To: Brith Sholom Media Watch Subscribers
From: Jerry Verlin, Editor (jverlin1234@comcast.net)
Subj: Brith Sholom MediaWatch Alert #664, 9/22/13
WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: A U.N. affiliate this week cited Egypt’s destruction of smuggling tunnels under its border with Gaza as “leading to shortages and higher prices [in Gaza] for basic goods.” CAMERA contrasted the paucity of Western media coverage of this with the “hue and cry, outrage and indignation” accompanying Israeli defense of its civilians from rockets from Gaza. So this week we look back at how the Inq cast the reality of those tunnels – “Israel says tunnels” – when it was Israel, not Egypt, that was trying to plug them.
This Week Not In The Inq: Gaza Tunnel Destruction By Egypt
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In an internet blog “Snapshot” on Tuesday (“Where’s the Coverage? And the Flotillas? Egypt Cracks Down on Gaza,” 9/17/13), CAMERA quoted a U.N. affiliate that
[Gaza border] closures, along with the large-scale destruction of smuggling tunnels that were a major supply route into Gaza, are leading to shortages and higher prices for basic goods.
OCHA [the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs] estimates that fewer than 10 tunnels are operational, down from 50 in recent weeks and 300 before June . . . .
CAMERA, noting that Arab and Jewish media have covered the story, compared the paucity of Western media coverage generally to the “hue and cry, outrage and indignation” that bursts forth “when Israel tries to protect its citizens from thousands of rockets, missiles and terrorist attacks from Gaza.”
Two such Philly Inquirer (“Inq”) campaigns which we’ve covered in this media watch have been over
[1] Israel intercepting a Turkish “aid flotilla,” which led off with a huge hysterical Inq front-page headline “Outcry, Crisis After Deadly Raid By Israel” (Inq, 6/1/10), followed by a succession of articles in the up-front news pages, many on Turkey demanding Israel apologize, followed a year later with, first, a 9/2/11 article “U.N.: Israeli Blockade on Gaza Legal” back on the Inq’s page A18, followed the Very Next Day, 9/3/11, with an article on Turkey still demanding Israel apologize on the Front Page of the Inq.
and
[2] Israel’s one-week February 2008 incursion into Gaza to stop Hamas having escalated rocket fire from lobbing small Qassams at Sderot to launching large Grad rockets at Ashkelon with a series of Inq headlines mentioning “Hamas,” “escalation” and “Ashkelon” not at all, but on three days trumpeting Abbas having [self-righteously] suspended peace talks “over Israel’s incursion into Gaza.”
So this week, let’s look back at a third instance of Inq imbalance in covering Israel’s troubles with those nice folks in Gaza – how the Inq portrayed the reality of those Gaza border tunnels back when it was Israel, not Egypt, trying to plug them.
BSMW #407 of 10/19/08 looked back at a 2004 Philadelphia Inquirer-authored news article as “a classic instance” of the Inq reporting as something merely alleged by Israel a reality reported by other news sources as fact (emphasis added):
A classic instance occurred in the Inq back on May 16, 2004, regarding tunnels which the IDF was ferreting out under Gaza’s border with Egypt. A Knight-Ridder (S.S. Nelson) article appearing inter alia in the Inq on that day stated matter-of-factly that the Gaza-Egypt border “has become crisscrossed by tunnels used for smuggling weapons and goods” from Egypt to Gaza. The not-especially-Zionist BBC had just sent a photographer along on an IDF tunnel hunt, and put on the internet tunnel photos he took along with the comment “The Palestinians with a tunnel entrance in their home are not necessarily militants or criminals. They may have come under pressure to allow the building of a tunnel.” The Conf. of Presidents’ Daily Alert quoted an Israeli paper that day that “IDF sources emphasized that the civilian population in Rafah also has suffered from the gangs involved in the smuggling tunnels, and some have even assisted Israel in revealing tunnels.”
But the Inq didn’t rest that day with the K-R article with its factual statement of the Gaza-Egypt border having “become crisscrossed by tunnels used for smuggling weapons and goods.” It supplemented its coverage with a homegrown (Matza) article (emphasis added) purveying tunnel aspects at least SEVEN TIMES as allegations of Israel:
**** Sub-head: “Israel is knocking down nearby houses that THE ARMY SAYS are used to hide smugglers’ tunnels.”
*** Accompanying IDF drawing: “… a diagram showing what ISRAELI DEFENSE FORCES SAY a typical smuggling tunnel looks like.”
*** Par. 3: “[the border road] overlays a network of tunnels used to smuggle weapons to the Palestinians, THE ARMY SAYS.”
*** Par. 6 “… houses that THE ARMY SAYS are used to hide tunnel openings….”
*** Par. 8: “… the army, which SAYS it has uncovered more than 80 tunnels along the Philadelphi Road in the last three years ….”
*** Par. 9: “The ARMY SAYS that, while the tunnels have been used to transport automatic rifles, ammunition and explosives into the strip, heavier armaments … could soon be coming through ….”
*** Par. 10: “Citing recent intelligence reports, ISRAEL SAYS it has information that the heavier weapons are being sent from Iran, through the Lebanese group Hezbollah, into Egypt and are destined for Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other Palestinian extremist groups.”
This “Israel Says” Inq piece was written by an award-winning Inq investigative reporter from a vantage point not of Callowhill Street but from the Inq’s own then on-the-scene Israel beat. Why have it? Like the BBC on the scene, might not the Inq have looked an “Israel Says” tunnel or two in the mouth?
On Tuesday this week, 9/17/13, Alarabiya.net (cited in the Conf. of Pres. Daily Alert) reported that
One of the factors that led to [Egypt] losing control over the Sinai during the era of Hosni Mubarak is that he overlooked Hamas’ smuggling operations and the digging of tunnels.
And that
… Hamas finally saw that Egyptian troops advanced quickly in the Sinai and succeeded in destroying tunnels.
It’s just speculation, of course, but if the Inq still had its only-such-place-in-the-world Jerusalem Bureau, and had it reported from there this week that Egypt was destroying tunnels under its border with Gaza, would the Inq have written “Egypt says tunnels” seven times in that article? I think not. That’s not an endorsement of the Inq et ilk’s balanced reporting on actions by Arabs. It’s an indictment of the Inq et ilk’s imbalanced reporting on actions by us.
Regards,
Jerry