
STATE OF THE UNION
J'Accuse
By
TOM GROSS
June 2, 2005
A French court last week found three writers
for Le Monde, as well as
the newspaper's publisher, guilty of "racist
defamation" against
Israel and the Jewish people. In a groundbreaking
decision, the
Versailles court of appeal ruled that a comment piece
published in Le
Monde in 2002, "Israel-Palestine: The Cancer," had whipped
up anti-
Semitic opinion.
The writers of the article, Edgar Morin (a
well-known sociologist),
Danièle Sallenave (a senior lecturer at Nanterre
University) and Sami
Nair (a member of the European parliament), as well as
Le Monde's
publisher, Jean-Marie Colombani, were ordered to pay symbolic
damages
of one euro to a human-rights group and to the Franco-Israeli
association. Le Monde was also ordered to publish a condemnation of
the
article, which it has yet to do.
It is encouraging to see a French court
rule that anti-Semitism
should have no place in the media -- even when it
is masked as an
analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The ruling
also makes
it clear that the law in this respect applies to extremist Jews
(Mr.
Morin is Jewish) as much as to non-Jews.
Press freedom is a
value to be cherished, but not exploited and
abused. In general, European
countries have strict laws against such
abuse and Europe's mainstream media
are in any case usually good at
exercising self-censorship. Responsible
journalists strenuously avoid
libelous characterizations of entire ethnic,
national or religious
groups. They go out of their way, for example, to
avoid suggesting
that the massacres in Darfur, which are being carried out
by Arab
militias, in any way represent an Arab trait.
The exception
to this seems to be the coverage of Jews, particularly
Israeli ones. This
is particularly ironic given the fact that
Europe's relatively strict
freedom of speech laws (compared to those
in the U.S.) were to a large
extent drafted as a reaction to the
Continent's Nazi occupation. And yet,
from Oslo to Athens, from
London to Madrid, it has been virtually open
season on them in the
last few years, especially in supposedly liberal
media.
"Israel-Palestine: The Cancer" was a nasty piece of work, replete
with lies, slanders and myths about "the chosen people," "the Jenin
massacre," describing the Jews as "a contemptuous people taking
satisfaction in humiliating others," "imposing their unmerciful
rule,"
and so on.
Yet it was no worse than thousands of other news reports,
editorials,
commentaries, letters, cartoons and headlines published
throughout
Europe in recent years, in the guise of legitimate and reasoned
discussion of Israeli policies.
The libels and distortions about
Israel in some British media are by
now fairly well known: the Guardian's
equation of Israel and al
Qaeda; the Evening Standard's equation of Israel
and the Taliban; the
report by the BBC's Middle East correspondent, Orla
Guerin, on how
"the Israelis stole Christmas." Most notorious of all is
the
Independent's Middle East correspondent, Robert Fisk, who specializes
in such observations as his comment that, "If ever a sword was thrust
into a military alliance of East and West, the Israelis wielded that
dagger," and who implies that the White House has fallen into the
hands
of the Jews: "The Perles and the Wolfowitzes and the Cohens...
[the] very
sinister people hovering around Bush."
The invective against Israel
elsewhere in Europe is less well known.
In Spain, for example, on June 4,
2001 (three days after a
Palestinian suicide bomber killed 21 young
Israelis at a disco, and
wounded over 100 others, all in the midst of a
unilateral Israeli
ceasefire), the liberal daily Cambio 16 published a
cartoon of
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (with a hook nose he does
not
have), wearing a skull cap (which he does not usually wear), sporting
a swastika inside a star of David on his chest, and proclaiming: "At
least Hitler taught me how to invade a country and destroy every
living
insect."
The week before, on May 23, El Pais (the "New York Times of
Spain")
published a cartoon of an allegorical figure carrying a small
rectangular-shaped black moustache, flying through the air toward Mr.
Sharon's upper lip. The caption read: "Clio, the muse of history,
puts
Hitler's moustache on Ariel Sharon."
Two days later, on May 25, the
Catalan daily La Vanguardia published
a cartoon showing an imposing
building, with a sign outside reading
"Museo del Holocausto Judio" (Museum
of the Jewish Holocaust), and
next to it another building under
construction, with a large sign
reading "Futuro Museo del Holocausto
Palestino" (Future Museum of the
Palestinian
Holocaust).
Greece's largest newspaper, the leftist daily
Eleftherotypia, has run
several such cartoons. In April 2002, on its front
cover, under the
title "Holocaust II," an Israeli soldier was depicted as a
Nazi
officer and a Palestinian civilian as a Jewish death camp inmate. In
September 2002, another cartoon in Eleftherotypia showed an Israeli
soldier with a Jewish star telling a Nazi officer next to him "Arafat
is not a person the Reich can talk to anymore." The Nazi officer
responds "Why? Is he a Jew?"
