The anti Israel media. NY Times

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1027506424746

BRET STEPHENS'S EYE ON THE MEDIA: Great white hopes
By BRET STEPHENS

Here's a story for The New York Times. On July 18, 1937, the Times published an article by Judah L. Magnes, founder and president of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, on the subject of "Palestine Peace Seen in Arab-Jewish Agreements." At the time, Magnes had lived in Palestine for 15 years, devoting part of his life to academia, the rest to building bridges with the Arab community, whose hatred of the Jews he ascribed largely to Jewish failings.

"The failure of my own people is hardest to become reconciled to," he informed the Times's readers. "With Jewish help Arab lands would have the chance of rising to their former economic, political and cultural glory. I believe that there are Arab statesmen both in Palestine and elsewhere, of sufficient stature to know that that is worth a real price....

"If a meeting of minds was possible even during the rebellion for a few Jews and a few Arabs by no means the least among their people, this should be possible today, the more so in view of the hostility which partition arouses among both peoples.... [T]here should be many opportunities for... openly negotiated agreements for limited periods between Jews and Arabs, between Jews of the world and Arabs of the world. If a first period of comparative peace from five to ten years could be established, as I firmly believe it can, there would be a necessary breathing space during which to prepare for the next five to ten years....

"It may well be that all these efforts would result in failure. But as in every effort to end war, it is our duty to make the attempt...."

WOULD THAT Magnes were alive to see his university today.

On Wednesday, within sight of the domed law school building that once housed Magnes's office, a powerful bomb exploded in a campus cafeteria, killing at least seven students and injuring almost 100, some of them Israeli Arabs. Hamas claimed responsibility; the Palestinian Authority offered a perfunctory condemnation, then rationalized the attack as just another episode in the "cycle of terror" for which Ariel Sharon is ultimately to blame.

Not surprisingly, university students and faculty are in shock: How could this happen to them? In their dispatch from Mount Scopus, Times reporters James Benet and John Kifner quote student union president Kobi Cohen as saying, "We always believed that because there are Arab students here and Arab workers, nobody will try to hurt us here." The Washington Post notes that "students said they consciously avoid trips to bars, shops, restaurants and malls in downtown Jerusalem," but that "they had few worries as they attended classes, ate meals and strolled across the 76-year-old campus."

The bombing will likely put paid to such thinking. What had previously seemed like a shield against terror now appears like a gateway to it. The accommodative attitudes encouraged by Magnes have literally blown up in the face of his successors. It did not matter to Palestinian terrorists that, in planting a bomb at Hebrew U, they were attacking the very Israelis most likely to look sympathetically on the Palestinian cause. Their aim was to kill Jews, even if it meant harming Arabs. They succeeded.

FOR MOST ISRAELIS, all this has been evident for some time, which is why they support Sharon and the unity government by a lopsided margin, and why efforts to form a new leftist coalition have gone nowhere. By and large, however, the Western news media play it differently, thereby providing crucial life support for Israel's political fringe.

In May, The Guardian hosted a "debate" between an Israeli and a Palestinian over how to resolve the conflict. The Palestinian spokesman was Yasser Abed Rabbo. The Israeli was... Yossi Beilin! Apparently, the organizers of the event believed that he is a representative Israeli voice.

The Economist routinely makes mention of Meretz leader Yossi Sarid as head of the country's "opposition," without giving much indication that Sarid's views are about as representative of the Israeli body politic as Ralph Nader's are of America's. Last month, Reuters headlined a story "Israelis Debate Wisdom of Gaza Attack" It quotes Shimon Peres, Haim Ramon, and Sarid condemning the Shehadeh killing, but fails to cite a single Israeli defending it. Meanwhile, Western reporters and columnists hostile to Israel routinely cite Ha'aretz writers Gideon Levy, Akiva Eldar, Doron Rosenblum, and Amira Hass to provide cover for their views.

