THE CARTER CONTROVERSY

Blind New York Times Continues Attacks on Jimmy Carter
by Patrick O’Connor
January 08, 2007

Printer Friendly Version EMail Article to a Friend

SOMETIMES DEALING WITH THE TRUTH IS DIFFICULT FOR AMERICANS, AND THIS IS ONE OF THOSE ISSUES THAT IS NOT SIMPLY BLACK AND WHITE. RIGHT OR WRONG JIMMY HAS OPENED THE FORUM FOR DEBATE.

CARTER CONTROVERSY GOOGLE NEWS SEARCH

The assault on Jimmy Carter and his new book which criticizes Israeli policy, Palestine Peace not Apartheid, has been led by many of the usual, uncritical, knee-jerk Israel supporters - Alan Dershowitz, Martin Peretz and Abraham Foxman. However, the campaign to discredit Carter among more thoughtful, less partisan Americans is led by powerful, mainstream institutions like The New York Times, that are respected for their seeming objectivity and balance.

In the January 7, 2007 Sunday Book Review, after the dust settled from weeks of frenzied coverage by other major media outlets, the Times made its bid to pronounce the “final word” on Carter’s book. In the review Jews, Arabs and Jimmy Carter,[1]Times Deputy Foreign Editor Ethan Bronner rejected the more hysterical claims that Carter is anti-Semitic, but simultaneously dismissed Carter’s book as “strange” and “a distortion,” and described Carter, the only US President to have successfully mediated an Arab-Israeli peace agreement, as suffering from “tone deafness about Israel and Jews”.

If Carter is “tone deaf,” Bronner’s review provides yet more evidence that The New York Times is willfully blind to Palestinians. New research detailed below shows that Times’ news reports from Israel/Palestine, which Bronner supervises, privilege the Israeli narrative of terrorism, while marginalizing the Palestinian narratives of occupation and denial of rights. Bronner himself has quoted eight times more words from Israelis than from Palestinians in 18 articles he wrote for the Times since mid-2000.

The Times paved the way for Bronner’s review with two news articles[2]and a blog posting.[3]While allowing Carter space to defend himself, the articles and blog posting focused on attacks on Carter by eight public figures, and included defenses by just two people. As usual, no Palestinians were permitted to comment. The Times’ blog posting noted that the controversy was unfolding during a holocaust denial conference in Iran, hinting at an unspecified link with Carter’s book.

In his review, Bronner constructs a deceptive sense of balance by rejecting both sides’ more controversial positions. He writes that Carter’s use of “apartheid with its false echo of the racist policies of the old South Africa” constitutes “overstatement” that “hardly adds up to anti-Semitism.”

Bronner derides Carter’s book as characterized by “misrepresentations”, and having “a Rip Van Winkle feel to it”, while simultaneously acknowledging that “Carter rightly accuses Menachem Begin … of deception regarding” settlement expansion, and that “his chapter on the endless humiliation of daily life for the Palestinians under Israeli occupation paints a devastating and largely accurate picture.”

Yet Bronner still minimizes Palestinians’ “endless humiliations” by devoting just two sentences to them, and he writes, with no sign of irony, “that Carter is right that insufficient attention is being paid, but perhaps that is because his picture feels like yesterday's story, especially since Israel's departures from southern Lebanon and Gaza have not stopped anti-Israel violence from those areas.”

Most of the world recognized that Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza did not end Israel’s occupation or control of Palestinian lives there, nor significantly lessen daily hardships. Bronner avoids addressing Carter’s central argument, that Israel's refusal to fully withdraw from the Occupied Territories is the main obstacle to a negotiated settlement.

Palestinians would be justifiably outraged to learn that their continued daily hardships are “yesterday’s story.” Mirroring elements of the arguments of Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League,[4]Bronner seems to see “today’s story” as radical Islam and terrorism, as he laments that Carter’s book on Israel/Palestine fails to also cover the Iranian revolution, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban’s rise, Al Qaeda and Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

One can only imagine the hysterics that would have arisen at the Times had Carter not ignored the right of return of Palestinian refugees and Israel's discrimination against its Palestinian citizens.

