My being wrong doesn't mean you are right

The government of Israel has become increasingly aggressive in trying to manipulate news coverage by labeling critical reports - or the failure to report stories the government wants circulated - as evidence of "anti-Semitism."

For example, it has

written to the BBC accusing its Middle East correspondent, Orla Guerin, of anti-semitism and "total identification with the goals and methods of the Palestinian terror groups"

because in her report on Hussam Abdu, the 16-year-old would-be suicide bomber, she noted Israel's obvious interest in the incident's PR potential and that journalists were not allowed to ask the boy questions beyond his name and age, leaving the army's version of the story the only one available. That was enough, in Jerusalem's view, to demonstrate "a deep-seated bias against Israel."

This was despite the fact that Israeli embassies around the world urged media to carry the story as part of a campaign to link Palestinian violence to Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, which would seem to show that its PR value was very much on their minds. Earlier, those embassies had called newspapers to tell them that failure to run the story about the 12-year old boy who supposedly was unwittingly carrying explosives would be regarded as showing an anti-Israel bias. When Sky News, the Times of London, and several French papers didn't follow orders, an Israeli newspaper called for their correspondents to be expelled from the country.

Israeli officials have also compiled dossiers on individual reporters in an attempt to influence their editors. Does all this work?

CNN sources say the network has bowed to considerable pressure on its editors. Israeli officials boast that they now have only to call a number at the network's headquarters in Atlanta to pull any story they do not like.

So does all this work? You tell me.

But let's be complete here. Just because the government of Israel wields the charge of "anti-Semitism" like a club in an attempt to control press coverage does not mean that anti-Semitism doesn't exist.

Burlington, Ont. (Toronto Globe & Mail, April 6) - All Canadians must fight against hatred and intolerance of the sort that spawned the firebombing of a Jewish school in Montreal Monday, Prime Minister Paul Martin said. ...

The attack destroyed the library of the United Talmud Torah elementary school, the oldest Jewish day school in the country. A message taped to the front of the building indicated the bombing was prompted by the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East and that further similar crimes were being planned.

The Prime Minister, who labelled the bombing a strike against freedom, said "the attack against a place of learning, where young children gather, is an offence against all that Canadians cherish."

But he quickly went on to decry other recent incidents that police are investigating as hate crimes, including the desecration of a Jewish cemetery in Toronto, the vandalizing of a synagogue and the attempted arson at a mosque.

The note, in French and supposedly from an outfit calling itself "the brigades of Sheik Ahmed Yassin," said the attack was in retaliation for Yassin's murder by Israeli forces.

Police, however, said they'd never heard of any such group and personally I wonder if the name wasn't made up pretty much on the spot to justify the expression of hatred.

The school's library was a total loss.