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August 19, 2005
Withdrawal Amnesia
Earlier, MK wrote about ABC reporter Terry Moran's amnesia concerning Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank and Gaza during the Oslo years.
It seems the editorial writers at the Los Angeles Times have been similarly impaired by a case of lapsed memory. Today's Op-Ed states:
This historic withdrawal is Israel's first from land on which Palestinians hope to build their state.
What about Israel's historic withdrawals during the Oslo years, when Israel withdrew from major Palestinian population areas, including Ramallah, Kalkilya, Jenin, Nablus, most of Hebron, Gaza City and Jericho, totaling 40 percent of the West Bank and much of Gaza?
This forgetfulness is reminiscent of an earlier LA Times news report. On May 2, 2004, correspondent Laura King stated in a news article:
If the withdrawal [from Gaza proposed by Sharon] takes place, it would be only the second time in Israel's history that the nation voluntarily gave up lands seized in the 1967 Middle East War -- the first being Israel's withdrawal from settlements in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.
Will Israel's "historic withdrawal" from Gaza today similarly be dropped from journalistic memory in coming years? Will we one day be reading LA Times accounts about future West Bank withdrawals as if they too are a first?
Posted by TS at August 19, 2005 10:54 AM
Comments
It's not amnesia. It's dumb-as-a-boot ignorance of the story they are covering.
I meet reporters on a regular basis here in Israel. I'm frequently interviewed by them for 'first-person' stories. And I'm endlessly appalled by the brazen know-nothingness that infects a significant proportion of them. That, plus the way some of them share the same factual nonsense that seems to go round and round. To me, this indicates that where they drink is where they learn. Palestinian activists and PA flunkies understood this long ago, which is why the American Colony Hotel in East Jerusalem is so significant as a source for the some of the poisonous narrative that eventually reaches the pages of Western papers and electronic media.
Posted by: Arnold Roth at August 20, 2005 02:03 PM
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