Israel’s leftist hostile media hated the fact that the Canadian prime minister was full of support for Israel, says investigative reporter.
By Gil Ronen, By Gil Ronen, INN
Israel’s mainstream media conducted an unofficial boycott of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s visit to Israel last week. The leading nationwide television channel, Channel 2, devoted only a single minute of coverage to Harper’s address to the Knesset, and did so only in the second half of the evening news program, according to Maariv’s Kalman Libeskind, who analyzed the shameful phenomenon in his latest column. Half of that minute covered hostile Arab MK Ahmed Tibi’s heckling of Harper.
Channel 10, the second nationwide commercial channel, completely blacked out the visit. Its news show did not cover the speech with even a single second of airtime.
Stephen Harper was like “a bone in the throat” of Israel’s leftist press, explained the influential pundit and investigative reporter. After years of mocking Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and presenting Israel under his leadership as a country that has no friends, “the Canadian prime minister came here and bucked all of the rules when he declared that he stood beside us.” He did so “without stammering, without apologizing, without saying anything unclear,” and the Israeli press “did not know what to do with this thing.”
Libeskind noted that Canada is a member of the G8 and other meaningful international forums, and that Harper showed that that he took the visit to Israel very seriously, when he came here accompanied by his foreign minister and five other members of his cabinet. He toured Israel and “did everything in order to make it clear to the entire world that he supports us, that he is unwilling to hear us associated with something that sounds like apartheid, and that Canada under his leadership will always stand beside us.”
“This is the kind of visit that the Israeli media should have covered on a very large scale,” he observed, but support for Israel “sounds like support for the Israeli government, and that is where the Israeli media’s ulcer starts bothering it.” Most of Harper’s statements were thus not even quoted by those news outlets.
Harper was quick to understand how things work in Israel, added Libeskind. In a news conference on the day after his Knesset speech, he berated Israeli reporters, who kept on asking him about Israeli “settlements.”
“Yesterday in the Palestinian Authority,” Harper said, “no one asked me to criticize the Palestinian Authority on matters of governance, human rights or any other subject. When I am in Israel I’m asked to criticize Israel, and when I am in the Palestinian Authority I am asked to criticize Israel.”
There are enough rich Jews who can create a new fair and balanced channel. Something similar to Fox News.
The left of the world are for the left and even against their own country if need be.
The left has become the mirror image of the Iranian Clerics.
The Israeli media has run amok. In its self-destructive stance It suffers from ‘insanity’ syndrome.
Laura Said:
The more effective response would be to buy a major leftist media outlet. However, the lefties won’t sell, at any price. The Koch Brothers (who are libertarian and actually socially liberal) tried to buy the Tribune newspaper chain but backed out. It is believe that they were told, off the record, that if they did buy the chain, the staffs of almost all the newspapers would either walk off the jobs and go on strike, or destroy the presses. This even though the newspapers were dying anyway.
That gives you an idea of the religious fanaticism of these “journalists”.
Shy Guy Said:
Almost as much of a disgrace as America’s.
Laura Said:
We did in Canada.. its called the Sun News network.. its often hysterically funny when they call out the lefty media.
Conservatives need to stop complaining about left wing media bias and start creating media outlets of their own. That is the only way things will change. Whining about media bias both in Israel and here in America is pointless. They won’t be moved by our complaints. They won’t change their coverage because we yell about it.
That’s pretty close to the same coverage in the U.S..
This is shameful. How can Israel’s media ignore such a strong supporter of Israel? Is there no audience for news about one of the major defenders of Israel in the family of nations, especially a country with such a sizable and important Jewish minority? I don’t think so. Were other, smaller news outlets following Harper’s visit?
Years ago here in the US all the major media were (and still are) very left-leaning, and only when Fox News came on the scene did conservatives find a news source that told the whole story. Now Fox News dominates the cable news industry, and CNN, the pioneer of cable news, has dropped to an all-time low in viewership.
The New York Times and Washington Post are no better. After the recent huge pro-life march in Washington, where vast numbers of marchers braved brutal cold to promote life, there was hardly a word written. The NY Times had a small picture with a 2-line caption, even though hundreds of New Yorkers were in the march. Contrast that with the pro-abortion demonstration that had wall-to-wall coverage even days ahead of the event. One Times reporter even admitted not knowing even a single pro-life person.
If Israel were to have a conservative media source come forward, there would be a big following of readers and viewers hungry for a pro-Israel stance . They would be so grateful that someone finally had courage to paint the Palestinian leaders as they really are. How Israel can cower to these thugs and let them get away with murder is beyond me!
Any fair-minded person has to be shocked and dismayed at the recent release of killers from prison, not to mention all the other foolish appeasement. It’s very cowardly and Israel must stop worrying about what others think but about what is right, and then do it!
Israel’s MSM: a national disgrace.