Ha’aretz reports:

Public trust in the media, as measured by the Israel Democracy Institute’s annual Democracy Index, dropped by 5.5 percent in the past year, from 51.8 percent in 2011 to 46.3 percent in 2012. That puts it second from the bottom of the list of institutions respondents said they trusted. The survey was conducted by Prof. Tamar Hermann.

The decline in trust in the media ran counter to the trend in this year’s survey, which saw a rise in public trust in most public institutions.

With the exception of 2011 public trust in the media has dropped every year since 2006. It reached a nadir of 33.8 percent in 2010.

The findings underscore the value of Presspectiva‘s work. Presspectiva, CAMERA’s Hebrew-language Web site, documents cases of Israel’s media failing to live up to its journalistic responsibilities.

Last month, an Israeli court dismissed the lawsuit brought by the family of pro-Palestinian activist Rachel Corrie who was accidentally killed by an Israeli military bulldozer while serving as a human shield in a military zone in Gaza in 2003 as part of the International Solidarity Movement. The judge ruled that the Israeli military was not at fault and that Corrie had put herself in danger.

Virtually all the coverage of the Rachel Corrie case – and there was tons of it – quoted the plaintiff’s attorney Hussein Abu Hussein decrying the verdict. But none of the popular press mentioned previous statements from Abu Hussein comparing Israel unfavorably to Nazi Germany.

Palestinian Media Watch translated and posted an excerpt from an interview Abu Hussein gave in July:

“Nazi Germany was a state based on the rule of law for a short while and it found refuge in the law. [However,] the State of Israel was founded from the start on robbery and theft of a nation’s homeland. Actually, the correct and true legal definition of what happened to the Palestinians is homeland theft… We suffer from a great injustice from the giant monster. This monster attacks us daily and bites into our flesh in the Negev, the Galilee, the Triangle [region in Israel], Jerusalem, and the occupied territories, the West Bank and Gaza. Every day it bites into our body.”

These comments were only covered by the Israeli press, niche publications and some blogs, including CiF Watch, an independent project of CAMERA, which posted a terrific piece.

So, if some of the attorney’s comments are worthy of coverage, why does the media ignore other, less sympathetic comments he makes?

In addition, CAMERA could find no conventional media that described the truly insidious nature of the International Solidarity Movement, which condones terrorism, nor could CAMERA locate any press piece that included this photograph of ISM “peace activists”:

Where’s the honesty? Where’s the integrity? Where’s the coverage?

On Thursday, August 30, 2012 in the print edition, and August 29 online, The Los Angeles Times ran an article about “SuperPacs” and political groups raising funds at the Republican National Convention. In the print edition, the article ran on the front page with the headline, “Money on the unofficial agenda for groups, donors” and was accompanied by a photo of two bearded men wearing kippot. Page one:

The jump page featured a second picture from the same meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition. Ask yourself why editors didn’t feature this photograph or a photo from another event on page one. Jump page:

Professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, in their controversial book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, charge that the “Israel lobby” has distorted the foreign policy of the United States in favor of Israel to the point of serious damage to U.S. interests. CAMERA research shows this book to contain fraudulent scholarship but the thesis that Jews manipulate U.S. policy for the benefit of Israel appears in the media in various forms, whether that be New York Times opinion columns or National Public Radio broadcasts.

While The Los Angeles Times article mentioned other interest groups, the Republican Jewish Coalition is the only religious group mentioned, though others held events including Christian groups like Patriot Voices and the Faith and Freedom Coalition. Even an atheist group called the Secular Coalition for America was represented at the convention, though not mentioned by The Times.

Does the fact that only a Jewish group was mentioned coupled with the page one photo — the only photo to accompany the article’s online version — play into the stereotype of rich Jews working behind the scenes to control the political system?

Professor Landis appearing in an interview in Iran’s Press TV last year

Time and again, Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma and a favorite media source on Syria, has been wrong. As excellently detailed by Jamie Kirchick, he claimed that “Western accounts of the protest movement in Syria have been exaggerated”; he argued that “el-Assad himself seems to have been shocked by the level of violence used by Syria’s security forces,” as if the strong-handed ruler was totally unaware of the activities of the forces which were under the thumb of his very own brother; and he attacked critics of Vogue‘s embarrassing paean to Bashar Assad and his wife Asma.