Bronner has written 18 articles on Israel and Palestine for the Times since July 30, 2000. In them he quoted 1226 words from Israelis, and just 145 words from Palestinians.[5]For example, in the Week in Review on July 30, 2000, after the failure of Camp David, and two months before the outbreak of the 2nd Palestinian intifada which has continued for the last six and half years, Bronner counseled that “no explosion… occurred, nor is chaos expected any time soon.” The peace process’ “positive direction in the long term is clear.”[6] Bronner quoted 228 words from Israelis and 67 words from a Palestinian in that less than prescient analysis.

During the same period, Amira Hass, an Israeli reporter for Ha’aretz Daily living in Ramallah, was comparing the situation to that before the outbreak of the first intifada, warning against the assumption that “confrontation is not feasible”, and arguing that “Rebellion is not planned from above, and the moment could come when the people who were not afraid of IDF rifles will not be put off by those wielded by Palestinian police.”[7]

In 2003, Bronner wrote a glowing review of The Case for Israel by pro-Israel hatchetman Alan Dershowitz.[8]Assessing Dershowitz’s book, alongside a book by Yaacov Lozowick, Bronner called them “intelligent polemics.” He offered not a single criticism of Dershowitz, saying his book made many “well-argued points,” and Dershowitz “knows how to construct an argument.” He described Dershowitz as a “liberal” “on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.” In contrast, Professor Norman Finkelstein devoted an entire book, Beyond Chutzpah, to documenting the errors, fabrications and outright plagiarism in The Case for Israel. “Liberal” Dershowitz defends torture, and suggested Israel destroy entire Palestinian villages in retaliation for suicide bombings.

It’s no surprise then that the news reporting Bronner oversees leans heavily on the Israeli narrative. Searches with Lexis-Nexis Academic identify 935 articles published between December 1, 2004 and November 30, 2006 by the Times correspondents based in Israel/Palestine, Bronner’s area of oversight.[9]Of those, 341 articles (37%) mentioned the word terrorism, 259 (28%) mentioned terrorist, 183 mentioned suicide bombing (20%), and 359 (38%) mentioned Palestinian attack(s).[10]In contrast, only 156 of the 935 articles (17%) included the dominant Palestinian experience of occupation, and 115 articles (12%) mentioned the word occupied. This overwhelming focus on terrorism, Palestinian attacks and suicide bombings occurred during a two-year period when Israel tightened its siege on Palestinians, sinking Palestinians further into poverty, and Israelis killed 903 Palestinians, approximately half civilians, while Palestinians killed 81 Israelis, 60 of whom were civilians, according to the Israeli human right organization B’Tselem.[11]Palestinians committed eight suicide attacks that resulted in 34 of the 81 Israeli fatalities.[12]

Israeli abuses of Palestinian rights are even harder to find than Israeli occupation in New York Times news reports. Over two years, the Times used the word illegal (as defined by international law or Israeli law) in just 55 articles to describe Israeli offenses against Palestinians[13](5.9%). International law relating to Israel/Palestine was mentioned in only 14[14]of 935 articles (1.5%),[15]the Geneva Conventions in one article (0.1%),[16]collective punishment in 12 articles (1.3%), right of return for Palestinian refugees in 14 articles (1.5%), discrimination against Palestinians in four articles[17](0.4%), and apartheid in three articles (0.4%). Though settlement(s) were mentioned in 318 articles (34%), as noted above, they were infrequently described as “illegal.” Settlement expansion and settlement growth appeared in just six articles each[18](0.6%). Even Palestinian poverty and unemployment were mentioned in only 13 and 18 articles respectively.[19]

In short, the entire Palestinian experience is marginalized in New York Times news reports from Israel/Palestine. The words and concepts that Palestinians continually invoke to describe their lives, including apartheid, are almost never found in the Times. Jimmy Carter claims that Americans are poorly informed about Israel/Palestine in part because “the major newspapers and magazines” exercise “self-restraint” in their reporting. Therefore, anything other than denial of Carter’s thesis by the Times would constitute an admission of its own failure.

