On CAMERA: [The New York Times] Hedging the Truth
by Andrea Levin

July 1, 2002

Public indignation at the New York Times' coverage of the Arab-Israeli
conflict has erupted in reader boycotts and loss of advertising for the
newspaper. Much of that ire is focused on the paper's undeniable
amplifying of Palestinian grievances and minimizing of Israeli
suffering. Reporting in one key two-week period (March 28-April 11)
sharply demonstrated the bias.

At a moment when Israel was enduring mass terrorist killings, burying
its dead and tending to its bereft and wounded and when, in response,
its military was moving against terrorist bases, the Times carried just
five human interest stories devoted exclusively to Israeli suffering.

By contrast, fourteen human interest stories focused solely on Palestinian
distress or on terrorists and their families.

Revealing as well of the paper's frequently hostile approach to Israeli
concerns is its handling of veteran Times correspondent Chris Hedges,
who publicly indicts Israel with patently false charges. In a May 2002
lecture at Dartmouth College headlined "Israel and the Palestinians:
The New Apartheid?" Hedges told young listeners Israel treats Palestinians
like South Africa did its Black population.

He had earlier also caused a furor in the fall of 2001 with an article
for Harper's Magazine entitled "A Gaza Diary: Scenes from the
Palestinian Uprising." Chief among his allegations of cruelty by the
Israel Defense Forces was his claim that Israeli "soldiers entice
children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport."

The malevolence of the accusation is apparent in its obvious falsity.

On the day in his "diary" on which he supposedly witnessed multiple
murders of children, one youth was reported killed in what the New York
Times itself and other outlets reported as a violent, rock-throwing
melee.

Hedges embellished his lurid claims with the assertion that Israeli
soldiers use "silencers" when shooting, a claim rejected as ludicrous by
Israeli officials - not one of whom was consulted or quoted in the
article. Silencers are, of course, not used by soldiers on guard duty
such as in the Gazan scene described by Hedges, but rather by elite
units in special operations.

At another point, Hedges echoes without challenge the charge by a
Palestinian that his brother was killed by Israelis while "playing a
game of soccer." Yet according to the New York Times and numerous other
news outlets, the brother was a Hamas member killed in a violent clash.

Hedges was equally reckless about other Israeli conduct in Gaza. He
quoted the mayor of Khan Younis claiming that Israel steals Palestinian
water. The mayor said Israel "built a pipeline in 1994 to carry the
water [from Gazan wells] into Israel."

In fact, the Israeli Kissufim pipeline pumps water from Israel into
Gaza; no water from Gaza is pumped into Israel. Indeed, questioned
about the water claim, Palestinian Water Commissioner Nabil A-Sharif
flatly contradicted the charge, stating that "water is never taken from Gaza
and brought into Israel."

Hedges' "diary" was littered with such bogus assertions, among them
accusations that Israel "would not allow" Gazan refugee camps to expand
nor Gazans to dig new wells. Israel repeatedly tried, as is well known,
to improve the living conditions of those in the camps, including
attempting to move them into new homes - but the Palestinians
themselves, at PLO direction, resisted such efforts. (In correspondence
with a Times editor in 1994 responding to CAMERA complaints about
another distorted article on Gaza, Hedges himself wrote: "The PLO did
resist Israeli attempts to move Palestinians to housing units. And many
people do charge the PLO with keeping Palestinians in squalor to prove
a political point.")

As for well-drilling, the Palestinians -- not the Israelis -- are
entirely in control of such activity in Gaza, as they have been since
Israel handed the area over to the Palestinian Authority eight years
ago.

The inflammatory Harper's article attracted immediate interest in some
quarters. Not surprisingly, National Public Radio promptly invited
Hedges to appear on its interview program Fresh Air, where he repeated
the incendiary charge of child killing and added that Israeli presence
in Gaza is comparable to the imperial British Raj in India. Anti-Israel
websites were also enthusiastic about the piece.

While Harper's, an opinion magazine, is well known for its bias against
Israel and its slipshod attention to factual accuracy, Hedges' gross
disregard for journalistic standards clearly called into question his
suitability for reporting at the New York Times.

In response to a detailed letter of concern to this effect to the
Times, News Editor William Borders wrote: "I don't see anything about the
[Harper's] article that raises a question about the suitability of
Chris Hedges for New York Times assignments in the Middle East or anywhere
else in the world. And I don't see anything in it that impugns his
professionalism."

And so it is that Hedges continues to report for the newspaper,
recently profiling admiringly the knee-jerk critic of Israel,
Henry Siegman,whom he describes as deploring the "glaring moral
failure of American Jewish leaders" to understand the "repression
meted out to the Palestinians..."

The Times' satisfaction with Hedges is symptomatic of the chronic
penchant for anti-Israel distortions that has stirred public fury at
the paper.
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