Kiwis for Balanced Reporting on the Middle East

Kiwis for Balanced Reporting On The Mideast New Zealand Media bias

Balance but bias in The Press letters

After a vicious anti-Israel cartoon (see May 21 post), the letters editor at The Press (ChCh) refused to print any letters in rebuttal. However when a cartoon appeared attacking Iran (see Aug 7 post), he quickly published a letter condemning the cartoon, along with one defending it, for balance. Then on Sep 23 a single letter appeared that compared Israel's ‘injustice to the Palestinians’ with the Nazis' treatment of Jews. Five days later a rebuttal by a KBRM member was published in the ‘iIn a few words’i section:

Printed in The Press on September 25, 2009 (Published In a few words)

Marc Fibbens seizes upon the Lincoln students' insensitivity to imply that the Israelis are the new Nazis (Sept 23). Not only does this ploy of Holocaust reversal ignore the evidence of history, it founders on the reality that the only group in the Middle East calling for genocide is Hamas.

The following two letters submitted September 25 & 26 were not published:

_________(23.09.09) doesn't seem to understand that the true lesson of the Holocaust was that Jews cannot depend on the international community to defend them. And so Israel has had to fight for its life for over 60 years.
There can be no equating the morality of those who want to destroy a neighbouring nation and deliberately attack its citizens with those who defend their nation while trying, not always successfully, to avoid civilian casualties.

_________(The Press 23 Sept) unfortunately misses the point completely. The only injustice being perpetrated on the Palestinians is by their own leaders whose obsessive desire to cleanse Israel of Jews has caused untold misery. If the Palestinian Arabs would have accepted the state offered to them in 1947 they could by now have a flourishing country. Instead they have spent 61 years engaged in terror and mayhem which has gained them nothing. The Israelis meantime turned the arid dessert into flourishing fields and built & defended a modern democratic society, something our neighbours will never achieve because they are too busy trying to kill Jews and educating future generations to hate rather than co-exist.