Despite a facade of balance and moderate positions, Ethan Bonner’s review of Jimmy Carter’s book represents yet another example of the mainstream US media’s willful blindness on Israel/Palestine. Bronner wields the Times’ power in a bid to restrict acceptable discourse on Israel/Palestine by hiding the Palestinian experience from the American public.

Fortunately, the US public seems not to be buying it. Instead, they’re buying Carter’s “strange” book, now number five on the Times bestseller list for hardcover nonfiction.


Patrick O’Connor is a New York City-based activist with Palestine Media Watch (www.pmwatch.org) and the International Solidarity Movement (www.palsolidarity.org).
[1]http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/books/review/Bronner.t.html?em&ex=1168232400&en=f236d4df09fdf9c8&ei=5087%0A

[2] Carter View Of Israeli' Apartheid' Stirs Furor, Julie Bosman, The New York Times, December 14, 2006, and Former Aide Parts With Carter Over Book, Brenda Goodman and Julie Bosman, The New York Times, December 6, 2006.

[3] Carter’s Rhetoric of Apartheid, Tom Zeller, December 13, 2006, http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/12/13/carters-rhetoric-of-apartheid/

[4] Judging a Book by Its Cover and Its Content, Abraham Foxman, Anti-Defamation League, November 13, 2006, http://www.adl.org/israel/carter_book_review.asp

[5] It could be asserted that Bronner is unfairly penalized for reviewing four books by Israelis and one book by a Palestinian. However, eliminating those five reviews worsens his ratio, yielding 1045 words quoted from Israelis, and 97 words quoted from Palestinians.

[6] Camp David Myth-Busting; Nothing Succeeds Like a Failure, Ethan Bronner, Week in Review, The New York Times, July 30, 2000.

[7] Reporting from Ramallah, Amira Hass, September 20, 2000 dispatch, pgs. 64-65, Semiotext(e)

[8] The New New Historians, Ethan Bronner, The Book Review, The New York Times, November 9, 2003

[9] 380 by Steven Erlanger, 438 by Greg Myre, 51 by Dina Kraft, 29 by Ian Fisher, 26 by Craig Smith, four by John Kifner and four by James Bennet.

[10] 499 articles mention attack(s). A review of each one revealed that 359 mentioned Palestinian attack(s), 136 mentioned Israeli attack(s), and 73 mentioned Hezbollah attack(s).

[11] http://www.btselem.org/English/Statistics/Casualties.asp

[12] January 18, 2005 (1), February 25, 2005 (5), July 12, 2005 (5), October 26, 2005 (5), December 5, 2005 (5), December 29, 2005 (1), March 30, 2006 (4), and April 17, 2006 (7).

[13] 112 articles mentioned the word illegal, but only 55 were about Israeli actions related to Palestinians.

[14] International law appeared in a total of 21 articles, 14 of which were related to Israel/Palestine. The rest were related to Israel and Lebanon.

[15] For more examples of this problem see International Law not Fit to Print, The New York Times and Israel/Palestine, Patrick O’Connor and Ahmed Bouzid, May 1, 2005, http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0501-28.htm

[16] The Geneva Conventions were mentioned in a total of three articles, but one article was about Israel and Lebanon and a second about Sudanese refugees in Israel.

[17] The word discrimination appeared in seven articles, but only four articles related to Israeli treatment of Palestinians.

[18] These six articles included also the variants, expansion of settlements, and growth of settlements.

[19] Impoverished was mentioned in 18 articles, and unemployed in 12 articles.


International Law Not Fit to Print: The New York Times and Israel/Palestine
by Ahmed Bouzid and Patrick O'Connor

More than any other newspaper, the New York Times influences how policymakers, journalists and the general public understand important issues. Unfortunately, Times' news reporters continue to misrepresent the Israeli/Palestinian conflict by failing to acknowledge the broad international consensus that Israel's settlements and West Bank Wall violate international law.

