Language: Illusion of Symmetry
A review of the 20 AP stories from April 1996 showed that seven stories described Israeli actions as retaliatory rather than escalation.1 Timeline nearly always continued to begin with Israel responding to a Hezbollah attack. One example read: “The Israeli air raid on Beirut — the second on the Lebanese capital in as many days — was in retaliation for Hezbollah guerrilla rocket attacks on northern Israel Friday morning.”2
By contrast, when AP mentioned Hezbollah’s stated rationale, as in the April 9 report noting that Hezbollah fired rockets in retaliation for a land mine explosion that killed a Lebanese teen-ager, the claim was hedged with distancing language of “Hezbollah said.”3 Israeli rationale, however, was presented as fact, without attribution.
The framing of territory also reinforced imbalance in the coverage. Of the seven stories that made references to the 6-mile-deep (10 km) strip of land inside Lebanon occupied by 1,200 Israeli soldiers and 2,500 of their Lebanese proxy militiamen, only one explicitly described it as occupied. Most adopted Israeli terminology: “the strip of land Israel controlled in southern Lebanon;”4 a “security belt along the border manned by Israeli troops and a pro-Israeli Lebanese militia;”5 Israeli “presence in a narrow buffer zone;”6 Hezbollah fighting “to drive Israeli troops from southern Lebanon;”7 or “the border zone” the Israelis “hold in southern Lebanon to curb attacks on northern Israel.”8 The most common references were “security zone,” “so-called security zone,” “self-proclaimed security zone,” security belt,” “buffer zone,” or simply “buffer.” This raises an obvious question: whose security was actually being referred to?
One story deepened the confusion by quoting Israel’s top general asserting Israel had “the right to return fire on Hezbollah guerrillas who attack Israeli soldiers from inside Lebanese villages, even if it causes civilian casualties.”9 The story did not explain that Hezbollah was targeting Israeli soldiers — not Israeli civilians — inside occupied Lebanese territory. Such framing, both before 1996 and afterward, blurred the fact of occupation, distorted the underlying issue, and omitted two crucial facts: Lebanese guerrillas were engaged in legitimate resistance under international law, and Hezbollah itself was a direct product of that occupation.
Other linguistic choices further tilted the narrative. An April 21 story reported: “Katyusha rockets continued to rain down on Kiryat Shmona and other northern settlements Saturday, and Israeli warplanes bombarded Hezbollah targets on the other side of the border.”10 The phrasing suggested a symmetry: Hezbollah struck civilian communities, Israel bombed militia targets. Another passage in the story cast Israel’s offensive as “part of the escalating battle it is waging against the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in south Lebanon,” implying that Israel was fighting a proxy war with Iran rather than suppressing resistance to its own occupation.
On April 25, AP repeated without skepticism Israel’s unsubstantiated claim that Hezbollah used civilians as “human shields,” erasing the role of Israeli bombardment: “Israel blames Hezbollah guerrillas for the heavy civilian toll, accusing them of firing on Israel from inside Lebanese villages and using civilians as shields.”11
Lebanese perspectives did appear but sporadically — scattered, fragmented, often confusing, and overshadowed by consistent narratives blaming Hezbollah for instigating violence. By contrast, stories critical of Israel more often highlighted domestic issues. One AP report during the 1996 fighting criticized Israel for failing to protect its Palestinian citizens near the Lebanese border, who, unlike fellow Jewish citizens, were not provided government shelters.12
Despite claims of objectivity, AP reporting after the 1982 invasion and throughout the 1990s, often leaned on value-laden language embedded in news definitions, especially when covering countries or groups deemed “unfriendly” to the United States.13 New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan rightly noted in 2013: “Although individual words and phrases may not amount to very much in the great flow produced each day, language matters.”14
Labels, whether subtle or overt, can legitimize or delegitimize force: one group’s violence is “terrorism,” another’s is “self-defense.” Scholar Karim H. Karim calls this process “integration propaganda,” a way of socializing audiences into dominant belief systems.15 Noam Chomsky described it as “brainwashing under freedom.”
