Book Review- "Can 'the Whole World' Be Wrong? Lethal Journalism, Antisemitism and Global Jihad", by Richard Landes

Part 2

This is Part 2 of my review of “Can ‘the Whole World’ be Wrong? Lethal Journalism, Antisemitism and Global Jihad” by Richard Landes. Here is the link to Part 1

Book Review- "Can 'the Whole World' Be Wrong? Lethal Journalism, Antisemitism and Global Jihad", by Richard Landes

Lethal Journalism

News consumers rightly expect reporting to reflect objective facts, and not the opinion of the reporter. So, when an unsuspecting consumer reads a narrative in not one but many MSM publications, that consumer will assume the reported facts are true. Until the 21^st century, no one had reason to believe that reporters would unquestioningly accept testimony from biased sources (i.e., Palestinian civilians) without other corroborating evidence, or report staged scenes as reflecting actual events because of some nebulous concept of artistic license as reflective of truth. Since October 7, 2023, the MSM has followed the playbook Landes describes to such an extent that it is hard to believe that his book was published in 2022. . As we have seen in the al Durah and Jenin cases, the MSM engages in a practice of reporting only the Palestinian side as fact and when reporting the Israeli side, all claims are couched as suspect (“Israeli authorities claim that …..”). Landes describes the failures of the MSM as “reporting what suits a preconceived story intended to manipulate the news consumer’s opinion and advance an agenda, rather than following the evidence, critically judging the accuracy and relevance of the data received and allowing the news consumers … to make up their own minds.”

Instances of selective reporting about Israel’s war against Hamas abound[1]. A good example is described by General Charles Wald, USAF (ret.), former Deputy Commander of United States European Command and Geoffrey Corn,. Chair of Criminal Law and Director of the Center for Military Law and Policy at Texas Tech University School of Law, in their article “Correcting the Record on the IDF and Lethal Targeting.” Wald and Corn analyze a New York Times article that suggested the IDF loosened its own guidelines in order to increase civilian casualties in its war against Hamas, in violation of the Laws of Armed Conflict. However, they point out that the NYT compared a single instance of a high civilian casualty operation against a Hamas commander to operations that occurred pre-October 7 when the landscape was entirely different. The NYT article also did not take note of or attempt to reconcile this dubious conclusion with, the many military experts who have opined that “the IDF has carried out its mission to eliminate the Hamas threat with operational and tactical excellence... despite encountering a complex urban and subterranean battlefield….” [link]

Why do the MSM engage in these practices? One reason is that the left-leaning news media that identifies as “progressive” do not want to be accused of racism by appearing to be pro-Israel and not supportive of the “oppressed” class, i.e., the Palestinians. For example, in the reporting of the lynching of the two unarmed off-duty Israeli soldiers in Ramallah on October 12, 2000. Reporters Greg Philo and Mike Berry objected to negative language used to describe the event such as “murder” and “lynch mob” when the same terms were not used to describe IDF killing Palestinians, ignoring the fact that the Palestinians were killed accidentally during military operations, not even remotely resembling the level of savagery displayed in Ramallah against unarmed soldiers in custody…” This type of moral equivalence confuses news consumers who are influenced to believe that when IDF soldiers kill Palestinians as a consequence of urban warfare, it is the same as when Palestinians intentionally kill civilians.

There is a romance to this David and Goliath storyline that encourages its adoption by the MSM. It permits the Palestinians, who could not possibly win on the battlefield against a military like the IDF, to exploit their own weakness as a tool in the fight to destroy Israel. MSM journalists support this fairytale by reporting Palestinian claims as credible, while treating Israel’s counterclaims as dubious, omitting key facts about Palestinian extremism and downplaying mistakes and slow walking their correction because many of them believe Israel as the “Goliath occupier” deserves it. Journalists believe they are leveling the playing field by promoting the Palestinian side. In so doing, they have substituted their own judgment for the truth. This is the definition of misinformation and extraordinary malfeasance.

Anti-Zionist “As a Jews”

One of the most fascinating parts of Landes’ treatise is the discussion of anti-Zionist Jews. Jews have a long history of self-criticism. This is a positive character trait and has served Jews well in many endeavors. But Landes notes a mutation that has developed among Jews on the subject of Israel’s conflict with its neighbors. It is based on the assumption (false) that “we” are entirely to blame for everything bad that happens to us and if only we “fix” ourselves, the world will respond positively. In the context of Israel’s dispute with the Palestinians, the mantra goes if only we Jews were “nicer, more forgiving, more understanding, more generous then the Palestinians wouldn’t hate us so much...” This masochistic mindset can be suicidal. Landes quotes Aharaon Megged who observed “Since the Six-Day War… and at an increasing pace, we have witnessed a phenomenon which probably has no parallel in history… an emotional and moral identification by the majority of Israel’s intelligentsia with people openly committed to our annihilation.” By the 2000s, after the media began its campaign against Israel, Jews who identify as liberals have turned to “virtue signaling” by putting distance between themselves and Israel. This mindset encourages liberal Jews to criticize the “right wing” government of Israel – as if world opinion about Israel would change if only the “extremist” Netanyahu government was not in power and if only there were no settlements in Judea and Samara (the West Bank). But these sentiments ignore the fact that the second intifada occurred when the Israeli government was left wing and had offered the Palestinians a state in exchange for peace.

In Israel there arose a movement of “new historians” comprised of Jews like Ilan Pappe and Avi Shalem who fully adopted the progressive policy of accepting everything the Palestinians say as true. Like a sick person who suffers from anorexia, these Jews “experiences Israel as a body whose inevitable imperfections, magnified by the news media”, humiliate, shame and disgust them leading them to join in the most extreme accusations against Israel such as racism, Nazism, and genocide. In order to be accepted by the liberal camp, these Jews feel that they must accept comparisons of Israel to Nazis and claims of apartheid, or be dismissed as a Zionist attempting to silence “criticism” of Israel. Rather than examine claims that Palestinians have genocidal ambitions towards the Jews, it is more comfortable to rely on the default mode of self-criticism: In other words, if only the Israelis could be good liberal Jews, the Palestinians would make peace.

Just like Jews are blamed for the actions of the Israeli government, Israel is blamed for things it does not do. But when the media accuses Israel of shooting Palestinian children “as an idle game,” as Chris Hedges did in Harper’s Magazine, it does not matter how false the claim, it’s a damning picture in a major publication.” In acceding to the MSM demonization of Israel, anti-Zionist Jews, caught like deer in the headlights, cease all critical thinking to adopt the view that provides some short term emotional comfort in appeasing their liberal comrades.

Conclusion

This review is only a summary of certain features of Landes’ work and is by no means comprehensive; Landes explores many topics and subtopics and delves into the history of anti-Israel thinking. Accordingly, this book is not a quick and easy read; rather it is a detailed academically driven discourse on the confluence of factors that have resulted in the media war against Israel that is as perplexing as it is terrifying. Since this is a complex academic work, it needs to be processed before trying to respond to anti-Israel propaganda. I recommend tackling only a few chapters at a time in order to avoid becoming overwhelmed. If you stay the course, you will come to understand the travesty of MSM reporting on Israel which boils down to the fact that the world does not very much like Jews and with the founding of the modern State of Israel, that antipathy has found a socially acceptable, even laudable, mode of expression.

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[1] The most prominent was the explosion at the parking lot of Al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza City on October 18, 2023 when the MSM immediately repeated Hamas’ claim that the strike came from Israel, although it was later determined that the strike had come from inside Gaza.