In October 2001, the Web site of one of
Italy's most respected
newspapers, La Repubblica, published the notorious
anti-Semitic
forgery, "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," in its
entirety,
without providing any historical explanation. It did suggest,
however, that the work would help readers understand why the U.S. had
taken military action in Afghanistan.
In April 2002, the Italian
liberal daily La Stampa ran a front-page
cartoon showing an Israeli tank,
emblazoned with a Jewish star,
pointing a large gun at the baby Jesus in a
manger, while the baby
pleads, "Surely they don't want to kill me again, do
they?"
In Corriere Della Sera, another cartoon showed Jesus trapped in
his
tomb, unable to rise, because Ariel Sharon, rifle in hand, is sitting
on the sepulcher. Sweden's largest morning paper, Dagens Nyheter, ran
a
caricature of a Hassidic Jew accusing anyone who criticized Israel
of
anti-Semitism. Another leading Swedish paper, Aftonbladet, used
the
headline "The Crucifixion of Arafat."
If the misreporting and bias were
limited to one or two newspapers or
television programs in each country, it
might be possible to shrug
them off. But they are not. Bashing Israel even
extends to local
papers that don't usually cover foreign affairs, such as
the double-
page spread titled "Jews in jackboots" in "Luton on Sunday."
(Luton
is an industrial town in southern England.) Or the article in
Norway's leading regional paper, Stavanger Aftenblad, equating
Israel's
actions against terrorists in Ramallah with the attacks on
the World Trade
Center.
Grotesque and utterly false comparisons such as these should have
no
place in reporting or commenting on the Middle East. Yet although the
French court ruling -- the first of its kind in Europe -- is a major
landmark, no one in France seems to care. The country's most
distinguished newspaper, the paper of record, has been found guilty
of
anti-Semitism. One would have thought that such a verdict would
prompt
wide-ranging coverage and lead to extensive soul-searching and
public
debate. Instead, there has been almost complete silence, and
virtually no
coverage in the French press.
And few elsewhere will have heard about it.
Reuters and Agence France
Presse (agencies that have demonstrated
particularly marked bias
against Israel) ran short stories about the
judgment in their French-
language wires last week, but chose not to run
them on their English
news services. The Associated Press didn't run it at
all. Instead of
triggering the long overdue reassessment of Europe's
attitude toward
Israel, the media have chosen to ignore it.
Mr.
Gross is a former Jerusalem correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph
and the
New York Daily News.
HAT TIP: Mara
UPDATE: JUNE 6th
SILENCE ON FRENCH COURT RULING
While this is an encouraging sign that Europe is waking up to the vitriolic anti-Israel content in its media, it's disturbing to note that this important ruling received almost no media coverage - in Europe or the U.S. None of the major wire agencies, and none of the major American news outlets (with one notable exception) has carried this story.
The French case focused upon a particularly troubling 2002 Le Monde article, 'Israel-Palestine: The Cancer', that described the Jews as 'a contemptuous people taking satisfaction in humiliating others... imposing their unmerciful rule.' Tom Gross notes in a Wall Street Journal article that while the Le Monde piece was bad, it was
no worse than thousands of other news reports, editorials, commentaries, letters, cartoons and headlines published throughout Europe in recent years, in the guise of legitimate and reasoned discussion of Israeli policies.
HonestReporting has continually critiqued problems in the British media (see recent examples here, here, and here), as well as problems in Sweden and Austria.
Gross cites more examples of the hateful anti-Israel and anti-Jewish material filling European media, including these editorial cartoons:
GREECE - Ethnos, April 7, 2002
IDF soldier: "Don't
feel guilty, brother.
We were not in Auschwitz and Dauchau to suffer, but to
learn"
ITALY - Panorama, front page, April 4, 2002
Baby
Jesus: 'Surely they don't want to kill me again?!'
GREECE - Eleftherotypia, April 1, 2002
'HOLOCAUST
II': 'War machine of Sharon is attempting
a new Holocaust, a new
genocide'
Earlier this year, a US State Department report on global anti-Semitism found a significant increase of European incidents. European media was found partly culpable in the report:
These media attacks can lack any pretext of balance or even factual basis and focus on the demonization of Israel.
The recent French court ruling against Le Monde is an important opportunity for HR subscribers to publicize this problem of anti-Israel media bias in the European media.
ACTION ITEMS:
1) Write a letter to the editor, noting the French ruling, the State Dept. anti-Semitism report, and the general problem of European anti-Israel media bias. Use some of the examples provided above.
2) Contact your local editor directly, requesting a reprint of Gross' Wall Street Journal article.
Thank you for your ongoing involvement in the
battle against media bias.
Comments