By 1997, AP’s language around the occupation had hardened into a template. A September 8, 1997 story read: “Israel set up the security zone to protect its northern settlements from cross-border guerrilla attacks.16 A September 9, 1997 Lebanon-dated story opened provocatively: “Gloating over the deaths of 11 Israeli soldiers killed in a commando raid into Lebanon, Shia Muslim guerrillas showed off mutilated Israeli bodies yesterday and called the battle a grave defeat for Israel.”17 Only in the tenth paragraph did readers learn that Israel occupied Lebanese land. Later paragraphs described the raid as “like scores of commando forays Israeli elite forces have made into Lebanon over the past 30 years,” with a passing mention — buried at the end — that Israeli raids over the years had also killed and kidnapped Hezbollah leaders.
Mitchell Kaidy of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs observed, “whatever it was called, the 22-year occupation of south Lebanon was a textbook demonstration of the American media’s mind-controlling activities led by two giants — The Associated Press and The New York Times.”18
“During those 22 years the media worked tirelessly to re-characterize Israel’s occupation of south Lebanon as something other than it was,” he said.
Even Chomsky adopted the misleading “security zone” terminology in his book, The Fateful Triangle. As did Lebanese media and Lebanese people routinely. “The term worked for dis-informational purposes, but was purely propagandistic,” said Kaddy.
An example of the recurring pattern that cast Israel as reactive and Hezbollah as the initiator of violence appeared in the AP lead on November 17, 1993: “Hezbollah guerrillas Tuesday mounted their heaviest attack on Israeli-held territory in southern Lebanon… Israel retaliated with air raids.”19
By linguistically altering narratives, blurring responsibility, and emphasizing Israel’s security, coverage obscured causes and effects. Questions of what happened, where and how were addressed, but the crucial “why” was left unasked. The result was a sanitized narrative: “facts” were adjusted to fit a framework in which Israel appeared as a democratic state fending off guerrillas. Violence, including suicide bombings, was presented as the origin of the conflict, while occupation and aggression receded from view. A Glasgow University study of the Israeli occupation and the Palestinian struggle against it highlights one effect of these blurred timelines: many respondents believed Palestinians were the occupiers rather than living under Israeli occupation.20
I deliberately avoid using the term “Israeli–Palestinian conflict” as this framing reduces a deeply asymmetrical reality to a contest between two equal sides, when in fact it is rooted in military occupation, settler-colonial structures, and systemic domination. The Palestinian struggle is not simply one half of a conflict but a struggle for liberation, self-determination, and survival against a brutal regime of dispossession: recurrent killings and mass incarceration, closures and checkpoints that fragment daily life, the construction of the separation wall, the destruction of homes and agriculture, and countless other forms of structural violence — not to mention the ongoing genocide in Gaza. To describe this as mere “conflict” between two sides obscures the imbalance of power and the broader context of colonization and resistance.
AP Style Book
Prior to 9/11, the AP stylebook had barred the use of the word “terrorist,” though Hezbollah was frequently referred to as being “considered a terrorist organization” by the U.S. In other words, AP went around the value-loaded word of “terrorist” by making it an official U.S. government label, not necessarily that of the news organization. A boilerplate21 in AP’s computer system instructed the style-approved language to be inserted into stories, including language for how to refer to Hezbollah. As New York Times’ Sullivan asserted, “When news organizations accept the government’s way of speaking, they seem to accept the government’s way of thinking.22
This explains how shifts in language and metaphor make the Middle East unintelligible. Repeatedly identifying Hezbollah as a Shia Muslim group reinforced the stereotypical characterization of Islam as an “ugly, intolerant and violent” religion, just as the word “fundamentalism” came to mean religious fanaticism in the Western media.23
As we have seen, in reporting on Israel’s conflicts, the source that dominated the narrative was often Israel, whether its government, army, politicians, or ordinary people. It often happened unconsciously as the journalist was unaware of the implications of the value-loaded language. According to Edward Said, foreign journalists reporting on Muslim countries are generally ill-equipped to provide adequate understanding of current events there.24 Except for a very few American journalists at AP, most did not speak the language or have a deep knowledge of the region and its modern history. This lack of expertise is even more acute today. Also, local employees of Western media in those years had little understanding of how their part of the world was portrayed in the West, or were aware of the impact the narrative and nuances had on the West’s understanding of the region. Over the decades of my employment with the AP, save for a handful with extensive knowledge of Islam and Mideast history, many of AP’s local, non-American staffers were also not well-versed in the history, religion or even literature of their own region. Their preconception of the Western media being free and unbiased allowed them to go with the flow. Many, for instance, were not aware the impact of stories that without evidence identified targets of Israeli airstrikes as Hezbollah “strongholds,” “paths,” or “trails,” even though most of the time, the casualties were civilian — and this discrepancy rarely factored into the coverage.