In fairness, the existence of a national unity government means that the media are to some extent obliged to go to the fringe in order to obtain a contrary political view. But this does not explain either the frequency with which they employ this recourse or the weight they give to fringe views.

Consider "Arafat and peace; the big myth," a June 24 column by The New York Times's Nicholas Kristof.

"In several columns in recent months," he writes, "I sneered at the Palestinian leader and reiterated the common view that he had rejected very generous peace deals proffered by the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak.... But prompted by various readers, I've been investigating more closely and interviewing key players."

Kristof concedes that the peace plan offered by Barak was "courageous and path-breaking." Yet plainly that was not enough: "it still would have left the Palestinian state shorn of at least nine percent of the West Bank." Then too, "the common view in the West that Arafat flatly rejected a reasonable peace deal, and that it is thus pointless to attempt a strategy of negotiation, is a myth."

How does Kristof know this? Well, because Yossi Beilin says so. "The mistake was to put all the blame on Arafat," Kristof quotes Beilin as saying. "Maybe he deserved part of the blame, and maybe it is true that the Palestinians did not initiate ideas, but it was a tactical mistake to put all the blame on one side."

One wonders just how much "investigating" Kristof did to reach his conclusions. He describes Beilin only as a "former Israeli negotiator," thus giving the impression that Beilin is an impartial authority on the subject of Camp David rather than a vocal left-wing ideologue.

Kristof quotes Clinton negotiator Robert Malley to the effect that the idea that Palestinians "reject any peaceful two-state solution" is an "unfair and incorrect characterization," without also noting that at Camp David Malley told the Israelis that the Palestinians "want to humiliate you."

Finally, Kristof cites former foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami as saying, somewhat blandly, that "the problem with Arafat is that he's never clear." But Kristof does not mention that Ben-Ami is also on record as saying that "Arafat is not a partner. Worse, Arafat is a strategic threat; he endangers peace in the Middle East and in the world."

Given that Kristof is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who brags about the pains he took to uncover the truth about Camp David, one can only assume these oversights are deliberate. Then again, maybe not; the conclusions men like Ben-Ami and most other Israelis reached after Camp David ("We mustn't forgo Jewish and Israeli patriotism any longer, and we must understand that the blame does not always lie with us") are so radically at variance with the political hopes, ideological premises, and emotional impulses of today's liberals that it's just as easy to believe that Kristof simply couldn't assimilate the information.

It reminds me somewhat of old Marxists who cannot think politically except in terms of the class struggle. All countervailing data is either ignored or otherwise squeezed awkwardly into the same old boxes of thesis and antithesis, labor and capital, bourgeoisie and proletariat.

The fact is, while few Israelis have a clear idea of what's to come, a broad consensus has developed in this country on at least a few points: That the premises, both tactical and strategic, of Oslo were mistaken; that Yasser Arafat is not a partner for peace; that Palestinians do not recognize Israel's moral right to exist; that a policy of unilateral concessions does not abate, but rather whets Palestinian ambitions; that the issue of the territories is merely a proxy in the same old battle for Israel's survival; that the Arab-Israeli conflict is, at bottom, a civilizational one, and that the civilization that opposes Israel cannot be so easily mollified by a "rational" process of negotiation and compromise.

Instead of coming to terms with this, the media seizes on the utterances of people like Beilin so they may feel safe in maintaining their old prejudices. They foster the illusion that a philosophical divide still reflects a political divide in Israel, and that their own predilections aren't really all that out of step with the sentiments of Israel's democratic majority.

IN MAGNES'S DAY, to hold stubbornly to the view that better mutual understanding, statesmanlike compromise, and Jewish noblesse oblige toward an Arab people fallen from former glory were the essential ingredients for a peaceful settlement may have been justifiable as idealistic. In the wake of the Hebrew University attack, it just looks like intellectual flabbiness.

The pity is that, as long as the media persists in deceiving itself, it will continue to deceive its readers as well.