American Jews almost unanimously believe that U.S. news media are biased against Israel. This perception is partially correct, but almost completely irrelevant.
I don’t question this reality because others have produced sufficient evidence of a consistent pattern of distortion, inaccuracy and misinformation. The more important question, which has been ignored, is: Does it matter?
Most American Jews believe it does. They fear that the news media will turn the American people against Israel, making the United States government change its policy in a way that will lead to Israel’s destruction.
This dread has spawned an industry of watchdog organizations and millions of dollars have been spent to monitor and react to the press. But the watchdogs say the bias not only exists, it’s worse than ever. So what have they accomplished?
The best the watchdogs can say is that without them the coverage might be even worse. Of course, you can’t prove this, and doing something, no matter how futile, makes many of Israel’s supporters feel better than doing nothing.
While it may be heretical to say, at one level we should be glad a bias exists, because it reflects the free and open society that exists in Israel. After all, if you want to read the most vicious criticism of Israeli policy, read the Israeli press.
Contrast this with the rest of the Middle East. When was the last time you saw a correspondent reporting live from Cairo, Riyadh or Damascus?
Those authoritarian societies usually do not allow Western journalists to enter at all, let alone roam freely, and since few reporters speak Arabic, it is not surprising that so little news emanates from them.
Soap or a candidate?
Israel reportedly spent millions of dollars on public relations firms to improve its image, but you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in the United States who believes the efforts have done any good.
One of the problems is that marketing Israel is not like selling soap. Consumer products generally don’t have psychological, religious and political dimensions.
Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi understood this and launched The Israel Project, which tries to sell Israel more like a political candidate. This involves conducting surveys and focus groups to determine public opinion and testing arguments and phraseology to determine what effectively moves that opinion.
This has improved the quality of pro-Israel communications. Nevertheless, this approach also has limitations, principally, that Israel is not like a candidate.
Most Americans don’t feel strongly about Middle East issues. In fact, polls indicate they wish the mess would just go away.
In addition, other than foreign aid, most Israel-related issues are not decided by Congress, so public opinion has at best a marginal effect by shaping the climate in which a president makes foreign policy.
I’m not aware of any evidence, however, that suggests President Bush’s position is determined by poll data. In fact, the reality is often the reverse. A president is far more likely to influence opinion on the Middle East than public attitudes are to influence policy.
Still favor Israel
Many people have a perception that Americans once loved Israel, particularly after the dramatic victory in the Six-Day War of 1967, but that public support has eroded because of Arab propaganda and the anti-Israel media bias (some would also blame Israel’s “bad behavior”). The data tell a different story.
American public support for Israel has consistently exceeded that of the Arabs and Palestinians by huge margins, and the overall trend has been in Israel’s favor.
In June 1967, 56 percent of Americans supported Israel, compared to only 4 percent who said they sympathized with the Arabs. Despite all that has transpired in the last 37 years, the Gallup poll taken in February 2004 found that 55 percent of Americans still sympathize with Israel.
Support for the Palestinians (Gallup changed the question wording from “Arabs” in 1993) reached a record high in this poll, but was still only 18 percent.
The percentage of Americans with a favorable opinion of Israel has averaged 62 percent over the past eight years, compared with only 17 percent for the Palestinian Authority (over five years). Three-quarters of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of the P.A.
Since 1998, roughly three-fourths of respondents have said the United States should take neither side in the conflict, but those who do pick a side mostly choose Israel (27 percent vs. 1 percent for the Palestinians in 2001).
Another key to understanding attitudes toward the Middle East, one that no one likes to say aloud, is the general negative feeling Americans have toward Arabs. As horrible as coverage about Israel may be, it is much worse for the Arabs.
In fact, journalists often justify their anti-Israel bias by claiming they get just as many complaints from the Arabs as the Jews. The difference, many would argue, is that the coverage of the Arabs is accurate.
Arab-Americans, for example, complain that they are too often stereotyped as terrorists and every terrorist attack reinforces an image of Arabs as barbarians.
By contrast, for all its flaws, Americans still understand that Israel is a democratic society whose citizens enjoy the same freedoms that we do.
Yes, Israel gets a black eye every time there is a story about house demolitions, civilians killed inadvertently during military operations, or some other action that seems particularly unfair, disproportionate or injurious to the average Palestinian. But these stories are powerful mainly because they conflict with the generally positive image most Americans hold of Israelis.
Greater threats
Rather than the media, the greatest threat to sustaining the U.S.-Israel relationship is the changing political landscape being shaped by demographic shifts. If the U.S. Jewish population continues to shrink and the U.S. Muslim population grows, the balance of political power may begin to shift.
I believe this danger has been overblown, and that the more likely scenario is that a new generation of lawmakers will come from the African-American, the Asian, and, especially, the Hispanic communities, which have little or no knowledge of the Middle East or appreciation of the historic friendship with Israel.
Also, while news media may play a role in shaping the views of future decision-makers, a more neglected influence is the academy. For at least two decades the Arabs have funded anti-Israel chairs and Middle East centers that have created a hostile campus environment and distorted teaching about Israel.
Many policymakers, journalists and other political elites have received their education about the Middle East from these biased sources. Students and advocates come and go, but faculty members remain for years and shape the campus environment and the minds of students. This is the most insidious danger to Israel’s standing on the campus and beyond.
Another factor in the future of U.S.-Israel relations is generational. Will generations lacking any personal experience of Jews in peril appreciate the role of a small Middle East democracy?
College-age students today can barely remember the first Persian Gulf War. They didn’t live through the wrenching days of the Yom Kippur War or the Six-Day War. Old Jews recite the mantra, “Never Again,” but Vietnam is ancient history for young Jews; World War II is like the Peloponnesian War.
The pro-Israel community should continue to insist that the news media employ a single standard for covering the Middle East, demand accuracy in their reports, and strive to educate journalists and the public about the region.
This mission, however, should be put in proper perspective, and resources allocated to where they will have far greater effect.
The U.S.-Israel relationship will be shaped far more by the quality of education provided in high schools and colleges and by the activism of the pro-Israel community, than by the news media.
Mitchell G. Bard, Ph.D., is executive director of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE) and is author of several books on the Middle East conflict.
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