Take the opening of the May 4, 1993 Lebanon-dated story: “Israeli helicopters and tanks attacked suspected Shia Muslim guerrilla bases in southern Lebanon today and security sources said two guerrillas were believed killed and seven people wounded.25
Journalists’ Perspectives
Having outlined the theoretical and academic arguments behind the three major narratives and the value-laden language often employed by AP, I turn to the views and experiences of dozens of AP journalists — American, non-American, and Middle Easters. Their testimonies enable us to walk through the process of source and news selection, and narratives. The study demonstrates how these value-laden labels found their way into AP copy, journalists’ opinions of them and whether they were aware of their impact. Personal opinions and experiences help determine if these practices stem from journalists’ belief system. Their mindset in applying the language is crucial to our understanding as to why they were seldom challenged.
The acceptance of Israel’s position is rooted, as Labelle explained, in the connectedness Americans feel with Israel. He also described American journalists’ reporting on Israel as a struggle:
Most Americans view the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict through an Israeli prism. Jewish groups in the U.S. also push the Israeli version of events and are quick to criticize news stories with which they disagree. So American reporters in the Middle East, faced with a skewed view of history by their readers, are likely to be cautious about reporting events involving Israel or its troops because their stories are likely to be challenged if they get something wrong.
AP’s New York editors interviewed for the study were generally unaware of the linguistic leavening in the copy; a few admitted their negligence stemmed from preconceived views about Israel and Arabs. Ellen Knickmeyer, an American who worked on the foreign desk in the 1990s, explained:
You grow up reading news coverage that’s crafted in a certain way and typically portrays the Israelis more sympathetically than the Arabs; that’s the context you have, what you think is the situation.
Almost everybody in the U.S., at least at the time I was growing up, was thinking Israel was this spunky little state that had to fight off its neighbors to survive as a country; [that] it was founded by Holocaust survivors. So most people grew up with a pretty sympathetic view of Israel. There’s not a lot from the opposing side there (in America). There was an attack on the Munich Olympics, so a Palestinian was synonymous with terrorist in the U.S. ...
There were people on the desk who had come from the Jerusalem bureau. But there were no Arabs on the desk when I was there.
Of the more than 25 AP journalists interviewed, 17 commented on the use of the label “security zone.” Six of them said they were unaware of its value-laden nature or its implications. Nine, who were aware, had varying reasons for accepting or rejecting it; none challenged its use. Only one disputed the routine use of the label. A former AP foreign editor, who requested anonymity and shall be referred to as Interviewee B throughout the thesis, conceded the label “parroted the source.” And “the quote marks is meant to signal that Israel calls it that but, ‘hey the AP isn’t calling it that. [It is a] failed attempt at objectivity,” said Interviewee B.
