A few months ago at this site, out of a growing concern that a small but vocal segment of American progressives were making common cause with virulent anti-Zionists, I laid out "The Liberal Case for Israel."
In my column, I argued that Israel's extraordinarily progressive record on a wide range of social and economic issues -- from gay rights to women's choice to universal health care to immigrant empowerment -- implored liberals like myself to support the Jewish State. I demonstrated why Israel is, in many ways, a liberal Mecca... uh... Paradise.
But my column also begged a critical question: With its remarkably progressive polity, why do so many of Israel's loudest critics come from the American Left?
I'm not qualified to expound upon the dynamics of the anti-Zionist groupthink of radical academia, nor understand its persistent preoccupation with Israel's reluctant occupation of lands it captured in its defensive struggle for existential survival during 1967's Six Day War.
Neither can I comprehend how this tiny nation (Israel can fit into Lake Michigan!), within a vast sea of countries that conspire toward its annihilation, can be considered the Goliath in that overused Biblical metaphor. (And remind me again whose flag bears David's star?)
I can, however, dissect one of the troubling sources of the confounding disconnect between Israel's liberal policies and American liberals' support.
And borrowing from the text-speak of my teenage daughters, I will call it "TMMMI": Too Much Media Mis-Information.
Now, I'm not one of those malcontents who complain incessantly about a liberal or mainstream or corporate media conspiracy. With a few notable exceptions, media outlets are rarely driven by ideological agendas.
However, since the time of Gutenberg (Johannes, not Steve), the media has been driven -- even animated -- by controversy. As the yellow journalists of the last fin de siècle proved, controversy sells papers. And in the current era of decimated news budgets and intense, instantaneous competition from the often-angry, always-polarizing blogosphere, news editors are further incentivized to publish provocative pieces that will generate the maximum number of hyperlink clicks.
So, for instance, while there may be thousands of instances of the Israeli military taking extraordinary precautions to protect innocent bystanders when they act to defend themselves from terrorist attacks (often by forces that don't value human life), the American media is much more likely to focus attention on the much rarer episode of a young soldier overreacting or making a split-second mistake.
Of course, I don't pretend that Israel is perfect. Like the U.S., Biblical literalists and far-Right politicos hold disproportionate political sway and regularly stoke public anger by demonizing their perceived enemies.
But far too often, the American media holds the Jewish State to a far different -- and far more unfair -- standard than other Western democracies, and certainly than other countries within its region.
Take, for example, the imperative issue of women's rights. Israel is a pro-choice, pro-maternity-leave, pro-equality beacon of feminist progress within a grim and shadowy region, a region whose ingrained culture often subordinates and disempowers women, who can be arrested -- or even beaten -- for such simple offenses as driving or failing to cover one's face.
Yet if you were a casual American media consumer, you might think that Israel was one of the world's prime culprits in the international subjugation of women.
In recent weeks, it's been widely reported by the American media that Israel's ultra-Orthodox (über-fundamentalist) leadership had forced bus lines that ran within their communities to segregate the sexes, sending women to the back of the bus. Indeed, one of Israel's loudest critics, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, cited these segregated buses as an indication of Israel's rightward lunge and an explanation as to why many American Jews were "just drifting away" from support of the Jewish State.
Such rhetoric is extremely misleading. Unlike the media's implications -- and Friedman's direct swipe -- the segregation of buses is widely unpopular in Israel, engaged in by a small, radical fringe of the ultra-Orthodox community. Segregation in public busing was declared illegal by Israel's highest court and has been denounced vociferously by a broad swath of Israeli political leaders from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ("Fringe groups must not be allowed to tear apart our common denominator. We must preserve public space as open and safe for all citizens of Israel), to opposition leader Tzipi Livni ("Those who relegate women to the back of the bus consign them to the edge of society.") Even the country's ultra-Orthodox Chief Rabbi pronounced that segregated buses are contrary to Jewish law.
Now compare Israel's consensus reaction against female segregation to the American Right's recent response to the latest Rush Limbaugh episode: El Rushbo's well-reported slander of a young woman, whose advocacy for contraceptive insurance coverage deemed her, in Rush's jaundiced eyes, a "slut" and a "prostitute."
House Speaker John Boehner termed Limbaugh's language "inappropriate." (As conservative columnist George Will commented, "Using the salad fork for your entrée, that's inappropriate. Not this stuff.") Likely Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney meekly suggested that "slut" and "prostitute" were "not the language [he] would have used." And presidential contender Newt Gingrich took this as yet one more opportunity to criticize the "liberal media."
See no evil... Hear no evil... And evil.
Did the media take this opportunity to suggest that American society is dramatically retreating on women's rights?
Of course not. The Rush incident has been rightly cast as yet another example of how the GOP's right-wing is far out of touch with society's mainstream, and how its national leadership risks the party's viability by its failure to forcibly reject such unpopular rhetoric.
There's no question that extremist forces also make mischief in Israel, as they do in every country since the dawn of civilization. Reporting on their activities is not only fair game, it's critical to the functioning of an open and transparent democracy.
But focusing disproportionate attention on the flaws of the radical Israeli fringe and failing to report them in the context of Israel's broad and loving embrace of progressive values is not only unfair; it's destructive to the decades-old and much-valued alliance between American liberals and the Jewish State.
And it's up to us to keep the record straight. Please join me.
(Interest in debating this issue? Click here to join me in an interactive video debate of "The Media's Double Standard for Israel," using Punndit.com, a breakthrough new online interactive video technology.)
Follow Jonathan Miller on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RecoveringPol
some turn to fascism and explicit antisemitism calling for the Jew as a human being, i.e. his physical elimination.
Other, a little more refines, might not seek the annihilation of the Jew, but they seek to destroy the Jew as a Jew. They don't want to see religious Jews nor nationalists ones having their own state. They want the Jews to be citizens first. Citizens only. In other words, they want they human being to stop being a Jew.
These are the Liberals, who might not want to kill the Jew, but they simply want him to stop being one. so they deny the Jewish people as a people, they oppose the idea of Jews having their own sovereign state, They criticize the Jews in ways they don't criticize anyone else etc.
It is wrong of you to agrue that a desire for Israel to enter into a fair and lasting peace with the Palestinains is equal to a desire for Jews to stop being Jewish... unless you are making some sort of backhanded insinuation that Jews must occupy and control other peoples throuugh violence as part of their intrinsic nature, which is both false and insulting.
"It is wrong of you to agrue that a desire for Israel to enter into a fair and lasting peace with the Palestinains is equal to a desire for Jews to stop being Jewish" - only I did not argue such a thing. Calling for the one state "solution" is not calling for peace, but for the destruciton of the Jewish state. Calling for the actual implementation of the claim for the right of return is not promoting peace. Justifying terrorism is not promoting peace.
Check your self and maybe you'll see why your "criticism" is much more than that. read Sartre to find out what is it exactly.
"It is wrong of you to agrue that a desire for Israel to enter into a fair and lasting peace with the Palestinains is equal to a desire for Jews to stop being Jewish
Really? “persistent preoccupation with Israel’s Reluctant Occupation”? Only one of numerous pronouncements so utterly devoid of historical accuracy or honesty it's astonishing! Israel as bastion of progressive liberal thought, rights, & justice? Is the world then to ignore the overview of Israeli actions and treatment of Palestinians? There IS a media “double-standard” regarding Israel, hiding/misrepresenting acts of Israeli brutality, racism & crimes from Americans!
An unbiased historically accurate overview of Israeli actions over a half century, plus even a cursory reading of recent events w/Israel making no substantive efforts to negotiations toward a viable, sovereign, Palestinian state, quite the contrary, should answer why “radical academia”, the “American Left” & people across the political/cultural spectrum and around the world, including many Jews, voice the truth; as others say Israel is sowing seeds of its own destruction!
There would be a far different view of Israel if they worked toward a sovereign Palestinians state with security for both people; the entire world would support and guarantee peace and end to decades of violence.
continued.....
http://www.hrw.org/legacy/english/docs/2004/02/20/isrlpa7581.htm
http://www1.american.edu/ted/ice/olive-tree.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSlFR541Uoo
It was called the Oslo Accords. The Palestinians refused to adhere to any of the interim agreements they signed. After numerous two state offers, they rejected all of them and declared war on Israel in direct violation of the peace treaties they signed. I am sure you were going to mention this.
On any objective scale, israel's critics and enemies are less liberal than israel, even under its current right wing leadership.
Examples please.
No problem and Israel gets what in return. Now spell out exactly what's on offer.
Is it a full and lasting peace end to all wars of annihilation demilitarisation of all Palestine. ROR for the 900000 Jews ethnically cleansed and dispossessed post 48 and reparations of 300 billion dollars they are owed.
Is it the end of Arab hatred on palestine tv and palestine press and school books for Jews is it the acceptance of the Jewish state and for Jews to live in Palestine too with full equal rights. Is it the renunciation of tel aviv and the dead sea as being in Palestine. Is it access to all holy Jewish sites including the temple mount
Is it Israel on a PALESTINAIN map of the region and acknowledgement of the Jews connection to the land for 4000yrs
If not. Forget it. No deal. Keep trying to kill Jewish civilians and keep losing land that's not yours anyway
You can stop right there -- We know, Dearheart, we know.
Well done, CJ. A very nice demonstration of the similarity between the arguments of today's GOP and today's anti-Israelis.
An excellent question, Mr Miller, that you have posed in your well thought out article on the media's double standard. I also have no answers but continually stare in confused wonder why the left is so susceptible to misinformation, distortion, manufactured historical fact, hate, and lies. Could it be that the reason why the liberal left has become anti-Zoinist (and often don't even know the meaning of the word 'Zionism') and are at times anti-Judaic as well, is that, like the far right, they are really authoritarians and totalitarians?
It makes it difficult to be a liberal when those who support liberal policies appear just as rigid and dimwitted as those on the far right.
Screwing over the world, laughing behind their backs, and then complaining when the structures they destroy collapse on them.
Awesome. You can't make this stuff up, folks. And it just comes to squiems naturally.
What occassion is that?
Really Jonathan? We might image that? We might really imagine that the American media consumer believes that Israel treats women worse than any Muslim nation?
I think the opposite is true.
On the other hand, Israel's treatment of Palestinian women is abhorrent, regardless what sort of costume they wear.
We should all work to see that the treatment of Muslim women improves, and step one is Stop dropping bombs on them".
During the Intifada, Israel killed 248 Palestinian women. But Palestinians killed 290 Israeli women.
Any idea how that could be? Israel has all those guns, tanks, weapons of war. How did the Palestinians manage to kill more Israeli women?
Might have something to do with targeting policies. Israel targets combatants, while trying to avoid hitting females - that's why 95% of the casualties of the Intifada were male, mostly fighting age. Palestinians, on the other hand, have a different policy. The central objective of a suicide bomber is to kill as many women and children as possible. That's the whole point.
Different outlook on life, I guess.
We should all work to see that the treatment of Israeli women improves, and step one is: Stop naming streets and universities after suicide bombers.
meanwhile, shariah law continues throughout Arab countries, including in Palestinian villages, and Israelis treat them badly? There have been many incidences when Muslim women, pregnant and with small children, are in cars with their husbands who are on terrorist watch lists, trying to cross an Israeli checkpoint, and when the Israeli soldier tells them they can all go through except the husband, who must stay behind, know what the husband does? He takes the car with him and makes his pregnant wife and small children walk the remainder of the way. Because these Muslim women are not allowed to drive cars as dictated by their communities.
step one, then? their husbands letting them do simple things. like showing their faces in public, speaking to strangers, or driving cars. but hey, if you want to continue to be ignorant, then the pro-palestinian media has done its job.
UN Security Council Resolutions 42, 43, 44, 46, 48, 49, 50, 53, 54, 56, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, 66, 72, 73, 89, 92, 93, 95, 100, 101, 106, 107, 108, 111, 113, 114, 127, 138, 162, 171, 228, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 240, 242, 248, 250, 251, 252, 256, 258, 259, 262, 265, 267, 270, 271, 279, 280, 285, 298, 313, 316, 317, 331, 332, 337, 338, 339, 340, 341, 344, 346, 347, 350, 362, 363, 368, 369, 371, 378, 381, 390, 396, 408, 416, 420, 425, 426, 427, 429, 434, 438, 441, 444, 446, 449, 450, 452, 456, 459, 465, 467, 468, 469, 470, 471, 474, 476, 478, 481, 483, 484, 485, 487, 488, 493, 497, 498, 501, 506, 508, 509, 511, 515, 516, 517, 518, 519, 520, 523, 524, 529, 531, 536, 538, 543, 549, 551, 555, 557, 561, 563, 573, 575, 576, 583, 584, 587, 590, 592, 594, 596, 599, 603, 605, 607, 608, 609, 611, 613, 617, 624, 630, 633, 636, 639, 641, 645, 648, 655, 659, 672, 673, 679, 681, 684, 694, 695, 701, 722, 726, 734, 756, 768, 790, 799, 803, 830, 852, 887, 895, 904, 938, 1039, 1052, 1057, 1068, 1073, 1081, 1095, 1109, 1122, 1139, 1151, 1169, 1188, 1211, 1223, 1243, 1254, 1276, 1288, 1300, 1310, 1322, 1328, 1337, 1351, 1397, 1435, 1559, 1583, 1648, 1701, 1860,