Yesterday, 23rd October 2012, Haaretz (an Israeli newspaper) reached a new low in journalistic ethics when the front page headline linked “apartheid” with “Israel”. Not surprisingly, the article about Israel’s “racism” was written by one Gideon Levy, a reporter who has previously been described as a virulent guilt-ridden self-hating Jew. As it happens, Levy wrote a pitiful article just two weeks ago, decrying “yellow”, sensational and inaccurate journalists, after an article appeared linking his (Levy’s) father to the Nazi party and having been a Nazi collaborator. Levy denied the claims. His scathing criticism of the ostensibly inaccurate journalism apparently did not come home to roost. It escaped him.
There are only three possibilities for linking South African apartheid with Israel: Ignorance of apartheid, ignorance about Israel, or racist anti-Semitism. As Levy is an Israeli, and claims to carefully check his sources, I can only conclude that he is a racist himself. A racist anti-Semite.
Haaretz was once Israel’s quality newspaper. The journalistic ethics favored justice, social justice, equality, liberty, democracy and more. It was once a respectable newspaper. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) it is dying. Now it seems that the editors and/or shareholders will pull any trick to attract readership. But they have lost their way.
The Haaretz article is based on the results of a survey of Israelis’ attitudes to Arabs. Because Haaretz (and Levy) wanted to grab as much mileage as possible from the skewed the results, the front-page (!) news item was spread over two pages, and included the questions and brightly colored graphs depicting the results. The questions were carefully crafted to obtain the desired anti-Israel results – and they succeeded. We do not know the sample size, nor are we informed as to whether those surveyed were given some (any?) background to the issues before answering the questions.
Israel deserves better from Haaretz. Unfortunately, that has not happened in a long time and, it seems, it’s only going to get worse before the paper dies.
The worst thing about Levy’s article, and the Haaretz newspaper in general with its anti-Israel bias, is that its reports are pounced upon with glee by the anti-Israel press, and published and paraded in foreign news sites in order to show how corrupt/bad/racist/apartheid etc. Israel is.
And if you stop to question their thesis, or their biases, they say “But it was an Israeli who wrote these things! He can’t possibly be anti-Israel, so it must be true”.
This article has been reported in probably almost every foreign newspaper. The UK Guardian and Independent made a great tzimmes of it, as you can imagine.
At an Honest Reporting Conference a couple of years ago, one of the speakers said that the most dangerous outlet for Israel was Haaretz. Never a truer word was spoken.
Haaretz has done a lot of good for Israeli democracy. Unfortunately. the good is buried deep below the bad that Haaretz has done. The newspaper has probably caused more harm to Israel than even The Guardian and The Independent and the New York Times together.
The sample size was 503. Any idea where you can view the actual questions online?
I saw the entire article including the questions (some? all? I don’t know) in the Hebrew edition of the newspaper. I do not know if it was all translated for their print edition or even the web edition. An example of one question, if I remember correctly, was: “If Israel were to annex the West Bank, should the Arabs there get voting rights in Israel?” The Israelis voted a resounding “NO”. What did the surveyers expect? For comparison: If Mexico had attacked the USA, and lost, and then the USA were to annex say, Yucatan, should those Mexicans get USA voting rights? Duhhhh
The exsiptere shines through. Thanks for taking the time to answer.