Ellen Nimmons, AP’s assistant international editor when she was interviewed, also acknowledged its frequent usage. “We tried to use neutral terms, but you can’t always find them.” Earleen Fisher found it acceptable if clarified it was a label that Israel used. However, as I was to discover, using inverted commas or prefacing the label with the term “self-declared” or so-called security zone did not guarantee clarity that the area was occupied. A copy editor at Toronto’s Globe and Mail newspaper in the early 1990s told me she was under the impression that there was no Israeli presence there but run by its proxy Lebanese militias — an impression shaped by the repeated use of the term “security zone” in news coverage.26
Leslie Shepherd, a Canadian and a former AP editor in New York, made a distinction between the views of a democratic state and a militia:
I think that somehow you can use different language when you’re referring to a government as opposed to an opposition movement of any kind, whether a democratically elected opposition party or a grassroots movement or whatever. ... You give the benefit of the doubt by and large to an elected government with huge caveats.
A non-American editor at AP’s Middle East headquarters in Cairo in the early 2000s where copy from bureaus across the region was edited, hereafter referred to as Interviewee C, said:
We were not encouraged to add a broader perspective, or were simply habitually expected to follow the narrative that had become boilerplates. I guess it is self-censorship. You just don’t venture out into uncharted waters. These narratives are what history is made of. ... [There was a] big difference in reporting from the Israeli side on one hand and Cairo on the other, with more pronounced pro-Israeli viewpoints expressed in Jerusalem stories, which tended to lack balance.
Many of these value-laden labels were found in stories filed from Lebanon, written by Lebanese reporters and edited in Cairo. The internalization of the term “security zone” meant it was often accepted without thought. Even Arab reporters did not challenge it. One, Interviewee D, explained: “You get programmed at the beginning” and it becomes a reality. Interviewee E, another Arab, said: “To me, it was its name, I accepted it.”
Of the six AP journalists who commented on the use of the word “retaliate” when describing Israeli attacks, five said they were unaware of its implication; one disagreed that the word was value-loaded. Shepherd said she did not “necessarily infer retaliation as defense. “It was just the language we used at the time.” She said she accepted the language filed by the bureaus at face value. “You were trying to make sure it was balanced.”
Of the 12 journalists who commented on the AP boilerplate: “the U.S. considers Hezbollah a terrorist” group, four said the fact that the AP caters mainly to U.S. newspapers justified its use; one had been unaware of its implication; one was dismissive; one did not believe it was routinely used; and three criticized its use, one only mildly. Interviewee B believed it was “a way for the AP to avoid labeling an organization on its own.”
Nimmons said AP continued to use the label, and had added the European Union, which designated Hezbollah’s military wing a terrorist organization in July 2013. “I think it’s because we are looking for a short hand way to tell readers something about this group. And we would have to put a paragraph to explain what Hezbollah is, and that wouldn’t do it fully, because there’s a lot going on with Hezbollah.”
Donna Bryson, an editor in New York and later Middle East news editor in Cairo, said: “I believe AP reporters strive for balance and fairness, but I know subtle language can leave readers convinced we don’t. One unwritten rule that pertains here is the definition of terrorism and terrorist, labels used primarily for non-state actors. A government is never described as terrorist, though the actions of some governments might arguably fit that description.” She added:
Reporters don’t question their own language enough, and that might be a matter of the professionally shared values. Our sense of what a journalist is, developed at university and in the workplace, is probably more to blame for conformity in the industry than the ‘power’ of top editors and an organization’s culture.
Interviewee F, said: “The references seemed fair and I was not conscious that these were loaded references. ... What similar qualifications [could we have used] for the other side? We couldn’t possibly say the terrorist state of Israel, could we?”
Interviewee D, an Arab, went along with the use of the boilerplate despite not considering Hezbollah a terrorist organization. “I thought since the AP is an American organization and they rely mostly on American readers, maybe they should tell them that’s what the U.S. thinks, it doesn’t have to be true.”
Interviewee D did not think at the time that AP was giving its readers an eschewed version of facts but admitted that changed over the years. “Here [in the Mideast], we know what they [Hezbollah] are, but for the reader in America, they put it in their head that it is a terrorist organization, I don’t know why it didn’t matter to me then.”
