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From: leichter@yale-com.UUCP (Jerry Leichter)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Israel & the PLO: replies to various people
Message-ID: <2115@yale-com.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 3-Oct-83 20:36:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: yale-com.2115
Posted: Mon Oct  3 20:36:27 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 4-Oct-83 02:44:48 EDT
References: utcsrgv.2398
Lines: 29

Just a side note:  The New York Times correspondent in Israel for a couple of
years has been a reporter by the name of David Shipler.  (He seems to have been
replaced, and moved on; I haven't noticed his byline recently.)  Like many
American reporters, Shipler wrote quite noticably anti-Israeli, pro-Palestinian
articles.  (If you don't believe me, all you have to do is look them up and
read them.)  The reasons for this apparent bias have been discussed in many
places, and I'm not going to go into the details here; but, to put the best
light on the matter, the current view in American journalism is that one should
take any government statement with many grains of salt, and be skeptical about
any information you get that might be government -"inspired".  Since Israeli
society and government are open and democratic, while most Arab societies are
closed dictatorships, this produces the paradoxical result that less is
"believable" in Israel than in Arab states.  Anyway...  Shipler did a very
impressive reporting job on what was to be found in the portions of Lebanon that
Israel captured.  It took up about two full Times pages.  I remember being
really astounded to see an article state such terrible things about the PLO
and such good things about the Israeli troops.  My first thought was that the
Times had sent in a new reporter; but, no, there was Shipler's byline at the
top.

Finding and "objective" evaluation of what happened in Lebanon is difficult.
Everyone approaches the situation with some biases.  However, if you want to
see how the reality "on the ground" affected one person's ideas, go to the
library and start reading Shipler's stories, beginning perhaps a month or
so before the invasion, and continuing through his big article on his travels
through southern Lebanon.  It might give you some facts to think about, instead
of sitting there and attacking everything as "Israeli propaganda".
							-- Jerry
					decvax!yale-comix!leichter leichter@yale