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Tuesday, May 17, 2005

My email to mainstream media

I just emailed this to MSNBC, CNN, ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the NYT, Reuters, AP and the Washington Post:

To the editor:

I am astonished that the story that can be found in http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP90805 has not been picked up by a single mainstream media outlet. Here we have the TV station run by the Palestinian Authority, whose head was appointed by Mahmoud Abbas himself, broadcasting the most vile Jew-hatred and anti-Americanism, the most extreme kind of Muslim fundamentalism, and we are proposing sending these people millions of our tax dollars? Here the PA is explicitly breaking its agreement to halt incitement against Israel, and not a word of it in the media, when Israel gets headlines by suggesting it will build some houses.

The double standard is long-standing but here, in wake of the Newsweek debacle, it is worse - it is as if everyone expects Muslims to act this way and it is not "news" that Muslims call for the genocide of Jews on TV. But recent history has shown that when these things are exposed in the Western media the incitement stops - for example, when MEMRI translated the Saudi Arabian newspaper publishing a blood-libel against Jews.

So the fact that this has not been covered yet is not only a failing of the mainstream media to report real news, it borders on irresponsibility - this time a crime of omission, not commission as in the Newsweek story.

The fact is that, as opposed to the impression one would get from reading the news, incitement against Israel and Jews on Palestinian broadcasts is now worse than it was under Arafat, yet Abbas is invariably referred to as a "moderate" leader - without any evidence beyond the fact that he wears a suit.

This is news. Please report it.

Thank you.
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As of noon today, a Google News search does not come up with a single story about this outside MEMRI, IMRI, and PMW.