Thursday, May 23, 2013

Are you biased against Israel? A quiz for reporters and NGO workers.

Elder of Ziyon

Yesterday I discussed the "Vulture Club" expose where some major journalists and human rights activists actively insult Israel in a private Facebook group.

You can click the graphic at the right to see the entire anti-Israel thread there. The hate for Israel on the part of supposedly unbiased reporters and activists is palpable.

Also yesterday I went into detail on  The Economist strenuously denying any anti-Israel bias, even though the article I referenced didn't even bother to pretend to ask Israeli officials for their side of the story and the wording was deliberately slanted to go beyond the evidence mentioned.

 I thought I would put together a quiz geared towards journalists and NGO workers who specialize in the Middle East, to see if they are biased against Israel:


1. Do you consider Gaza to be a virtual concentration camp?
2. Do you think that Jewish settlers regularly storm the Al Aqsa Mosque?
3. According to the Geneva Conventions, is Israel illegally occupying the West Bank?
4. Is Gaza under Israeli occupation?
5. Was the second intifada a spontaneous uprising?
6. Do you think that, in general, Jews were treated fairly under Muslim rule throughout history?
7. Are most Jewish residents of the territories from the United States?
8. Does Haaretz represent mainstream Israeli political opinion?
9. Is Benjamin Netanyahu less credible than Mahmoud Abbas?
10. Is Israel's naval blockade of Gaza illegal?
11. Do a majority or significant percentage of settlers support Baruch Goldstein's murders of Arabs in Hebron in 1994?
12. Was the Green Line a national border between 1949 and 1967?
13. Does, or did, Israel have a policy to sterilize Ethiopian women?
14. Does the IDF Spokesperson routinely lie?
15. Is the PA government more desirous of peace than the current Israeli government?


If you are a Middle East journalist or NGO worker, and you answer "yes" to any of these questions, then you most probably have an anti-Israel bias. At the very least you are woefully uninformed about a topic you are pretending to be well-versed in.

Ordinary people could be forgiven for thinking that the answers to some of these questions are in the affirmative - because they only get their news from people who allow their biases to overcome their dedication to accuracy and truth. Middle East "experts" should know better.

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