Qassam or not Qassam

Finally, Israel advocates try to cozy up to the media

Written by Shlomo Kapustin
Tuesday, 07 April 2009

TORONTO – Anderson Cooper stood, facing the cameras, second take not quite complete. CNN’s silver fox newshound was in Israel to cover the hostilities between Israel and Hamas that began last December, in which Israel, facing rocket attacks from Gaza, launched a military campaign, dubbed Operation Cast Lead. And in his report, he described the Qassam rocket, a Hamas staple, as “homemade.” For Aryeh Green, director of MediaCentral in Israel, who was watching in the wings, an alarm went off. He sidled up to Cooper.

“I have no agenda here,” he said, “but something doesn’t sit right…. How can you keep calling them ‘homemade’? Cookies are homemade.”

Sure enough, when the report aired, any similarity to baked goods was left on the cutting room floor: the Qassams were now “made in small workshops.”

Green was in Toronto recently to speak about his work. His talk, Israel in the News … A War of Ideas, was sponsored by the Speakers Action Group and the Canadian Jewish Civil Rights Association, and took place at the law offices of Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP in downtown Toronto. John Thompson, director of the Mackenzie Institute, introduced Green.

“I talked with Anderson a number of times in our first two days,” the media veteran said. The last-minute linguistic switch was no coincidence; it was the fruit of days of information, access, services and materials that Green’s organization offered to the CNN newsman, including a trip to the Ashkelon police station to view actual Qassam rockets and to be briefed on the damage they can inflict.

“Building relationships is the founding principle on how we can somehow influence these journalists,” said Green.

For more than 30 years, Palestinians and their “fixers” have catered to the foreign press, which tend to congregate at the American Colony Hotel in East Jerusalem. As a Middle East bureau chief for one of the three main wire services told Green, “they embrace us, and that’s something you’ve never done.” Hence MediaCentral’s tagline: “Embracing the journalist.”

At the same time, Green said that he has always believed that accuracy is Israel’s best ally and that his organization, which receives no funding from the Israeli government and was established at the initiative of HonestReporting, accomplishes its goals by not having a political agenda.

“The majority of journalists are professionals who are doing the best job that they can. Our goal is to help them achieve their own goals – to report in an accurate and balanced way.”

His “friend” Oakland Ross, of the left-of-centre Toronto Star, for example, is “not anti-Israel, but is a product of both his environment and intellectual milieu. Palestinians are the good guys, and Israelis are aggressive, violent occupiers.”

In distinguishing between “pro-Palestinian” and “anti-Israel,” Green said that many of the foreign press in Israel simply accept the Palestinian viewpoint in forming their opinions about the Middle East.

The battle for headlines, Green said, is perhaps the most important one today, and it’s not only a Jewish issue, but also one that faces the world at large.

“The media isn’t a monolith, but there is a trend … to minimize the existential threat not only against Israel, but also against the rest of the Western world.”
Last Updated (Wednesday, 08 April 2009)

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