Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 50, No. 48, Ed. 1 Thursday, November 28, 1996 Page: 2 of 48
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TEXAS JEWISH POST, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1996 ■ IN OUR 50TH YEAR! - HANUKA ISSUE
Anti-Israel Bias Taints National Geographic
By Andrea Levin
If it had only happened once that
National Geographic published a
photo-laden article on the Middle
East espousing anti-Israel themes,
its ten million subscribers could
assume the piece was a regrettable
aberration. But the venerable mag-
azine has clearly fallen into a nasty
pattern.
A 1992 article entitled “Who
Are The Palestinians" launched the
trend with a revisionist history in
which Palestinian Arabs were said
to be the descendants of Canaan-
ites, and Jews were erased from
the region’s ancient record The
Jews of modem Israel fared no
better, being cast as interlopers and
exploiters. Articles in 1993 and
1995 purveyed related themes with
Israel portrayed in one case as ex-
ploitive in its use of water resourc-
es and in another as unjust to the
Arabs of the Galilee.
1996 has already brought a
bumper crop of similar articles to
the traditionally apolitical publi-
cation. April’s “Three Faces of
Jerusalem,” July’s "Syria Behind
the Mask" and September’s “Gaza,
Where Peace Walks A Tightrope”
all manage to project a message of
Israeli wrongdoing, exploitation
and intrusion.
Alan Mairson’s Jerusalem arti-
cle is a muddle of personal preju-
dices, errors and omissions. Most
glaring is the author’s exclusion of
any reference to the unique and
preeminent ties of the Jewish peo-
ple to the city. Instead he offers the
themes of anti-Israel propagandists
that the ancient connection of the
Jews to the land of Israel ended
thousands of years ago, to be re-
sumed in modern times by dispos-
session of native Arabs Thus, read-
ers meet an Israeli Jew who sur-
vived war-torn Europe and whose
arrival in Israel, it is said, must
inevitably have trampled Arab
rights. The crude linkage scorns
fact and promotes the false allega-
tion that Palestinian Arabs paid the
price of the Nazi Holocaust against
the Jews.
Unmcntioned is the tenacious
and nearly unbroken presence of a
Jewish community in Jerusalem
through millennia, a community
that dwindled or flourished with
the ebb and flow of foreign con-
querors. Nor does Mairson tell
readers that, other than a short-
lived Crusader stale, only the Jews
have repeatedly established an in-
dependent nation there, with Jerus-
alem as the capital. Nor does he
inform readers that Jews have com-
prised a plurality or majority in the
city since the first censuses were
taken in the early part of the centu-
%
Just as the past is misrepresent-
ed, there is no sense conveyed of
the unique expressions of devo-
tion by the Jews toward Jerusalem,
whether in the thrice-daily prayers
uttered through millennia by the
religious or in the loving restora-
tion of the city by municipal lead-
ers, architects and citizens in the
years since Israel was reborn as a
modem state. The beauty of Jerus-
alem is noted, but nowhere does
Mairson point out that undercen
tunes of Islamic dominion pre-
ceding the Jewish restoration,
the city was a destitute and
neglected backwater. The
author leaves unidentified
those responsible for the
renaissance, with no
mention of. for exam-
ple, the planting of
nearly eleven mil-
lion trees around
Jerusalem, the
protection of re-
ligious sites or
the refur-
bishment
and pres-
ervation
of antiq-
uities.
I n -
stead
lim holy sites on the Temple Mount.
The author, who identifies him-
self as Jewish, conveys in detail
his discomfort with religious ob-
servance among the Jews, but is
deferential to Christian and Mus-
lim devotion. Wajeeh Nusseibeh,
for example, is identified as the
d e - scendent of a Muslim
line going back to
715 "not
kr]
oux. While he offers glimpses of the
hostile public attitudes among Syri-
ans toward Israel, he completely ob-
scures essential facts of history and
geopolitics. No fewer than half adoz-
en pages contain references to the
Golan Heights and Israeli possession
of the land, but not once does Ther-
oux indicate to readers that Syria lost
that territory as a consequence of
decades of unprovoked aggression
launched from the Golan against Jew-
ish communities.
Other violent policies of
the regime arc un-
mentioned
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Mair-
son paints
the picture. Jews are
a largely mail
lematic p
they are religious. Orthodox Jews
are presented as repellent dis-
rupters of normal, secular life. In
one passage a “young man with
glassy eyes and a green knit skull
cap" intrudes on a happy scene of
picnicking Jerusalemites when he
sets up a table with prayer imple-
ments. The offense? To encourage
passersby to pray.