Regarding Landis’ unfortunate take on the Vogue fiasco, Kirchick wrote: “As with nearly everthing he writes, Landis was parroting the Syrian regime, in this case, its attempts to rouse populist anger against Israel as a means of distracting attention from its own failings.”

The New York Times, which has quoted or cited Landis on Syria five times this year, has taken a liking to the professor. In an important story about vitriolic anti-Alawite hatred harbored by Syria’s Sunni child refugees in Jordan, David Kirkpatrick relies on the oft-cited and oft-erroneous professor to falsely smear Israel with a gratuitous swipe. He writes:

The roots of the animosity toward the Alawites from members of Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority, who make up about 75 percent of the population, run deep into history. During the 19th-century Ottoman Empire, the two groups lived in separate communities, and the Sunni majority so thoroughly marginalized Alawites that they were not even allowed to testify in court until after World War I.

Then, in a pattern repeated across the region, said Joshua Landis, a Syria scholar at the University of Oklahoma, French colonialists collaborated with the Alawite minority to control the conquered Syrian population — as colonialists did with Christians in Lebanon, Jews in Palestine and Sunni Muslims in Iraq. After Syria’s independence from France, the military eventually took control of the country, putting Alawites in top government positions, much to the resentment of the Sunni majority.

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The disputed property in Ras el-Amud (Photo by Melanie Lidman/Jerusalem Post)

In a blog post about a disputed property in Jerusalem, the Los Angeles Times’ Maher Abukhater reports selectively. Writing about the eviction of members of the Hamdallah family from one room of their house in Ras el-Amud, a neighborhood in Jerusalem, Abukhater writes in the first paragraph: “The family must turn the house over to its new owners, Israeli settlers.” He continues:

After dozens of court hearings and back-and-forth lawsuits and appeals, an Israeli court decided in 2005 that Moskowitz was the legal owner of the plot located in the heart of the Arab neighborhood. . ..

Khaled Hamdallah said his family has lived on that land since 1952, long before Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967.

If the court had ruled that Moskowitz was the legal owner, then why does Abukhater refer to the Hamdallahs as owners? And while the reporter (rightly) mentions that the Hamdallah family has lived there since 1952, which he may believe is relevant to the question of ownership, he does not mention the property’s prior history. As Ynet reported:

The land was purchased by the Chabad and Wohlin Hasidic yeshivas during the Ottoman period but they lost control of the area in 1948.

The land was taken over by a man who was registered as the owner in the Jordanian Land Registry Bureau and in 1952 it was given over to the Hamdallah family. Over time additional buildings were constructed on the land and connected to one main structure.

In 1967 the yeshivas discovered what happened and filed a claim with the district court, which voided the land registration. In 1990 Moskowitz purchased the land and in 1995 filed a petition for the eviction of the Hamdallah family.

As with their earlier film, Budrus, the creators of My Neighborhood are enjoying a warm, uncritical reception in the mainstream media. PRI’s “The World,” from the BBC, PRI and the NPR affiliate WGBH, had this enthusiastic endorsement of the film about the eviction of 11-year-old “Mohammad [al-Kurd]’s family and his neighbors from [Sheikh Jarrah, in eastern Jerusalem] homes they’ve lived in since 1956, part of an ongoing push by Jewish settlers for more control over Palestinian areas.” The PRI feature details:

‘“I live in Jerusalem in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood,” Mohammad says. “This is my father. This is my library. I have lots of books.”

It’s a peaceful introduction. And then Mohammad’s life is upended.

Soon, we hear Mohammad’s grandmother shouting at Israeli settlers in 2009. . . .

You hear so often about this conflict but it’s translated into these broad political processes that people can’t really think of in tangible terms,” said Nadav Greenberg, the film’s associate producer. “Seeing someone kicked out of their home in the middle of the day, and then other families moving in in front of their very eyes is something that’s very difficult to remain indifferent to.”

