[Peace-discuss] Letter to DI

[C. G. Estabrook]

Excellent.  Amazing what the wire-services get away with, without criticism.  --CGE


David Green wrote:
> The DI’s exclusive reliance on AP articles to inform readers regarding 
> the Middle East and the Israel/Palestine conflict in particular often 
> leads to gross distortions. In general, the emphasis is on Arab 
> terrorism and Israeli suffering, regardless of the context of Israeli 
> occupation and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, neither 
> of which are discussed in any depth.
> For example, the DI writes headlines that grossly sensationalize events 
> with propagandistic language. More specifically, on February 15^th the 
> DI carried an AP article titled “Hezbollah’s threats echo across the 
> globe; Israel on alert.” One would think that it is Israel that is 
> occupied, and that it is Lebanon that invaded and destroyed Israel in 2006.
> In addition, the article contains the following unproved assertion: 
> “Hezbollah has retaliated in the past for Israeli attacks … The 1994 
> bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires (that killed 85) 
> followed Israel's capture of a senior Hezbollah leader, Mustafa Dirani 
> …” This often-repeated fabrication is intended to demonize Iran, and is 
> part of a larger campaign to promote an attack on that country. It has 
> been most recently deconstructed by Gareth Porter in /The Nation 
> (/http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080204/porter). There is no evidence 
> that Hezbollah perpetrated this bombing.
> The DI owes its readers a more accurate rendering of both historical 
> context and current events in the Middle East. It should be an 
> embarrassment to a “world class university” that its newspaper does no 
> more than repeat the propaganda of the mainstream media. The editors owe 
> their readers a retraction and an apology.