Mairson makes.clear this sort of
activity is only part of the menace
posed by devout Jews, whom he
describes ominously as “an increas-
ingly powerful community" pro-
ducing large families and making
demands on the municipality. Par-
ticularly deceptive is the author's
inflated emphasis on a tiny, fringe
group, the Temple Mount Faithful
whom he casts as a threat to Mus-
%
long
after the
Prophet Muhammad
is said to have received the
wisdom of the Koran from Allah.
Nusseibeh," Mairson adds respect-
fully, “lives his life by that wis-
dom."
Muslim religious intolerance,
surging Muslim population growth
which surpasses the Jewish rate in
the city, Arab pressures on the mu-
nicipality, Arab abuses against non-
Muslims that, before 1967, deci-
mated the Christian population of
East Jerusalem, are all erased in
Mairson’s skewed portrayal of the
city.
Less dramatically distorted but
insidious as well was the story on
Syria by noted author, Peter Ther-
weD.
There
isnoth-
i n g
about
Syria's in-
clusion on
the US Slate
Department's
list of nation’s
sponsoring ter-
rorism— more
than half a dozen
terrorist organiza-
tions find safe refuge
there. Nor is there a
single reference to Syr-
ian occupation of Leba-
non and its promotion of a
drug trade there that spills
into American cities. Syria
is, in Theroux’s rendering, a
colorful, liberalizing nation,
whose misfortune it is to have
Israel on its southern border.
National Geographic's twenty-
five page story on Gaza in Septem-
ber continues the theme of Israeli
malfeasance andculpability, this time
in cruder form by photographer/writ-
er Alexandra Avakian. Once again,
Israel is cast in the role of oppressor
opposite the blameless Palestinian
victim. Regrettably, readers are also
referred to the magazine’s new inter-
net Website where further misinfor-
mation on the subject is appended
and where lesson plans are actually
provided so that teachers can pass the
magazine’s nonsense about Gaza on
to children.
Avakian ascribes all the miseries
of life in Gaza to the twenty-seven
years of Israeli occupation, and to
current Israeli policies, stressing the
allegedly malign impact of the
new government of Benjamin
Netanyahu. Nothing is said of
the much more horrendous con-
ditions that prevailed in Gaza
before 1967. Nor is the current
reality honestly portrayed.
Yasser Arafat is described as
struggling with every breath to
make life better for his people.
Avakian writes: “(Arafat] works
incredibly long hours—often un-
til three or four in the morn-
ing—tending to the details of
government. His transition from
guerrilla fighter to peacemaker
has not been easy; recent events
have made his position more
difficult as he mediates be-
tween an increasingly desper-
ate populace and Israel’s new
hard-line government."
Not a word here of what his
restive Palestinian subjectscall
the "Gazan OCtupation," refer-
ring to Arafat’s harsh and law-
less reign over them. Nothing
of the ruthless suppression of
dissent, including the repeated
detention and torture of Gazan
psychiatrist and human rights
activist, Iyad Sarraj, by the Pal-
estinian Authority or of the si-
lencing of all journalistic criti-
cism. Not a mention of Arafat's
squandering of aid money on
networks of oppressive militias
and a sprawling bureaucracy,
funds that might have been
turned to job development.
Israel is held culpable for the
general suffering, including for
the degraded water conditions,
the crowding, the psychologi-
cal pain of children and on and
on.
The proliferation of biased,
anti-Israel articles in a suppos-
edly non-political publication
such as the National Geograph-
ic may be a symptom of the
specific views of current edi-
tors at the publication or it may
be an indication of the degree
to which anti-Israel attitudes
have become established
throughout diverse parts of the
media. Whatever the explana-
tion, perhaps a revolt by con-
cerned subscribers would send
a salutary message that Nation-
al Geographic should stick to
what it knows and avoid parti-
san Middle East politics..
Andrea Levin is National
President of CAMERA, the
Committee for Accuracy in Mid-
dle East Repotting in America -
P.O. Box 428, Boston, MA
02258-0428, (671) 789-3672.
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Wisch, J. A. & Wisch, Rene. Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 50, No. 48, Ed. 1 Thursday, November 28, 1996, newspaper, November 28, 1996; Fort Worth, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth755347/m1/2/: accessed June 29, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .