The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it Resolved, the western media has an anti-Israel bias

Episode Date: November 28, 2023

Within one week of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, the BBC received more than 1,500 complaints relating to its coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict. Criticisms were split almost evenly between those claiming its reporting had been biased against Israel and those saying it was biased in favour of Israel. These disparate interpretations of the media’s coverage of the war are not limited to the BBC. Other mainstream media outlets like the New York Times, CNN, and the CBC have faced similar accusations in recent weeks. Israel’s supporters argue that activists have infiltrated newsrooms, leading to journalism that is increasingly biased against the party whom many young progressives have deemed the villain in this conflict: Israel. From falsely and prematurely blaming Israel for an attack on a Gaza hospital, to refusing to use the word terrorists to describe Hamas, to trusting information provided to them by Hamas under the pretext of the Gaza Health Ministry, the international press has shown its true colours and cannot be relied upon to deliver unbiased, factual reporting. Others argue that the opposite is true. For decades the western press has ignored the suffering of Palestinians and deemed them less deserving of attention or sympathy due to a colonial, white supremacist way of thinking. Whereas Ukrainians who use violence to resist occupation are depicted as heroes, Palestinians are derided as attackers and terrorists. This dehumanization has made violence towards them more acceptable and has made western media outlets complicit in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians.   Arguing in favour of the resolution is James Kirchick. He’s a columnist for Tablet magazine and a writer at large for Air Mail. Arguing against the resolution is Arwa Damon, a former CNN Senior International Correspondent.   SOURCES: Sky News, BBC, Fox News   The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths - @rudyardg.   Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail].   To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ Senior Producer: Ricki Gurwitz Editor: Kieran LynchBecome a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Today's debate, be it resolved, the Western media has an anti-Israel bias. Photojournalists used by the AP, CNN, the New York Times, and Reuters position themselves in the middle of the terror attack so they could take. take photos and collect video. The New York Times now admitting they were wrong in how they covered the deadly blast near a hospital in Gaza last week. An apology from the BBC. A BBC news, as it covered initial reports

that Israeli forces has entered Gaza's main hospital. We said that medical teams and Arab speakers were being targeted. This was incorrect and misquoted a Reuters report. Hello, I'm your moderator, Rudyard Griffiths. Well, within one week of the Hamas attack on Israel of October 7th, the BBC received over 1,500 complaints relating to its coverage of the conflict. Criticisms were split almost evenly between those claiming that its reporting was biased

against Israel and those saying it was too much in favor of the Jewish state. Mainstream media outlets like The New York Times, CNN, and Canada, CBC have faced similar accusations in recent weeks. Israel supporters argue that activists have infiltrated many mainstream media newsrooms leading to journalism that is relentlessly biased against the Jewish state in this war. From falsely and prematurely blaming Israel for the attack on a Gaza hospital to some outlets outright refusing to use the word terrorist to describe Hamas, the international press has shown its true anti-Semitic colors and cannot be relied on to. to deliver unbiased, fact-based reporting. Others argue that the opposite is true. For decades, the Western press has ignored the suffering of Palestinians and deem them less deserving of our attention or sympathy.

Whereas Ukrainians who use violence to resist Russian occupation are depicted as heroes in much of the mainstream press, Palestinians are derided as genocidal terrorists. On this installment of the monk debates, we challenge the essence of these arguments by debating the motion, be it resolved. The Western media has an anti-Israeli bias. Arguing in favor of the resolution is James Kirchik. He's a columnist for Tablet Magazine and a writer at large for Air Mail.

Arguing against the motion is Arwa Damon, a former CNN senior international correspondent. James Arwa, welcome to the mug debates. Hi, thank you. Thank you. Pleasure to be here. Looking forward to today's conversation. It has been a topic that has dominated the media. The media loves talking about the media.

