Posted on 04/21/2002 3:24:17 PM PDT by l33t
My recent encounter with CBS News anchor Dan Rather and his producer made me realize that much of the anti-Israel coverage in the media -- which treats Israel with a double-standard unparalleled anywhere else in the world -- is attributable to factors other than anti-Semitism.
I met his CBS producer at a building in Jerusalem's Jewish Quarter that overlooks the Temple Mount where she wished to film from. We proceeded up to the roof which afforded a masterful view of the centerpiece of the Old City. Sprawled out in front of us was the Temple Mount, the place where the two ancient Jewish Temples stood, and currently the shared location of the Western Wall and the Al-Asqa Mosque. Behind the Temple Mount is the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, with the rugged hills of the Judean Desert in the background.
This is the focal point of the entire Arab-Israeli conflict. In fact, Palestinians call the current conflict the "Al-Asqa Intifada."
As we stood side-by-side taking in the extraordinary view, the producer turned to me and said in a sort of apologetic tone, "You'll have to excuse my ignorance, but what exactly are we looking at?"
My stomach instantly dropped. Maybe she was unsure of a specific building?
"No, what is this entire area we are looking at?"
"The Temple Mount!!" I wanted to scream. "It's the most important spot in the entire region!"
I controlled myself and began my first history lesson to a national news producer. I explained how the Jewish people built a Temple in this spot 3,000 years ago, and how, after its destruction, a second Temple was built in the exact same location.
I explained how Jesus visited this second Jewish Temple, which stood until the Romans ultimately destroyed it in the first century. I explained how the Muslims came to Jerusalem in the mid-seventh century, soon after the creation of their religion, building the Al-Asqa Mosque and the Golden Dome. I explained to her that the Western Wall is the remaining retaining wall of the second Jewish Temple.
As I went through these historic points, the producer was taking furious notes on her yellow writing pad, trying to record the details of this place so integral to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
A few minutes later, Dan Rather arrived. He climbed the stairs to join us on the roof. As he reached the top stair, he looked out at the view that was spread before him. "Oh, I've been here before," he said. Then, looking at his producer, he quietly asked, "What is this that we're looking at?"
My stomach plummeted again. Not Dan Rather, too?! The expert on world events who is watched by 30 million nightly viewers can't identify the Temple Mount? I knew American viewers were in big trouble.
The producer read the notes on her yellow pad, filling Mr. Rather in on all the details of the place in front of them. During the film shoot, Rather held this same yellow pad of paper in his hand, reading from it on air. So much for in-depth research and media accuracy.
A DEBATE ABOUT TRUTH
After Dan Rather left, I spent some time with his producer, discussing her viewpoints of what was currently happening in Israel. After seeing the tone of her news segment, I was concerned. I began to question her about accuracy in reporting.
Her answer was even more shocking than what I had already observed. "The thing is," she told me, "it is impossible to be objective in this situation. The fact is that there is no objective truth -- neither side is right or wrong."
"Wait a minute," I asked her. "When a Palestinian straps on a belt of dynamite lined with nails and walks into a pizza shop, blowing up innocent people, that wouldn't be objectively wrong?"
"Of course I would think that is wrong," she answered me. "But the Palestinians believe this is a legitimate form of warfare. And they would say the Israelis are doing the same to them by killing innocent civilians when they retaliate militarily. Who am I to say what is right or wrong? Who am I to say that the Palestinians are wrong in their beliefs?"
"But don't you think there's a difference between a person blowing himself up in a restaurant, and a military that responds by searching for and killing terrorists. Granted that innocent civilians are killed in both circumstances -- but in one situation the innocents are targeted, and in the other situation they are regrettably caught in the line of fire?"
"Well, that's a very Western way of looking at things. You see I'm Christian and American. I see things the way you do as an Israeli -- we have the same moral framework. But the Arabs view things differently, and who's to say that we're right and they're wrong?"
At this point we both realized we weren't going to get any further in the conversation, and we politely thanked each other and parted ways.
CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS
This experience gave me new insight into why so much of the media seems biased against Israel. Not only, as I saw with my own eyes, was even the top echelon some of the media unprepared and lacking knowledge of the basic history and make-up of the conflict, but they also possess an extremely dangerous philosophy -- a belief that there is no objective right and wrong.
The world today is being shaped into two conflicting civilizations. This has been happening minimally for decades, but more probably for centuries, and has now become most evident since September 11. One civilization, led by Judeo-Christian ethics, values life with the utmost sanctity. Individual rights and freedoms, equality of the sexes, and peace amongst nations are pillars upon which this half of the world stands.
The other civilization holds very different ideals: the glorification of death and war, totalitarian control of the masses, and oppression of women. The latter civilization sees the former as a direct threat to its way of life and is willing to sacrifice its own children to destroy the other.
This clash of civilizations is being fought on many fronts, including the battlefield. But for most of us non-soldier-types, the war is being fought in the recesses of our own conscience.
Many world leaders, like President Bush and Prime Minister Sharon, have identified this clearly as a fight against evil. But there are others, many of whom are influential in the media, who don't believe that the values of the Western world are "objectively good." Reuters news service refused to call the September 11 attacks "terrorism," finding that even too much of a moral stretch.
This clash calls upon us all to must make a clear choice. Are we confident in our own values and morals? Do we know that they are objectively good and thus worth defending and fighting for?
Unless we can answer these questions with full determination and conviction, we will remain deeply threatened by those who seek to destroy us. Because one thing is certain: The other side has the determination and conviction to carry on their crusade.
If they cared, they would educate themselves......this way there is no need.
I spent about three years working off and on as a contract employee for one of the major networks. The exposure I received to Hollywood and the utterly empty people that are Hollywood and the entertainment industry in general made not pursuing that career an easy choice.
Liberalism has a way of coming back to bite its most devoted followers.
Watching it happen is not without amusement.
The common "belief that there is no objective right and wrong" is truly frightening and typical of the kind of moral relativism practiced by the Left.
That is disgusting beyond belief, and lame-brained to boot. A person who can't see the clear-cut good and ill of this situation is a moral imbecile, much like those fellas in WWII with the bent crosses on their arms.
I have tried to chronicle "the stories the media simply doesn't like to talk about" here:
DUBOB 9-- even *more* tales from the Dark Underbelly of the Beast.....
People like that just turn my stomach. Far too many folks think in gray terms like this.
She needs to get a grip...a philosopher she ain't!
Someday that woman will get knocked off the fence she so proudly sits on and it won't matter which side she falls on because that fence will just fall down and crush her anyway.
Far be it from me to judge this woman's relationship with God, but I have a little trouble see how a real Christian couldn't discern right and wrong, especially in this situation.
Funny that they never seem to have this problem when it comes to RATS and Republicans.
Touché!
She might as well have said, "But the Arabs Satanists view things differently, and who's to say that we're right and they're wrong?"
The Mainstream Media:
IGNORANCE ON PARADE
"The thing is," she told me, "it is impossible to be objective in this situation. The fact is that there is no objective truth -- neither side is right or wrong."
Featuring The World-Famous
WITHOUT-A-CLUE REVUE
Ayn Rand had a lot to say on that very notion. This is the unwillingness to use reason due to moral relativism.
Who am I to say what is right or wrong?
Bingo! It is an open secret that important positions Time, Newsweek, NYT, etc, are generally given to graduates of Ivy League institutions. So, now we get a small glimpse into what ignoramuses these Ivy Leaguers really are.
This disgustingly stupid cow is neither...
Welcome to the world of moral relativism and secular humanism.
Now he has PhD's saying it's the learned perspective. And his shills BILLDO AND SHRILLERY act it out so convincingly for the terminally ignorant and willfully blind. Greater treason than all the other treasonous characters from the whole world and all of history combined? No problem. "It's the BILLDO AND SHRILLERY WAY! No right or wrong--unless you hurt our chances at world domination--then we terminate you."