Times' reporters instead present Palestinian and Israeli views using a 'he said, she said' formula, without an appropriate framework to help readers evaluate competing claims.

These shortcomings came to a head in an April 19 piece by Steven Erlanger, The New York Times' correspondent to the region, titled 'Israel, on Its Own, Is Shaping the Borders of the West Bank'.

The article's thesis that, 'the likely impact of the provisional new border on Palestinian life is, perhaps surprisingly, smaller than generally assumed,' was essentially based on the flawed analysis of the Wall's impact by David Makovsky.

Mr. Makovsky, a former Editor of the right-wing Jerusalem Post, is now a Senior Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a spinoff from the right-wing American Israeli Public Affairs Committee(AIPAC). On top of paraphrasing Mr. Makovsky's arguments, Mr. Erlanger quotes 144 words from Mr. Makovsky, versus only 23 words from Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.

'The land between the green line and the barrier is 8 percent of the West Bank,' Mr. Erlanger reported. He happily added that, 'Eight percent is half of what the figure was last summer,' ignoring the reality that Palestinians don't accept Israeli annexation of any of their land.

Mr. Erlanger wrote that the revised Wall 'route has sharply reduced the number of Palestinians caught inside the barrier: fewer than 10,000 of the two million Palestinians in the West Bank.' He then added caveats - 10,000 does not include Wall impacts on 195,000 Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, the Wall has cut off most of the Palestinians' best agricultural land, and the Israeli army can completely seal off Palestinian towns like Qalqilya that the Wall nearly surrounds. Though Mr. Erlanger never admits this, these caveats add hundreds of thousands of Palestinians negatively impacted by the Wall, making Mr. Makovsky's figure of 10,000 Palestinians totally misleading.

Worse, Mr. Erlanger notes three times that Israeli annexation of 8% of the West Bank is close to the 5% that President Bill Clinton supposedly proposed in 2000. The emphasis on annexing 5% - 8% of the West Bank serves Mr. Makovsky's partisan political agenda - lowering the bar for expectations of what constitutes a just resolution.

However, there is no justification for 'lowering the bar' when international law requires that Israel withdraw from the entire West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Furthermore, analysts like Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolition have explained repeatedly that Israeli annexation of a strategic 5% of the West Bank will leave Israel in control of the West Bank, and prevent the establishment of a viable Palestinian state.

What is crucial to note in all of this is that there is a widespread consensus that international law provides a viable framework to address most elements of the conflict. The Times, however, studiously and systematically avoids mentioning that international law -- even the 2004 ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the world's highest legal body -- deems the construction of the Wall on Palestinian land illegal.
After Mr. Erlanger's article, Michael Brown of Partners for Peace suggested to the Times that it note in articles that UN Security Council resolutions declare all Israeli settlements illegal. Daniel Okrent, the Times Public Editor responded in his April 24, 2005 column 'The Hottest Button: How the Times Covers Israel/Palestine,' by quoting the Times Deputy Foreign Editor Ethan Bronner who said, 'We view ourselves as neutral and unbound by such judgments.

We cite them, but we do not live by them.'

Bronner's response is very telling and quite typical of the types of responses the mainstream media gives its critics when it has no answer. Instead of answering Mr. Brown's point that the Times systematically ignores UN resolutions and international law, Mr. Bronner accuses Mr. Brown of wanting the Times to 'live by them,' and then proceeds to vehemently assert that the Times will not bend to doing that!

On a positive note, Mr. Okrent left the door open to improving the Times coverage of Israel/Palestine. In response to the observation that a Ramallah-based correspondent might see the conflict differently from those based in West Jerusalem, Okrent wrote, 'The Times ought to give it a try.'

Readers should hold the Times to Okrent's proposal.

Ahmed Bouzid is President of Palestine Media Watch --

http://www.pmwatch.org/