We complain over and over about the dishonesty of the media. Do we really understand just how much damage they do? Caroline Glick does:
Over the past eight years of the jihad against Israel, among countless examples, three instances of open media collusion with Israel’s enemies stand out for their strategic impact on the course of events. First there is the al-Dura affair. It was followed by the mythical “Jenin massacre” in April 2002. That in turn was followed by the fabricated “massacre” at Kafr Kana in Lebanon in July 2006.
The al-Dura story solidified the Palestinian narrative of victimization by Israel just months after they rejected statehood and peace at Camp David [and became the emblematic justification for the intifada, the murder of the Israeli reservists in Ramallah in 2000, and the decapitation of Daniel Pearl — ed]
When the so-called Jenin massacre was reported in April 2002, the IDF was in the midst of Operation Defensive Shield. Just before the Palestinians began making allegations of an Israeli massacre, IDF forces uncovered documentary evidence proving that the Palestinian war against Israel was run by the PA and Yassir Arafat. By fabricating the massacre, the PA was saved from being delegitimized as an actor in Washington. The Israeli peace camp was also resuscitated from its death throes.
As the Winograd Commission documented in its final report on the Second Lebanon War, the media reports of the fabricated massacre of Lebanese civilians by an IAF bomber in Kafr Kana in South Lebanon caused US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to end US support for an Israeli military victory over Iran’s Lebanese proxy and to pressure Israel to accept a cease-fire leaving Hizbullah intact. [my emphasis]
Technorati Tags: media, Israel, Caroline Glick, Mohammed Dura, Kafr Kana, Jenin massacre
The lesson of this is that Israel must better learn to prepare for the Media being used in support of the other side should there be another major outbreak of violence. We need a level of sophistication that can think more than one step ahead. We need too leaders determined to achieve our goals, and not be deterred by negative media reports which stir world opinion against us.