Very few casual readers of the American mainstream press will ever develop a critical view toward Israel and sympathy for the Palestinians. But readers of even centrist and right-of-center publications in Europe like, say, The Economist and the Financial Times, to say nothing of left-of-center papers, tend to be opposed to Israeli policies in the West Bank and express some degree of concern for the oppressed Palestinians.

Naturally, Israel and its apologists claim that is because European reporters are anti-Israel and not anti-Semitic. It is never Israeli policies and their transmissions into the homes of Europeans that has turned most Europeans pro-Palestinians. No, nothing as simple as destructive Israeli policies could ever be at fault. Rather it is a “new anti-Semitism” they like to claim that has infected European journalism.

No thoughtful person, even a strong supporter of Israel, would subscribe to this theory and it is clear that even the most hawkish apologists of Israel don’t. They know that it is Israeli policies and not journalistic bias that it is at play. And that if a great many of Americans knew about these policies and particularly if such knowledge was accompanied by harsh images, then the solid support that Israel has in the United States would gradually slip away.

The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, the destruction of Beirut and the Sabra and Chatila massacre of Palestinian refugees, was a traumatic event for the Jewish state in American public opinion. The U.S. press did not shy away from critical coverage and the images presented an image of Israel that threatened to undue most of the goodwill that Israel has cultivated in the West. I wrote about Time magazine’s coverage then as a reflection of a once honest U.S. press (it’s in the archives somewhere).

While the 1982 invasion was a turning point of Israel’s image in Europe, in America Israel’s supporters realized that public advocacy on behalf of Israel must extend to the U.S. media. And by advocacy, Israel’s supporters intended to intimidate any press institution that would repeat the critical coverage seen emanating from Beirut. Any press critical of Israel and seen as sympathetic toward Palestinians would face an organized effort to tame itself or face boycotts. This practice is long rooted in the pro-Israel community. In his memoir The Prince of Darkness, the late journalist Robert Novak writes about organized community boycott threatens against newspapers that ran his column which on occasion was critical of Israel.

But it was post-1982 that saw an increase in such censor tactics. Supporters of Israel became gatekeepers blinding American of inconvenient truths.

The 1980s saw the formation of several groups dedicated toward monitoring the media and reporting on “bias” against Israel. CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America), COMA (The Committee on Media Accountability) and FLAME (Facts and Logic About the Middle East) were all started for such a purpose and once reporting on a alleged “bias” against Israel, the message to supporters was clear: flood the newsroom with letter and phone complaints, threaten to cut off service and threaten a boycott if such “bias” continues. Sometimes demonstrations in front of news offices would ensue. These act of intimidation are very effective in taming coverage of brutal Israeli policies in the Occupied Territories.

The major test of the pro-Israel lobby came with the First Palestinian Intifidah. A non-violent movement sparked spontaneously by young Palestinians championing their right to self-determination, it was met with merciless Israeli brutality in an effort to put it down. Then army chief of staff Yitzhak Rabin uttered that there is nothing wrong with a little broken bones as the occupying IDF did just that to Palestinian youngsters. American libertarian satirist P.J. O’Rourke, who visited the Palestinian territories during the Uprising, wrote in Holidays in Hell that of all the war zones he visited Palestine was the worst. He described the Israeli beatings of Palestinian youth “bullshit.”

“This is barbarism. I’ve covered a lot of rioting and pushes-come-to-shoves, and there is no excuse for the kind of civilian-hammering by soldiers and police,” he added.

P.J. also noted the apartheid conditions in Israeli hospitals “where Arabs wounded in the rioting are treated, was a pile of shit. . . . The hospital waiting room looked like the “Colored” waiting rooms used to look in bus stations Down South.”

The Israel lobby knew it would have an image if a many Americans saw the images that P.J. did. And so they went to work. The first target was CNN:

...in the midst of the Palestinian uprising, the Likud government launched a dirty and successful campaign against CNN, accusing two of its former staff members in Israel, Jerusalem Bureau Chief Robert Weiner and correspondent Michael Greenspan, of “anti-Israel” news coverage of the intifada. The anti-CNN campaign, during which Weiner and Greenspan were branded as “self-hating Jews,” was joined by several American Jewish organizations, led by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith. It resulted in the firing of Greenspan and the reassignment of Weiner. “The hostile journalists of CNN are finally going home, ” announced a bold headline in Israel’s daily, Yediot Aharonot.

But that did not please the Zionists enough:

... on April 20, 1991, CNN broadcast a half-hour special report entitled “The Israeli Connection” and hosted by correspondent Mark Feldstein. The report presented various perspectives on the Israeli-Arab conflict and raised questions about the strength of US-Israeli ties in the aftermath of the Gulf War and the end of the Cold War. “The Gulf conflict is over now, but another, older conflict remains,” Feldstein stated. “How much longer it will do so may well depend on Israel’s willingness to do what it has so far refused—change the status quo.

This was too much to stomach for the usual chorus. AIPAC’s newsletter, Near East Report, said that CNN “is a home for Israel bashers. ” This ignores the fact that CNN’s correspondent, Wolf Blitzer, is a former editor of that same newsletter, and one of CNN’s “special investigators,” Steven Emerson, is better known as a long-time anti-Arab propagandist.

Commentary magazine carried a special report entitled “CNN vs. Israel. ” It accused CNN of conducting a campaign against the Jewish state. This was despite the fact that a few months earlier, under pressure from the Israeli government, CNN reassigned its producer in Jerusalem, Robert Weiner.

Such efforts are designed to make CNN like other US news outlets, march to the tune of what one might refer to as the Israeli PC (politically correct) line. It insures that an American supporter of Israel who might, after watching “The Israeli Connection,” have developed (God forbid!) some doubts about the Likud government’s commitment to peace or the strength of American-Israeli ties, can relax. The report was, after all, nothing more than an anti-Israel plot.

Such tactics are clearly effective. One CNN executive once told the New York Times that the network receives as much as 6,000 e-mails a day following a report critical on Israel.

The charge of anti-Semitism is something no respectable media organ wants and that is why Zionists uses it so frequently.

The neo-conservative weekly Commentary, previously owned by the American Jewish Committee, accused the big three networks of anti-Semitism for their coverage of the 1982 Israeli invasion penning an article titled “J’accuse” in the fashion of Emile Zola’s pointing to French anti-Semitism in the famous Dreyfus affair. The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) with its brilliant Beirut correspondent Peter Jennings was attacked at the “Arab Broadcasting Company” and Jennings was vilified for the rest of his life by such fanatical Zionists outlets like The New Republic.

These tactics continue to this day

In May 2003, the pro-Israel Committee for Accurate Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) organised demonstrations outside National Public Radio stations in 33 cities; it also tried to persuade contributors to withhold support from NPR until its Middle East coverage becomes more sympathetic to Israel. Boston’s NPR station, WBUR, reportedly lost more than $1 million in contributions as a result of these efforts. Further pressure on NPR has come from Israel’s friends in Congress, who have asked for an internal audit of its Middle East coverage as well as more oversight.

After seeing journalists fired, funds drying up and stations the subjects of boycotts, demonstrations and accusations of anti-Semitism; is it any surprise that today’s American journalists are so afraid of strongly criticizing Israeli policies?