Comments on: “El País” one sided coverage of the Israeli Palestinian conflict

By: Guerra y paz | filoblog.com

Guerra y paz | filoblog.com — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 21:08:59 +0000

[...] unas semans me llamó la atención esta frase de Martin Varsavsky: The Palestinian-Israeli conflict will be resolved when everyone recognizes their mistakes, and [...]

By: Dani

Dani — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:24:24 +0000

the good news is an increasing number of Spanish readers realize the biased, partisan paper El Pais has become, to the point that El Pais is coming close to losing leadership to El Mundo (which also has its flaws). Things might end up even more dramatically – JL Cebrian, CEO of Prisa, which publishes El Pais, is through his incompetence leading the company closer and closer to bankruptcy. Maybe there won’t even be El Pais in a few years. That’s what happens when you put ideologues rather than professional journalists/managers at the helm.

By: glem

glem — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 10:41:43 +0000

In Spain the vision of the Israëli/Palestinian conflict is ioften shaped by the vision about jews in general. I have been sometimes amazed to meet young educated people speaking about jews using almost middle-age imagery, conspirational theories etc. while older countryside people, which are not or hardly educated, show more openness.
Does it come from educational sphere then? Does someone have an idea?..
Regarding the post, I want to say that it is understandable that the Gaza blockade would fuel anti-Israël sentiment, but it’s difficult to understand why it would be the cause of a civil war between Palestiniens. Mandi mentions a series of things and he is right to do so but he does not answer this point, which is at the core of Martin’s post.

By: Felipe

Felipe — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 14:07:19 +0000

Martín your message is wrong on so many levels it is difficult to believe you ar blind to so much reality:
-The article does not picture Israel “as the bad guys” as you say anywhere in any shape or form. It just describes what happened in an objective balanced way without using any adjectives.
-Saying that whatever (good or bad thing taht happens in Palestine is completely independent of what happens in Israel or unrelated to what Israel does is absurd, childish, or stupid. You chose the adjective.
It is funny that you use the description “one-sided” when you then proceed to be exactly that.
Regards

By: Haim

Haim — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 10:53:50 +0000

Mandi,

About UN resolutions:
I think that in 1948 some people did not accept the UN resolution and wanted to throw all the Jews to the sea.

In light of the perfect and pacific human organization that the Palestinians leaders are building in the Gaza strip, I am really surprised how come Israel is reluctant to retreat completely from the west bank. Such a pacific and quiet neighbors!

Palestinians are second class citizens in all the Arab world (Lebanon, Jordania, Kuwait, Qatar, etc, etc, etc). Is someone complaining about that in your neighborhood?.

I know ! Is the Israeli citizenship is what they are after? It’s not worth it, believe me, kids must serve in the Army for 3 full years + the reserve for life, high risk of being kidnapped (as Gilad Shalit, hopefully alive somewhere in Gaza) or killed. The IRS will take 50% of your salary, and Sundays is a working day. Well, at least medical services are good and universal, both for Arabs and Jews of course.

And lastly, are you writing some of your detailed letters to the Palestinian leaders? Because I believe that there is SOMETHING they can do for their own people. They are probably waiting for some enlightening directions or instructions. So far, they are only bringing more suffering to their own people.

Salam Alekum

Haim

By: Uri

Uri — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 20:59:47 +0000

@Martin, 2 questions:
1. Have El Pais or other major Spanish newspapers tried to delve deeply into the profound distinction between Fatah and Hamas, and explain how does this struggle will critically affect the Palestinian society, it’s identity, and the whole area?

I’m asking this, since a so-called human-rights, justice advocating pro-Palestinian journalism should probably be interested to analyse the differences and at least results would be if Hamas wins or manage to assassinate Abu Mazen.

2. One thing I was curious about ever since starting to read the posts here that cover the Middle East – What does the Spanish blogosphere (other than martinv say?

@neoyorquina – thanks for the interesting comment. I had a chance to speak with a worker in the Spanish embassy here in Tel-Aviv, who said something similar, and it was quite weird to hear it. Many here think of Spain/Catalonia/Euskara as amazing lands and culture empires, and the contrast with the “unequipped journalism” is confusing.

By: José Luis

José Luis — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 23:22:42 +0000

Neoyorquina, couldn’t agree more with you. I have been a long time reader of El País and nowadays it has nothing to do with the original liberal paper it was supposed to be. In the early 80s it decided to be the market place of the “progressive” culture left and since then the message has become quite predictable. Sometimes, I do not need to see the firm to know the author of the article. If it about how terrible Jews are and how nice palestians are, I know is Maruja Torres. Americans are terrible?. Pradera wrote it. Some of the best articles in fact are translations from the American press or writers such as Paul Krugman.

By: neoyorquina

neoyorquina — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 22:50:48 +0000

It’s not only El País’ coverage of the Israel-Palestinian conflict that is one-sided. A lot of their foreign coverage is sorely lacking.

True journalism, a la Upton Sinclar, Edward R. Murrow, Woodward & Bernstein, et al., generally is not practiced in the Spanish press. Spanish newspapers are banal political pamphlets stuck in the past and they are not equipped to truly inform and enlighten their readership.

El País, the so-called New York Times of Spain, is a prime example of this. It is a boring, predictable, lazy publication which never breaks any real news and never shows any real initiative in terms of investigative, muckracking journalism, neither at home nor abroad. It’s laughable how many “progre” Spaniards consider El Pais some kind of bible from which they get their talking points. Actually, it’s pathetic.

By: Liam

Liam — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 20:42:16 +0000

Dear Mandi,

You talked about the 1948 war, and I noticed you were not very happy with the results. That is the reason why I asked you such question. (And that is the reason why it is not a stupid question)

You said “The 1948 “war of independence” was one of the largest Ethnic Cleansing operations in the modern history”. That is simply false. By the way, 5 Arabs countries rejected the two state solution in 1948 and started the war against Israel. Israel was fighting for its survival.

The other reason why it is not a stupid question is because Hamas don´t recognize Israel´s right to exist (and say that they never will), so I ask you: How do you achieve peace with an organization that don´t even recognize your right to live?

PD – “The brutality shown today by Israel was shown by Spain 500 years ago when it first colonized America.” Very funny

By: José Luis

José Luis — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 18:18:01 +0000

Martin, with regard to Israel or US, the average Spanish voter in not as sophisticated as you think. As for the average El País reader, usually an avid socialist voter, all I can say is that they vote socialism in part because it feeds on their childish anti-American and centuries old anti-Semitic sentiments. As you have probably observed, when elections approach in Spain, in order to mobilize their voters, current prime minister Zapatero stirs the anti-American and anti-Semitic prejudices, along with saying that voting for the opposition is bringing back Franco from the tomb and that will mean the end of pensions for the elderly (many bad things can be said about Franco, but he in fact stablished social security). Usually, the sophisticated voter you refer to, plays along the socialist propaganda.