There also remained an inclination to trust the official word — Israeli or American — as Shepherd noted, because they were democracies. Even non-Western journalists tended to accept their “otherness” and embrace a narrative that reduced Arabs as aggressors. In their view, if that was the narrative of a free media, then it must be true. When many of these journalists eventually realized it was not the case, they were powerless to change the narrative, as Interviewee C asserted. They remained complacent. After years of such coverage, audiences — and journalists themselves — were instilled with the idea that though Israel’s killings and attacks were unwarranted and violent, “stuff happens,” and the Arabs asked for it — a sentiment that was dominant during the 2006 war.
Unqualified support for Israel no longer had to do with the perception that it was weak and surrounded by hostile neighbors — its was now the strongest in the region, thanks to U.S. assistance. Israelis boasted about their “superior” culture and technology over Arabs. A journalist recalled in an interview that during a briefing some years earlier in Jerusalem, a senior AP editor described the Palestinians as “primitive people” — an attribute reminiscent of the Orientalist construct of Arabs. The reporter, who divulged the information on condition of anonymity, said:
That was the first thing he told me, he was briefing me about Jerusalem, he was telling me about the Israel coverage. He said Palestinians are primitive people. He was just describing the conflict as he saw it. He said there had never been a good Arab military leader; the Arabs had never had a good military commander which is something I’ve heard since then from other people who have a pretty strong bias for Israel.”27
The AP official (Interviewee K), contacted by email for a reaction, denied he had ever described Palestinians as “primitive.”
Another AP journalist, Susan Sevareid, who covered Israel’s withdrawal from the Lebanon-Israel border in 2000, offered her testimony in an interview that shed light on the change that occurred in AP’s coverage between 1982 and 2000. Throughout the day on May 25, 2000, Lebanese residents walked along the fence, pointing at soldiers, peering into Israel, and breaking into chants that led to impromptu demonstrations. At one point, she said, Israeli soldiers started shooting at the demonstrators, some in the back as they ran. Sevareid telephoned her report to Cairo, AP’s Mideast headquarters.
Later that day, I called in another update to the story and was told by the news editor in Cairo that New York had not yet moved the earlier lead with the injuries. She said they were holding it until Jerusalem could get Israeli army confirmation. The editor in New York, who was very senior and had vast Middle East experience, wondered how I could be sure the soldiers had inflicted the wounds and that they weren’t caused by someone firing on the Lebanese side. I, on the other hand, wondered what in the world I was doing standing there getting shot at if New York wouldn’t believe me until what I saw was confirmed by an Israeli army spokesman sitting in Jerusalem. While I was complaining, the confirmation came through and the update moved.
Conclusion
This chapter laid out some of the changes AP coverage underwent in reporting Israel’s wars on Lebanon. In the early to mid-1980s, AP Beirut bureau was at the forefront of providing news to the world, including local Lebanese media. For the most part, it did not take at face value rumors or information disseminated by interested parties, and reporters aggressively checked them out. On many occasions, Americans, Israelis and the warring militias had to retract their reports — such as suicide pilot rumors, Israeli denials of their presence in refugee camps during the Sabra and Shatila massacre, or denying Israelis opened fire on crowds in Nabatiyeh on Ashoura. Except for a few value-laden labels, AP copy was comprehensive.
By and large, even while operating in an environment tilted toward Israel, AP’s Mideast coverage during this period often managed to reflect the actual realities on the ground. As scholar Karim H. Karim explained, journalists were still able to reflect these realities despite the inbuilt Western preconceived biases and the enormous power Israel wielded behind the scenes across Western institutions.
Journalists generally had the freedom to report what they saw and judged events without interference or guidance, as long as every effort was made to be factually accurate. They were not held back from making it clear when the Israelis were using extreme measures against civilians.
Over the years, however, coverage moved away from neutrality, increasingly taking Israel’s position at face-value, as demonstrated in reporting the 1996 war. Timelines became more blurred. Stories did not consistently give a full and fair account of the conflict; in many ways the picture was incomplete and often misleading.
