israelinsider: "With coverage like this…"

Cynthia Yacowar-Sweeney is a Montreal-based PR communications professional and a research associate of Canadian Institute for Jewish Research (CIJR). She monitors and comments on Mideast media reports.

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"With coverage like this…"
By Cynthia Yacowar-Sweeney May 14, 2001

Suzanne Goldenberg has good reason to celebrate. The Guardian's Jerusalem correspondent was recently honored with the London Press Club's prestigious Edgar Wallace award for outstanding writing. The judges commended her coverage of the Middle East as "exemplary examples of courageous and objective journalism".

Unfortunately, Goldenberg's readers have no reason to rejoice in her honor. They are being misinformed on a continual basis by her distortion and misrepresentation of the news. Let's take a look at some of her recent "objective" articles on Israel.

Ms. Goldenberg turned the Palestinian bus driver, who in February mowed down and killed eight Israelis at a bus stop near Tel Aviv, into the victim of the attack - he was depressed. "The carnage was far from being the calculated aim of a dedicated terrorist," wrote the "objective" Ms. Goldenberg, suggesting it was an accident, despite the driver's own remorseless claim of having planned the attack.

She also downplayed the number of Israelis killed, writing in a March article that during several weeks in the Intifada, more Israeli citizens died as a result of domestic violence than by drive-by shootings in the West Bank or bomb attacks inside the borders of the Jewish state.

And her April 12th article "Jewish pupils urged to visit Hebron" is riddled with falsehoods and bias. Ms. Goldenberg begins by writing that Sharon was "unfazed by the bloody consequences of his morning stroll around a shared holy site in Jerusalem," implying that he is not bothered by Palestinians terrorizing and killing Israelis, and that he is unmindful to Palestinian deaths as well. She is erroneously acting as judge and jury. Once again, this is scarcely objective journalism.

Anyone with passing knowledge of the evolving Mideast situation would have established that the "bloody consequences" were not a result of Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount, but of Arafat's decision to resort to violence. In late March, Edward Walker, a senior U.S. administration official, said that the Intifada was planned after the failed peace talks at Camp David last summer. PA communications minister Imad Faluji admitted in early March during a PLO rally in a South Lebanon refugee camp, that the Intifada was planned in advance and had nothing to do with Sharon's "stroll." The recently published Mitchell Committee Report confirms this.

Despite this mountain of easily-accessed evidence, Ms. Goldenberg continues to stress that Sharon's visit "set off the uprising which has claimed 460 lives, mainly Palestinian." And yes, "mainly" Palestinians have died because they have chosen to place themselves in danger by attacking Israelis, whereas the Israeli dead are given no choice. Would Ms. Goldenberg be satisfied if more Israelis were killed, thereby evening out the score?

She complains that "Sharon has now called on Jewish school children to make pilgrimages of their own: to Hebron, one of the crucibles of the Palestinian uprising." Why shouldn't Jewish school children make pilgrimages to Israel's second holiest city? "These are our deepest roots where the Tomb of the Patriarchs is located," Sharon said in an April Ha'aretz interview. Abraham specifically bought the land, the field of Machpelah in Hebron as a burial place for his wife and later for himself, and in perpetuity for his family. It was in Hebron where King David was crowned and began ruling some 4,000 years ago. There was a continuous Jewish presence in Hebron until the Arab riots and pogroms in 1929 finally forced the Jews to flee. When they returned after the 1967 war, Israel did not evict Arab residents of the old Jewish area, but built a new neighborhood on the outskirts of the town. That neighborhood, the symbol of 4,000 years of Jewish presence in Hebron, is now viewed by journalists like Ms. Goldenberg as an obstacle to peace.

Is this what the London Press Club considers award-winning journalism? Seems so. Roy Greenslade, one of the judges who awarded Ms. Goldenberg the Edgar Wallace trophy, wrote in the May 7th Guardian edition, "A good award went to a good woman who won it on merit." The Guardian, the BBC, and now the London Press Club. There certainly is nothing great coming out of "Great" Britain.