Kesher Talk

MSNBC's beef with Israel: Jim Maceda of MSNBC (seemingly trying to out-do MSNBC's resident anti-Israel blogger, Eric Alterman) tries a little historical revisionism of his own. HonestReporting calls him on it.

Also from MSNBC is an example of historical revisionism by Jim Maceda, who reports under the headline "Arab Israelis Caught in Between: For 1.3 million Arabs in Israel, fear and anger mix with ambivalence." (August 16)

Maceda refers to Palestinians in 1948 who "were lucky enough to escape 'transfer' by the nascent Israeli government." Maceda offers no documentation to support this provocative accusation, and makes no mention of the fact that Israeli politicians publicly implored the local Arabs to stay.

Maceda also severely understates the amount of terror attacks that Israel has faced. He writes:

"[S]ources quoted by the Israeli Ministry of Interior claim that every terror attack inside Israel over the past 22 months has had, directly or indirectly, an Israeli Arab connection. But the numbers of those incidents remain relatively small, fewer than a dozen..."

In fact, at least 60 major attacks have occurred "inside Israel over the past 22 months," including multiple attacks in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Netanya, Afula, Kfar Sava, Rishon Lezion and Hadera. See a listing at: http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0ia50

Maceda also unquestioningly describes Arab allegations like this:

"But life is now so tense in Umm el Fahm that many Arabs don't leave their houses -- not due to any curfew, but because they fear being beaten by Israeli police or vigilantes."

However, Maceda fails to cite even one example of Israeli Arabs "being beaten by Israeli police or vigilantes." For further imbalance, Maceda's article fails to quote any Israeli officials.

See Maceda's article at: http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/795042.asp

If you believe the article is factually distorted, write to:
letters@msnbc.com
Dan.Fisher@msnbc.com

posted by Howard @ 8/20/2002 10:32:33 AM