Soccer Dad

Reconsidering

Toward the end of the Star Trek: The Next Generation Episode, "Descent Part II," the villain Lore - android Data's "brother" - declares that he must make a "sacrifice" and destroy his "dear brother. Of course the hypocrisy of this scene is that for Lore, this is no sacrifice, it is an action to advance his own agenda.

I get a similar sense of hypocrisy when I read of journalists berating themselves for not being more skeptical of President Bush's claims of WMD in Iraq. They're not bothered so much that they're wrong. They don't mind being wrong. Rather they're perturbed that they gave the benefit of the doubt to someone who they disagree with. Does it make a difference that (except for Scott Ritter and the government of Iraq) everyone thought that the Iraq had WMD? Nope.

Why is this hypocritical? Because of another major mistake the media made. Here's Mere Rhetoric:

We now know that the Palestinians had been preparing for months to go to war with Israel:

PA Communications Minister, 'Imad Al-Faluji, visited Lebanon and spoke at the 'Ein Al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp. In his speech Al-Faluji stated that the Al-Aqsa Intifada was pre-meditated, and was the Palestinian response to their failure to achieve their goals at the Camp David negotiations. After Israel announced its intention to use Al-Faluji's words to support its response to the Mitchell Commission it was reported that Yasser Arafat pressured Al-Faluji to retract his statements. Subsequently, Al-Faluji announced that he had never made such comments. However, similar statements by Al-Faluji as well as other Palestinian leaders have been reported previously.

There are still people today who insist that Sharon's visit "caused" the five years of violence. Those are the same people who, every time that Arab and Muslim countries insist they want to wipe out Israel, talk about the "occupation" as the root cause of Arab intransigence.

Actually, it's most people today who believe that Sharon's walk is what started the "intifada," because that's what's usually reported. It doesn't make a difference what we now know (or know if we choose to) the media won't budge from its narrative. But it's wrong. Not just on account of the admissions of a member of the PA, but also from contemporaneous accounts.

And it's not just the start of the "intifada" whether it was trusting Palestinian sources about the killing Mohammed al Dura (and amplifying the grievance against Israel) or downplaying the lynching of two Israeli soldiers, the media has shown itself to be all too trusting of Palestinian claims and too accepting of the Palestinian narrative.

Events between Israel and the Palestinians, then, are governed by premises that are often biased, if not totally untrue and the media hasn't done a job of cleaning up after itself. Guest blogging at Solomonia, Second Draft's Richard Landes writes of an analogous situation :

In his book on The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn cites an experiment to illustrate the problem that people have registering information that contradicts their expectations (what he calls "anomalies" to the prevailing paradigm). The subject sat and watched pictures of playing cards flashed on a screen in front of him and identified them. In the deck were some cards with red spades and black hearts. Initially subjects ignored the anomalous data and read the cards as normal ones. Only when the picture was held up for long periods of time could the subjects identify the anomaly. Only once they readjusted their expectations did they then recognize these cards.

In the specific case of Tuvia Grossman, the media did look again, but with most of the rest of the "intifada" if the media has looked again they've merely reinforced their flawed (or dishonest) first impressions.

See Camp David: Whose story is it anyway? or Quest for Mideast Peace: How and why it failed.

In the case of President Bush the media has gone into overtime trying to show deliberate deception on the part of the President but when it comes to Yasser Arafat they've been all to eager to overlook his intransigience and his serial betrayals of peace.

I'd like to ask similar minded bloggers if you'd be interested in what I'll call the September 27th initiative.

September 27th was the day that Sgt David Biri was killed by a roadside bomb. Keep in mind 2 things. 1) September 27th was the day before then opposition leader Sharon visited the Temple Mount and 2) that a roadside bomb requires a certain amount of advance planning. Sgt Biri's death is the first of the "intifada" because the violence was planned in advance of the walk on the Temple Mount and was being unleashed already.

What I'd like to do is to collaborate with other similar minded bloggers and activists and marshal the evidence showing that the violence started prior to Sharon's walk on the Temple Mount. Then as a group we will present it to ombudsmen and ask them to assign a story setting the record straight.

Do I think that they will respond positively? No. But I think that a group of people pursuing the same goal might, at least, be able to put the media on the defensive.

I do not mean for this to be done overnight, but hope for it to come together over two or three months. So think it over. If you feel that you have something to add to this effort please e-mail me at dhgerstman at hotmail dot com

Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Posted by SoccerDad at September 30, 2005 2:55 PM