Indeed, telling the story through the point of view of the grandson and grandmother definitely depicts the situation in “tangible terms.” Tangible terms, but not accurate and balanced terms. While the independent filmmakers are free to present a one-sided documentary, PRI, BBC and WGBH are obligated to maintain impartiality.

Specifically, PRI never mentions that the property in question, where the Kurds had been residing for decades, is Jewish-owned. Furthermore, while “The World” describes the disputed neighborhood as part of “Palestinian areas,” the area, known to Jews as Shimon HaTzaddik, has a centuries-old Jewish significance and presence: As detailed by former Ha’aretz reporter Nadav Shragai, writing for the JCPA:

The mixed Jewish-Arab neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah-Shimon HaTzadik has for decades been a vital corridor to Mt. Scopus, home for 80 years of Hebrew University and Hadassah Hospital. For hundreds of years the Jewish presence in the area centered around the tomb of Shimon HaTzadik (Simon the Righteous), one of the last members of the Great Assembly (HaKnesset HaGedolah), the governing body of the Jewish people during the Second Jewish Commonwealth, after the Babylonian Exile. His full name was Shimon ben Yohanan, the High Priest, who lived during the fourth century BCE, during the time of the Second Temple.7

According to the Babylonian Talmud, he met with Alexander the Great when the Macedonian Army moved through the Land of Israel during its war with the Persian Empire.8 In that account, Shimon HaTzadik successfully persuades Alexander to not destroy the Second Temple and leave it standing. According to tradition, Shimon HaTzadik and his pupils are buried in a cave near the road that goes from Sheikh Jarrah to Mt. Scopus. He appears as the author of one of the famous verses in Pirkei Avot (Sayings of the Fathers) which has been incorporated into the Jewish morning prayers: “Shimon the Righteous was among the last surviving members of the Great Assembly. He would say: ‘The world stands on three things: Torah, the service of G-d, and deeds of kindness.’”9

For years Jews have made pilgrimages to his grave to light candles and pray, as documented in many reports by pilgrims and travelers. While the property was owned by Arabs for many years, in 1876 the cave and the nearby field were purchased by Jews, involving a plot of 18 dunams (about 4.5 acres) that included 80 ancient olive trees.10 The property was purchased for 15,000 francs and was transferred to the owner through the Majlis al-Idara, the seat of the Turkish Pasha and the chief justice. According to the contract, the buyers (the committee of the Sephardic community and the Ashkenazi Assembly of Israel) divided the area between them equally, including the cave on the edge of the plot.

Dozens of Jewish families built homes on the property. On the eve of the Arab Revolt in 1936 there were hundreds of Jews living there. When the disturbances began they fled, but returned a few months later and lived there until 1948. When the Jordanians captured the area, the Jews were evacuated and for nineteen years were barred from visiting either their former homes or the cave of Shimon HaTzadik.

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One American Aegis destroyer, instead of the two oriiginally planned, will take part in the October joint exercise

In today’s print edition, Ha’aretz‘s Amos Harel disputes part of Time Magazine’s article yesterday concerning a reduction in the number of U.S. troops slated to take part in a joint U.S.-Israeli military drill this October. Harel writes:

Time implies that the reason for the downgrading of the drill — called Austere Challenge 12 — is related to differences concerning the Israeli willingness to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities in the near future. But, in practice, it is highly unlikely that these differences are the true reason.

The drill was initially supposed to take place last May, but was then postponed to October.

At the time, Israeli officials said that the October drill would be smaller than originally planned. The reason is primarily U.S. budget considerations. The decrease in the number of U.S. soldiers in Israel for the drill doesn’t carry deep significance, since the U.S. presence in Israel during the weeks of the drill is already noteworthy — and these are the critical weeks as far as the Iran strike is concerned.

Officials believe that if Israel strikes the nuclear facilities in Iran, Tehran would, in any case, accuse the U.S. of being part of the planning, pointing at the forces present in Israel at the time of the strike. From that perspective there is no substantial difference if there will be between 1,000-1,500 soldiers on the exercise, or 5,000 — the original number planned for the May maneuver.

In May, the U.S. Department of Defense released this report about budget tightening affecting drills with allies.