JOSHUAPUNDIT on media bias

Media Bias Anyone? Foreign Policy Magazine Lists Israel As A Failed State!

Foreign Policy magazine has a nifty little feature out today called 'Postcards from Hell-Images from the world's most failed states.' In it, the author, former Foreign Policy managing editor Elizabeth Dickenson juxtaposes images from the failed states, based on something they call a 'failed state index' with photos designed to illustrate how awful they are.

Most of the prose follows the Leftist catechism with lots of mentions of Global Warming. Some of it is either ridiculously inaccurate or overblown. But the prize has to go to FP's listing of Israel as a failed state, number 54 out of a list of 60. Yes, Israel, with a booming economy so far hardly affected by the global recession, almost total literacy, some of the best medical care in the world,total political liberty and an independent judiciary is a failed state - ranked below Papua New Guinea, Zambia, Comoros, Mozambique, Madagascar, Bolivia and Djibouti, and just above Angola. I kid you not.

So how did the brainiacs at Foreign Policy justify this? How did presumed foreign policy expert Elizabeth Dickenson square this circle? Simple. They titled the entry 'Israel/West Bank' and cited some figures from a biased EU-funded British study about how 'tens of thousands of Palestinian families risk being forced to leave their homes as a result of Israeli policies' and that half the children 'suffered from water-borne diarrhea', linked to an article from that equally unbiased source, al-Jazeera!

Just one problem. Aside from the fact that the figures are obviously cooked, the study and the article both focus on a part of Judea and Samaria (AKA the West Bank) known as Area C. This is the part of Judea and Samaria where the major Jewish communities are, and is fully under Israeli administration. And guess what? Only an estimated 4% of the 'Palestinian' population lives there...if that much. So there aren't 'ten of thousands of Palestinian families' facing eviction and the 'water-borne diarrhea' figures of children are so small as to be negligible...unless of course, you have an agenda.

Foreign Policy is a particularly fact challenged source, especially when it comes to the Middle East and it's home to Israel bashers like Stephen Walt, co-author of the scurrilous 'The Israel Lobby'. They have a perfect right to publish whatever horse manure they choose, but I have a problem with them issuing this kind of propaganda and calling it 'journalism'. At this point, the Israel Derangement Syndrome is so pronounced among 'journalists' like Dickenson that they can't even be bothered to make up lies that are remotely credible. And they ought to be ashamed of that.

As for Israel the failed state, a particularly comical aspect of this is the amount of Africans from some of the countries FP ranked above Israel who have attempted, often by walking amazing distances overland, to enter the country and start new lives. Not to mention the African countries who are the eager recipients of Israeli humanitarian and economic assistance. Somehow, they didn't get the message it's a failed state.

FP: Palestinians are ready for a state and Israel is a failed one. What can one say? We live in an upside down and backwards world. Orwell would have recognized it instantly. Black is white and white is black. 
The PostWest. I am glad I am old enough to get off early.