At a recent American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee conference, spokesman Hussein Ibish, a venomous critic of Israel, expressed satisfaction with the coverage of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict by the Washington Post's "beat writers" -- the reporters in the Middle East.
Several recent stories by the newspaper's Lee Hockstader indicate why. A June 26 report on the status of the cease-fire brokered by American CIA Director George Tenet offered precisely the tilt that would please pro-Palestinian readers. Even though it is the Palestinians who have continued initiating violent attacks against Israelis with mortar bombardments, stonings and shootings, the Washington Post obscures this reality. Nor is there any hint given that Israeli dead and wounded are overwhelmingly victims of premeditated attacks, while Palestinian casualties result mainly from Israel's defensive response to assaults.
The piece both opens and closes with Palestinian perspectives. Hockstader begins in a Palestinian hospital visiting wounded teenagers whom he names and whose injuries he describes. He closes quoting two more Palestinians (with an officer in Arafat's Force 17 also cited mid-story). One says: "Everybody is fed up with the Jewish occupation. What are we supposed to do? We live in garbage. And the Israelis come with their tanks and guns. Are we supposed to sit back and accept this humiliation?" The other, a soldier in Gaza's Rafiah border area, declares according to Hockstader that keeping the peace is "virtually impossible."
There, in sum, is the Arab view: The Jews are brutal occupiers and the Palestinians are helpless bystanders, not to be held responsible for the violence and misery in which they find themselves.
Although the Post reporter mentions that roads in Judea and Samaria are dangerous and Jews have been killed and injured during the tenuous cease-fire, they are unnamed, including the "6-year-old boy shot in the chest... by a Palestinian sniper."
A June 28th Hockstader story was equally biased, once again laying the onus for progress in the Israeli-Palestinian standoff on Israel, this time with the focus on Ariel Sharon. The piece, little more than an anti-Sharon editorial, also relies heavily on the dubious journalistic practice of citing unnamed sources, making half a dozen such references - most hostile to the policies of the Israeli Prime Minister.
Hockstader says the Israeli leader's refusal to negotiate "under the threat of terror and violence " is "recalcitrance." While conceding that a "large majority of Israelis agree" with their elected leader on this matter, he nevertheless invokes an anonymous chorus of "American, European and Israeli analysts, [who say] Sharon's demand for weeks of Palestinian quiescence before making reciprocal moves is unrealistic." (Hockstader's use of "reciprocal" here is also peculiar. He obviously means something other than Israel likewise foregoing violence, as it had already done so unilaterally weeks earlier. Hockstader is implying that the Palestinians' ending their killing of Israelis should be paid for by additional Israeli concessions.)
Another unnamed "European diplomat" pronounces Sharon's cease fire goals "an impossibility and everybody knows it." The same nameless source calls for "an enabling strategy for Arafat" and declares that "the only way of moving Sharon back to the table is through international pressure." Hockstader's habit of concealing his "analysts'" identity not only enables him to impute all sorts of views to unverifiable sources, but also protects him from criticism that he relies on one-sided commentators.
But perhaps no article is more suggestive of Hockstader's sharp tilt toward the Palestinians than his July 7th human interest piece on a man just arrested by Israel on suspicion of being the Palestinian who raised triumphant, blood-drenched hands at a window of the Ramallah police station after the mob murder of two Israeli reservists on October 12, 2000. The suspect, Aziz Salha, is sympathetically portrayed as the son of loving parents who describe him as "calm, good natured and athletic" as well as one who suffers from a "severe stutter."
Hockstader then steps again into editorial terrain, writing that Salha was "as cognizant of the Israeli occupation as any Palestinian: Jewish settlements have been built east and west of his home village..." That is to say, according to the reporter's implication, the suspected Ramallah murderer committed his deed in response to oppression. But why not say Salha was, as much "as any Palestinian" a product of the Palestinian Authority's hate indoctrination, that he acted on the ferocious anti-Israel exhortations of PA school texts, PA clerics, PA leaders, PA media?
The answer is unclear. But what is clear is that such biased and shoddy reporting is unworthy of an important newspaper, read and relied upon in America's capital.