And the aborting mothers delivering their precious soon-to-be-terminated soon-to-be-formerly-life-filled cargo into the greedy hands of the murderers for hire who now add baby parts brokers to a greedy industrial complex.
Forcefully prevent protectors of our nation and their own lives from voting? No problem. There is no right or wrong.
Homosexual, beastial, S&M, snuff films, etc. at the expense of children and families? No problem. There is no right or wrong.
Have you ever noticed the Board of Directors of the National Geographic Society? Then check out the great folk behind some of the more insensitive countries. Then check out the movers and shakers among the IMF, the WTO, the Club of Rome, the Skull and Bones, Various influential UN groups, CFR etc. See how many names keep cropping up.
I've been watching more stuff on the National Geographic channel. They really have been a huge force for decades peddling the notion that chance plus time = ordered complexity. NO right or wrong. Just chance DNA etc. As Huxley said (I forget which one), "We had to kill God off so we could scr*w like bunnies." Pleasure is the only "right" and in a contest, my pleasure over your pleasure is right--especially if I'm more successfully manipulative, a greater theif or have a bigger stick. You know survival of the fittest.
Fit for what?
LORD OF THE FLIES?
INDEED!
. . .right; it might just depend on what the meaning of 'is' is. . .
Liberalism at it's best; is an extremely dangerous philosophy; at it's worst, a political reality.
Terrific fact checking! NOT!
Imagine living in such a two-dimensional world.
If this article etc. is false...then knowing Rather, I may still believe it.
I'll never forget that picture with Rather and Castro. Now Jimah Cahter is going. Fidel must be happy with his useful idiots.
When is el hefe going to die of lead poisoning?
5.56mm
This article is priceless; it puts the entire problem and danger to civilization into one cogent nutshell: the opinion molders of the West will not rise to defend it.
They are lazy and stupid and morally blind and would not, in 1940, have been willing to call Hitler evil.
"Who's to say what evil is?" they would say, as they were marched naked into the gas chambers at Nazi machinegun point. "Maybe the Nazis are right, after all, they believe very strongly that they are right. Who am I to say that I am right and they are wrong?"
BTW...Dome of the Rock is at high elevation and dominates the landscape when you look in that direction.
My husband has a friend who is a liberal. When we had the Mardi Gras riots in Seattle he made every excuse imaginable for the thugs. Mind you, that people were attacked for no reason and we had one death. The excuses:
being frustrated, built-up anger, the people beaten shouldn't have attended, or the best one, they simply wanted to attack people and that was their right to do so.
Anyone with a normal brain could not possible think that attacking people minding their own business is excusable!
Yes, and from this 'discrimination' becomes a totally abhorrant word; rather than a necessary and good faculty.
But you can be sure they practice the 'discriminating' when they choose the food they eat, the clothes they buy; their cars, their homes; their friends (we know they will not associate with Repubs or Conservatives).
A good example as well, would be taking this Producer's own words. . .
"Well, that's a very Western way of looking at things. You see I'm Christian and American. I see things the way you do as an Israeli -- we have the same moral framework. But the Arabs view things differently, and who's to say that we're right and they're wrong?"
. . .and transposing them to something like:
'Well, that's a very Western way of looking at things. You see I'm Liberal Democrat and you are a Republican and a Conservative. . .We share the same values as Americans; but Liberals do view things differently. . .and who's to say that we're right and you're wrong?" . . .
I just watched a program on EWTN because Mel Martinez was being interviewed about his life story - from Cuban refugee to Cabinet Officer. I t was quite good and then the 2nd half hour of the show called "The World Over" was an interview with an author - Liza Elliott - who is strongly proPalestinian. Wow! Talk about having distorted vision!
Bottom line, of course - It is all the fault of the "occupying forces" that teenage Palestinians cannot go to school or get a job or play 'football' so the only thing left to them is to conduct terror.
She was calm and sort of nun-looking (I do not want to use the word conservative in this context!)
Some might say that my wife is as well but she doesn't satisfy the "moral relativist" part of the boolean expression either.
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