“The opposite of impartiality is partial coverage, that is, coverage which fails to mention relevant events or issues,” said leading academic at Glasgow University Greg Philo.28 Selective use of material, ignorance of crucial evidence, and avoidance of going into vital areas of significance gave the impression that the Israelis were in constant self-defense mode. More on cause and effects will be discussed in the following chapters.
As the American government became even more blatantly pro-Israel, so did the coverage. The massive imbalance of power between the two sides was largely ignored: a state and an army backed by the full weight of the U.S., armed with vast American-supplied weaponry and enjoying virtually unlimited Western support, versus a small guerrilla group resisting occupation with a rudimentary arsenal. While Israel’s backers were invisible in AP copy, Iran’s role in aiding Hezbollah was amplified and depicted as committing a war crime for aiding Hezbollah, even though its supply of weapons and funds was negligible compared with that provided to Israel by the United States and its allies.
By portraying Israelis as “victims” and Arabs as “the other,” AP sometimes used inflammatory language to describe Arab actions, as illustrated in the September 6, 1997 story.29 Priority and more space were given to Israeli views of events, while Lebanese guerrillas were cast as extremist Islamists, rendering them inferior and provocative. Failure to provide background and context — for example, guerrilla reactions, violent or otherwise, in the context of the continued occupation and Lebanese humiliation and suffering — and reluctance to challenge Israeli views further distorted the narrative and coverage.
However, it was the September 11, 2001 attacks on America that became a catalyst for a near-total transformation of U.S. mainstream media, particularly in their coverage of the Middle East and Islam — a watershed moment that brutally rattled the American consciousness of stability and protection. The changes that followed in newsrooms left a lasting mark on the way the media reported stories. Patriotic reporting and analyses became a badge of honor for journalists rather than a liability. Media narratives, parroting official government and military statements, adopted the frame of a “war on terror,” casting it as a struggle between the Western “good guys” against the Muslim “bad guys.”
By then, the Hasbara Project had evolved into a gigantic institution, deeply embedded in almost every decision-making arm of the American system. The Israel Lobby’s efforts played no small role in paving the way for the war on Iraq in 2003. The 9/11 attacks also made it easier for Israel and many U.S.-allied Middle Eastern dictatorships to invoke the terrorism charges — Israel to justify its wars against Palestinians and Lebanon, and the dictatorships to crack down on domestic opposition.
Chapter 3 coming soon.
AP archives, “Guerrillas Fire Katyusha Rockets on Northern Israel,” April 9, 1996; “Israelis Again Fire on Rebel Hub in Beirut,” April 12, 1996. http://www.deseretnews.com/article/483092/ ISRAELIS-AGAIN- FIRE-ON-REBEL-HUB-IN-BEIRUT.html?pg=all; Barry Schweid, AP archives, “Christopher Works on Agreement to Halt Israel-Hezbollah Conflict,” April 15, 1996. http:// www.apnewsarchive.com/1996/ Christopher-Works-on-Agreement-to-Halt-Israel-Hezbollah- Conflict/id- d5ee2ce426cb3e7b1103ce545c5e01d8?SearchText=lebanon%20April %201996%20hezbollah%20israel %20;Display_; Hussein Dakroub, The Brownsville Herald, “Israel-Hezbollah battles claim more lives in Lebanon,” April 16, 1996. http:// newspaperarchive.com/us texas/brownsville/brownsville-herald/ 1996/04-16/page-3; Jack Katzenell, AP archives, “Overwhelming public support for bombardment of Lebanon,” April 16, 1996. http://newspaperarchive.com/us/texas/brownsville/brownsville-herald/ 1996/04-16/page-3; Dianna Cahn, AP archives, “Israelis Flee Rocket Fire, But Strongly Support War,” April 16, 1996; Nicolas B. Tatro, AP archives, “U.S. Truce Proposals: International Monitoring and Syrian Guarantee, April 17, 1996. http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1996/U-S-Truce-Proposals- International-Moni- toring-And-Syrian-Guarantee/id-ecf4922d8d05458c41da4e6c2a8e3ade? SearchText=lebanon%20April %201996%20hezbollah%20israel%20;Display_ ; Scheherezade Faramarzi, AP, “Israeli Arabs: Government doesn’t protect us from rockets.” April 17, 1996, http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1996/Israeli-Arabs-Gov- ernment-Doesn-t-Protect-Us-from- Rockets/id-0c8ba8001532115d3049f10e087f8e3f? SearchText=Scheherezade%20faramarzi %201996%20Arab%20Israelis%20shelters%20;Display_; Robert H. Reid, AP archives, Pressure Mounts in Security Council for Cease-fire in Lebanon, April 18, 1996; Tarek al-Issawi, AP archives, “Israeli Aircraft Attack Apartment Building in Southern Lebanon, 11 Killed,” April 18, 1996, http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1996/Israeli-Aircraft-Attack-Apartment-Building-in- Southern-Lebanon-11-Killed/id-0af1bc2f474a8cd46a22dc5f803551d5; AP published in Arizona Daily Wildcat, “Israeli attack kills 75 UN refugees,” April 19, 1996. http://wc.arizona.edu/papers/ 89/141/01_2_m.html; AP archives, “Chronology of Recent Fighting,” April 19, 1996. http:// www.ap- newsarchive.com/1996/Chronology-of-Recent-Fighting/ id-7608f3ed94a7e12aca9de9e540bddcba?Search- Text=lebanon%20April %201996%20hezbollah%20israel%20;Display_; Dafna Linzer, News Press, April 21, 1996. http://archives.savannahnow.com/sav_pdf_archive/text/ fr147/A_2323472.pdf; Sam F. Ghattas, AP archives, “Christopher in Lebanon, Israeli Warplanes, Gunboats in Action,” April 24, 1996. http:// www.apnewsarchive.com/1996/Christopher-In-Lebanon-Israeli-Warplanes-Gunboats-In- Action/id- ac712413140aa0068461a6312b7a5c05?SearchText=lebanon%20April %201996%20hezbollah%20israel %20;Display_; Hilary Appelman, AP archives, “Israelis Say Fighting to Prevent New Tragedy,” April 25, 1996; Louis Meixler, AP archives, “UN General Assembly Condemns Israeli Attack on Civilians in Lebanon,” April 26, 1996. http:// www.apnewsarchive.com/1996/U-N-General-Assembly-Condemns-Is- raeli-Attack-on-Civilians- in-Lebanon/id-ef6ad8298d968f103c7ce9727f26198a?SearchText=lebanon %20April %201996%20hezbollah%20israel%20;Display_; Tarek Al-Issawi, South Coast Today, “Lebanese refugees go home.” Saturday April 28, 1996. http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ article?AID=/ 19960428/NEWS/304289998; Robert H. Reid, AP archives, “Israel’s Artillery
AP published in Desert News, “Israelis Again Fire on Rebel Hub in Beirut,” April 12, 1996. http:// www.deseretnews.com/article/483092/ISRAELIS-AGAIN-FIRE-ON-REBEL-HUB-IN-BEIRUT.html? pg=all
AP archives, “Guerrillas Fire Katyusha Rockets on Norther Israel,” April 9, 1996.
AP published in Desert News, “Israelis Again Fire on Rebel Hub in Beirut,” April 12, 1996. http:// www.deseretnews.com/article/483092/ISRAELIS-AGAIN-FIRE-ON-REBEL-HUB-IN-BEIRUT.html? pg=all
Barry Schweid, AP archives, “Christopher Works on Agreement to Halt Israel-Hezbollah conflict,” April 15, 1996. http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1996/Christopher-Works-on-Agreement-to-Halt-Israel-Hezbol- lah-Conflict/id-d5ee2ce426cb3e7b1103ce545c5e01d8?SearchText=lebanon%20April %201996%20hezbol- lah%20israel%20;Display_
Dianna Cahn, AP archives, “Israelis Flee Rocket Fire, But Strongly Support War, April 16, 1996.
Hussein Dakroub, The Brownsville Herald, “Israel-Hezbollah battles claim more lives in Lebanon,” April 16, 1996. http://newspaperarchive.com/us/texas/brownsville/brownsville-herald/1996/04-16/ page-3
Tarek al-Issawi, AP archives, “Israeli Aircraft Attack Apartment Building in Southern Lebanon, 11 Killed. April 18, 1996.
Tarek al-Issawi, AP published in South Coast Today, “ Lebanese Go Home,” April 28, 1996. http://www. southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19960428/NEWS/304289998
Dafna Linzer, News Press, April 21, 1996. http://archives.savannahnow.com/sav_pdf_archive/text/ fr147/ A_2323472.pdf
Hilary Appelman, AP archives, “Israelis Say Fighting to Prevent New Tragedy,” April 25, 1996.
Scheherezade Faramarzi, AP archives, “Israeli Arabs: Government doesn’t protect us from rockets.” April 17, 1996, http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1996/Israeli-Arabs-Government-Doesn-t-Protect-Us-from- Rockets/id-0c8ba8001532115d3049f10e087f8e3f?SearchText=Scheherezade%20faramarzi %201996%20Arab%20Israelis%20shelters%20;Display_
Herbert Gans, Deciding What’s News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek and Time (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1979). Gans was mainly referring to Communist countries, but this theory can be applied to anywhere the US regards as unfriendly.
Margaret Sullivan, New York Times, “Targeted Killing,’ ‘Detainee’ and ‘Torture’: Why Language Choice Matters,” April 12, 2013. http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/12/targeted-killing-detainee-and- torture-why-language-choice-matters/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
Karim H. Karim, Islamic Peril: Media and Global Violence (Montréal: Black Rose, 2003).
AP published in the Los Angeles Times, “Guerrillas attack Israeli-occupied zone,” Sept. 8, 1997. http:// www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19970908/NEWS/309089984&
AP story published in Desert News, “Israel military ‘in pain’ after loss in Lebanon, Sept. 6, 1997. http:// www.deseretnews.com/article/581302/Israel-military-in-pain-after-loss-in-Lebanon.html?pg=all
Mitchell Kaddy, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Disinformation in the U.S. Media Turned Occupied Territory into Israel’s ‘Security Zone,’ July 2000. http://www.questia.com/magazine/ 1P3-509431111/disinformation-in-the-u-s-media-turned-occupied-territory
AP published in the Los Angeles Times, “Guerrillas Attack in S. Lebanon,” Nov 17, 1993. http:// articles.latimes.com/1993-11-17/news/mn-57785_1_southern-lebanon examples
Greg Philo and M. Berry, Bad News from Israel (London: Pluto, 2004) pp. 261-275.
Boilerplate is phrases or sentences that are a standard way of saying something and are often used (source: Webster dictionary)
Sullivan, op cit.
Karim, opt cit. p. 34.
Edward W. Said, Covering Islam (London: Routledge & Regan Paul, 1981).
Edmond Shadid, AP archives, “Seven Wounded in Israeli copter Raid, 2 Killed in Tank Fire,” May 4, 1993. http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1993/Seven-Wounded-In-Israeli-Copter-Raid-2-Killed-in-Tank-Fire/ id-9b04ea2f7477bba5af8fe20fd04207be
The Globe and Mail editor, who shall remain anonymous, is not quoted more in the book.
The journalist wished to remain anonymous.
Report of the Independent Panel for the BBC Governors on Impartiality of BBC Coverage of the Israeli- Palestinian Conflict, April 2006. http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/our_work/govs/panel_re- port_final.txt
Ahmed Mantash, AP published in South Coast Today, “Guerrillas gloat over slain Israelis,” Sept. 6, 1997. http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19970906/NEWS/ 309069921&emailAFriend=1