| IRWIN BLOCK | |
| The Gazette |
Thursday, October 31, 2002
Pervasive anti-Israel bias in the media is a "cancer" that is destroying much of the media's credibility and eroding support for the Jewish state, CanWest Global founder Israel Asper says.
In a hard-hitting denunciation of media coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Asper charged that "much of the world media ... have abandoned the fundamental precepts of honest reporting."
None of the major media call "the so-called Al Aqsa uprising or intifada" what it really is,
Asper said, describing it as "the current version of the Arab war of extermination of Israel and the Jewish people."
It has been going on since the 1917 Balfour Declaration promising a Jewish homeland in Palestine, Asper said, and the media are not providing this context.
"They (major media) have been taken captive by their own biases or victimized by their own ignorance," Asper alleged in a speech delivered last night to 400 people at an Israel Bonds gala reception honouring a Montreal industrialist.
Asper, president of the Asper Foundation and executive chairman of CanWest Global Communications Corp., which owns The Gazette and other Southam newspapers, cut a wide swath in his denunciation of biased coverage.
He named CBC television, the major U.S. TV networks, U.S. National Public Radio, the most influential U.S. dailies and major British media for what he termed selective, dishonest and biased reporting and use of terms loaded against Israel.
He challenged his audience to be "more aggressive and vigilant" in acting against "media bias" by protesting, canceling subscriptions and boycotting advertisers of media "guilty of dishonest reporting."
He also called for the establish ment of "honest reporting response groups" in local communities to "call to account dishonest media."
To sustained applause, he urged the audience to withhold financial support from universities that fail to distinguish between hate propaganda and honest intellectual discourse.
Asper concentrated much of his address on an analysis of
errors of omission and commission in major media reporting of Middle East issues.
"The terms 'cycle of violence,' 'moderate Arab states,' 'peace process' and 'illegal settlements' have also become tools and weapons used by the journalistic propagandists in their desire to create undeserved sympathy for the Palestinians and opprobrium for Israel," Asper said.
The continuing war "proves there is no peace process, there are no moderate Arab states, the term 'cycle of violence' is an insult to the truth and, under the Oslo agreements, there is no prohibition against Israel establishing new settlements in the territory it captured from Jordan (in 1967)," Asper insisted.
Many reporters and analysts writing about the Middle East are basing their views on "some fundamental lies," he opined
"Dishonest reporting tells you that it's about territory and Jerusalem and Palestinian statehood and alleged refugees," Asper said.
"Honest reporting would tell you that it is a war to destroy
Israel and kill or expel or subjugate all the Jews." A major "big lie" is that the conflict could be settled by "Israeli land concessions."
A second "big lie" is that then opposition leader Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem in September 2000 set off a spontaneous intifada.
In fact, according to Palestinian communications minister Imad Falouji, the uprising was planned from July 2000, when the Camp David peace talks failed.
"When Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat ... could not get the extravagant concessions he demanded from the Clinton Camp David meetings, he planned the uprising of terrorism as a means of intimidating the U.S. and Israel into giving in to his maniacal demands."
Asper cited a litany of reports or commentary that were "at best misleading, or ignorant and plain dishonest at worst."
Heading his list of errors of commission was "by far the worst offender in Canada, the CBC," which "along with the New York Times and other left-wing media, will still not label the Palestinian murderers as terrorists."
"They are terrorists, but the CBC, particularly in the person of (former Middle East correspondent) Neil Macdonald, simply refers to them as 'militants.' "
He contrasted the "hypocrisy' of the world media in condemning the recent Bali night-club bombers as terrorists but not the Palestinian bombers of Israel Passover services.
All Canadians should demand honesty in reporting and insist on Israel's right to exist.
In the face of "the most virulent vitriolic and vicious explosion of anti-Semitism" in Europe since the mid-1930s, he urged his audience to stand up and be counted.
"It's time to vigorously and vigilantly become activists."
The evening was a tribute to builder David Azrieli, 80, who has converted a Sherbrooke St. W. office building he owns into the Sofitel Montreal hotel.
