(Writen by a Jew)The Zionist Connection II:What Price Peace?by...

(Writen by a Jew)
The Zionist Connection II:
What Price Peace?
by Alfred M. Lilienthal


Part Two. The Cover-Up
Chapter X
Terror: The Double Standard

And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand.
- George Bernard Shaw. Caesar and Cleopatra
IT IS NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE to pick out the one particular subject of Middle East reportage the media has most slanted and distorted. But certainly the manner in which the use of violence has been presented probably has had the most influence in formulating American public opinion.
The media has succeeded in getting Western man to accept a double standard: one, that Jews and Zionists have been freedom fighters in pursuit of a moral, legal, historical imperative, namely, the establishment of their own state, Israel. On the other hand, the media has stressed that when Palestinians resorted to armed violence to regain their homeland, they were terrorists. Whereas the Hitler experience was readily invoked to condone Zionist intemperate acts, the desperate frustration of being deprived of their homes for thirty years, and any hearing for their grievances, was deemed no excuse for Palestinian excesses.1 The choice of words and pejorative adjectives, the shadings, the explanatory material spelling out the particular incident, and the amount of sympathy employed in describing the victims were all instrumentalities in applying this double standard.
As an example, few voices were allowed to be heard in dissent of the totally accepted Zionist labeling given the October war. One of these appeared on WEEI, the CBS outlet in Boston, three days after the fighting erupted. Following four callers, who were to varying degrees pro-Israel, the moderator introduced a soft-spoken voice unmistakably Indian or Pakistani, who complained of the use of slanted language by the reporters. He stated that the moderator had no right [357] [358] to call the war an act of aggression when all Egypt and Syria were trying to do was get back their own territory. Moderator Howard Nelson tried unsuccessfully to rebut the gentleman by reading the dictionary meaning of the word "aggression," totally refusing to take into consideration the initial 1967 Israeli seizure of Arab lands. The persistent questioner countered by pointing to the persistent media slanting. "Why is it, when Israelis hijack a Lebanese plane and force it to land in Israel, newscasters call it a 'diversion,' but when the Palestinians engage in air thievery, it is called 'hijacking.' Why," he asked again, "is there this double standard?"
A study 2 made of U.S. press reportage showed that although all acts of terrorism were generally bemoaned, Israeli actions were usually justified as responses to 'intolerable situations." The Washington Post, for example, justified the 1973 Israeli assassinations in Beirut as "the best kind of terrorism," since they killed "the worst kind of terrorists."3 In editorials dealing with the commandos, 95.2 percent of the coverage by the New York Times, 91 percent by the Washington Post, and 100 percent by the Detroit Free Press was against commando terrorist activity. While condemning the commandos, the Times did manage to publish three features indicating sympathy for the plight of the Palestinian refugees as refugees. The Washington Post had three editorials and one feature on the refugee problem.
Under rules of the media, the Israelis are "freedom fighters" and the Arabs are "terrorists," the Israelis "make reprisals" while the Palestinians "commit atrocities," the Arabs constantly stand vilified, the Israelis glorified. As stated in an October 1968 "Letter to Christians" signed by sixty-six ministers from nine denominations:
Westerners in general are already aware of what the Israeli feels: pride that he is once more, after so long, master in Palestine, where he no longer need apologize for being Jewish. But Westerners are not so aware of what the Arab feels: resentment at losing his land, humiliation at military losses, frustration at being unable to make his claims understood to the rest of the world....... Westerners should understand that the Arabic term for the underground fighters,fedayeen, means "those who sacrifice themselves," and that the Arabs compare them to the underground fighters in Europe during the Nazi occupation.4
This double standard came into play long ago and slowly permeated reporting from the outset of the struggle in Palestine, helping to mold the popular impression of events there. Most people became conditioned to believe that it was the Arabs alone who resorted to [359] violence. But the record of the Zionist use of violence in behalf of their cause, carefully blacked out from public surveillance,5 is a lengthy one that could be traced back to the days of the British mandate...