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Andrea Levin is Executive Director of CAMERA. For more information please visit the CAMERA website at www.camera.org.
Several recent stories by the newspaper's Lee Hockstader indicate why. A June 26 report on the status of the cease-fire brokered by American CIA Director George Tenet offered precisely the tilt that would please pro-Palestinian readers. Even though it is the Palestinians who have continued initiating violent attacks against Israelis with mortar bombardments, stonings and shootings, the Washington Post obscures this reality. Nor is there any hint given that Israeli dead and wounded are overwhelmingly victims of premeditated attacks, while Palestinian casualties result mainly from Israel's defensive response to assaults.
The piece both opens and closes with Palestinian perspectives. Hockstader begins in a Palestinian hospital visiting wounded teenagers whom he names and whose injuries he describes. He closes quoting two more Palestinians (with an officer in Arafat's Force 17 also cited mid-story). One says: "Everybody is fed up with the Jewish occupation. What are we supposed to do? We live in garbage. And the Israelis come with their tanks and guns. Are we supposed to sit back and accept this humiliation?" The other, a soldier in Gaza's Rafiah border area, declares according to Hockstader that keeping the peace is "virtually impossible."
There, in sum, is the Arab view: The Jews are brutal occupiers and the Palestinians are helpless bystanders, not to be held responsible for the violence and misery in which they find themselves.
Although the Post reporter mentions that roads in Judea and Samaria are dangerous and Jews have been killed and injured during the tenuous cease-fire, they are unnamed, including the "6-year-old boy shot in the chest... by a Palestinian sniper."
A June 28th Hockstader story was equally biased, once again laying the onus for progress in the Israeli-Palestinian standoff on Israel, this time with the focus on Ariel Sharon. The piece, little more than an anti-Sharon editorial, also relies heavily on the dubious journalistic practice of citing unnamed sources, making half a dozen such references - most hostile to the policies of the Israeli Prime Minister.
Hockstader says the Israeli leader's refusal to negotiate "under the threat of terror and violence " is "recalcitrance." While conceding that a "large majority of Israelis agree" with their elected leader on this matter, he nevertheless invokes an anonymous chorus of "American, European and Israeli analysts, [who say] Sharon's demand for weeks of Palestinian quiescence before making reciprocal moves is unrealistic." (Hockstader's use of "reciprocal" here is also peculiar. He obviously means something other than Israel likewise foregoing violence, as it had already done so unilaterally weeks earlier. Hockstader is implying that the Palestinians' ending their killing of Israelis should be paid for by additional Israeli concessions.)
Another unnamed "European diplomat" pronounces Sharon's cease fire goals "an impossibility and everybody knows it." The same nameless source calls for "an enabling strategy for Arafat" and declares that "the only way of moving Sharon back to the table is through international pressure." Hockstader's habit of concealing his "analysts'" identity not only enables him to impute all sorts of views to unverifiable sources, but also protects him from criticism that he relies on one-sided commentators.
But perhaps no article is more suggestive of Hockstader's sharp tilt toward the Palestinians than his July 7th human interest piece on a man just arrested by Israel on suspicion of being the Palestinian who raised triumphant, blood-drenched hands at a window of the Ramallah police station after the mob murder of two Israeli reservists on October 12, 2000. The suspect, Aziz Salha, is sympathetically portrayed as the son of loving parents who describe him as "calm, good natured and athletic" as well as one who suffers from a "severe stutter."
Hockstader then steps again into editorial terrain, writing that Salha was "as cognizant of the Israeli occupation as any Palestinian: Jewish settlements have been built east and west of his home village..." That is to say, according to the reporter's implication, the suspected Ramallah murderer committed his deed in response to oppression. But why not say Salha was, as much "as any Palestinian" a product of the Palestinian Authority's hate indoctrination, that he acted on the ferocious anti-Israel exhortations of PA school texts, PA clerics, PA leaders, PA media?
The answer is unclear. But what is clear is that such biased and shoddy reporting is unworthy of an important newspaper, read and relied upon in America's capital.
-----------------------------------------------------
Andrea Levin is Executive Director of CAMERA. For more information please visit the CAMERA website at www.camera.org.