Kiwis for Balanced Reporting on the Middle East
October 10, 2009
When is a donkey not a donkey?
Answer: When Palestinians paint stripes on it to make children think it's a zebra. This news item, with an accompanying photo of two donkeys with painted stripes, appeared in many newspapers and TV news programs. Ironically, the Reuters text used inappropriate words and missing facts to convey another false impression: that the Palestinian in Gaza are innocent victims of Israeli aggression. Several KBRM members wrote as follows:
The word ‘resistance’ implies resistance against an aggressor. Yet Reuters (10.10.09, p. 15) described Hamas, whose goal is to destroy Israel and who has fired thousands of rockets at Israeli towns, as refusing to give up ‘armed resistance against the Jewish state’, implying that Israel is the aggressor and Hamas the defender. This is an inversion of reality. Reuters also mentioned Israel's embargo of Gaza without stating that it was instituted after Hamas took over Gaza and began raining rockets on Israel, again inverting aggressor and defender. The result was as false a picture of Israel as the donkeys that were painted with stripes to look like zebras. (Sent to Otago Daily Times)
Another letter was sent to The Press and once again the Letters Editor showed his bias.
Here is the letter as submitted:
It is disconcerting that Palestinian zoos show children donkeys disguised by paint to look like zebras. (Oct. 10) Donkeys lives are cheap in Palestine and they are fed to other zoo animals when not wanted and often beaten, abused and abandoned by their owners. Perhaps this is a result of fundamentalist Muslims justifying cruelty by a medieval religion which teaches that the devil got in Noah's ark on the tail of a donkey (Tabari I:360 ‘... When Noah brought the donkey in, Lucifer attached himself to its tail, ...’). A UK registered charity for donkeys (www.safehaven4donkeys.org) from both Palestine and Israel is located in Israel, the much maligned, multicultural, democratic, single Jewish State. Faking zebras is just a tiny reflection of the treachery practiced by Hamas and Iran to deceive and destroy Western values.
The editor rejected the letter, saying he did not want to ‘reopen the Hamas debate at the moment’. (This is in keeping with his policy of ‘reopening the debate’ only when anti-Israel letters are submitted.) The letter writer then deleted the last sentence (in red) and resubmitted. This time the letter was accepted, but when it appeared in print (on Oct 14), the reference to the Islamic belief and the phrase referring to Israel as ‘the much maligned, multicultural, democratic, single Jewish state’ was omitted, without any indication that the letter had been abridged. It appears that to the Letters Editor, saying that Israel is a multi-cultural, democratic, Jewish state is not permitted in his column.