So we're going to indulge in a little bit of that today with our motion, be it resolved. The media has an anti-Israeli bias. James, you're arguing in favor of the motion. So I'm going to put two minutes on our proverbial show clock and turn the program over to you. Thank you. Yes. loves talking about the media, but the one thing the media loves talking more about the media is Israel. And I'm going to argue today that the media has an anti-Israel bias. I would even say

an obsession with this country. And I'm going to present three reasons, three Ds for this. One is disproportionate coverage. Two is the demonization of the state of Israel. And the third is a double standard that the media applies to Israel, that it does not apply to any other country. To start with disproportionate. We've heard this word disproportionate a lot in the past couple of weeks to describe Israel's military attack on Gaza in response to the massacre of October 7th. But I would say that the word is a much better descriptor for the media's coverage of Israel. Let's just take a look at some other global conflicts that have occurred around the same time. We had 300,000 Afghan refugees living in Pakistan. We're deported back to that country, which is now being run by the Taliban, where I'm sure they will meet a terrible fate. Azerbaijan, ethnically cleansed. And I'm going to use that term accurately because the term has been applied inaccurately to what Israel's been doing in Gaza. But Azerbaijan, ethnically cleansed, actually forced out 100,000 Armenians from the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh and is moving in Azaris to take over their homes. And then in Sudan's Darfur region, Arab militias have been waging a brutal

campaign, a sexual violence, torture, and murder. About 11,000 people have died, and six million have been displaced. Now, you would be forgiven for not knowing about these stories, because they've barely been covered, certainly barely been covered next to the massive amounts of coverage. Front page news every day leading the news broadcasts for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Second is demonization. There are so many examples that I could offer, and we'll get into them today. The most blatant one was the coverage of the supposed Israeli bombing of the Al-Ali hospital, about a week into its attack on Gaza, where most Western media outlets reported with total credulity, the Palestinian claim that Israel had deliberately bombed a hospital and killed 500 people.

Everything about that story was false. 500 people didn't die. The hospital wasn't hit. It was the parking lot. And it was an errant rocket from Palestinian Islamic jihad. Yet this falls into a pattern, and there are many examples going back decades of the Western media accepting at face value, fantastical Palestinian claims, which they later have to walk back. And you'll see if you actually look at the corrections that Western mainstream media outlets are routinely, repeatedly have to issue. The vast majority of those corrections go in one direction.

They go in correcting false or error-filled news reports about Israel, not in the opposite. direction. Finally, is the double standard. The director of the BBC Global Service recently said that Israel is no more credible than Hamas. Can you imagine the director of the BBC ever saying that about the British government and the IRA or the American government in the Al-Qaeda? This is not to say that Western governments don't lie. They lie all the time, but to say that they're on par with a genocidal anti-Semitic terrorist organization, which is what the director of the BBC Global Service said, I think, is just blatant example of bias. and the double standard that is applied to Israel.

Furthermore, where are the Western media exposés, the mainstream media exposés on what life was like in Gaza before October 7th, on the corruption of the Palestinian Authority, on the corruption of Hamas? We don't see that sort of reporting because it doesn't fit the narrative, which the mainstream media has adopted on this conflict, which is that Israel is a colonialist aggressor and the Palestinians are pitiable victims. That is the main frame that most journalists and most mainstream media outlets covering this conflict. That's the one that they've adopted.

And so writing stories about corruption of the Palestinian Authority or human rights abuses of Hamas in Gaza, it doesn't fit that frame. They're not going to cover it. It's certainly not to the extent that they would cover conflicts within Israel, which is a democratic society and allows journalists to operate freely. So those are the three main reasons why I think the media is biased against Israel. and I look forward to discussing this further. Thank you, Jamie, for that opening statement.

You're listening to our debate today, be it resolved that media has an anti-Israeli bias. Arwa, you're arguing against the motion. Your opportunity now for some opening remarks. Thank you. So I am obviously going to be arguing that the media has a pro-Israeli bias and one that actually does go back decades because no nation, no entity can justify its wrong. without dehumanizing the population against whom action and violence is being taken. And the campaign to dehumanize Palestinians has been ongoing and has been amplified in the

Western media for the most part for decades now. And there is a crucial point of departure that is lacking when it comes to coverage of anything that has to do with Palestine and Israel. And that starting point is that we need to be able to agree that all, life is sacred and should be protected. But again, that is not the case, because we cannot deny that what we are hearing Palestinians on the airwaves now saying is not new. For decades, Palestinians have been begging for the right to live. For decades, Palestinians historically have been treated as less than by the Western media. And we see this now specifically in the conflation of Hamas's

vicious actions and the Palestinian quest for freedom. a state to call their own. We see this when heads of state question Palestinian deaths. We see this when the world's largest democracy supports an entire siege on 2.3 million people. We see this in the rhetoric and the reporting of the death tolls and how even talk of Palestinian pain is somehow being considered to be pro-Hamas. What we're seeing right now and this media bias towards Israel and the blind U.S. backing of Israel's actions has actually sent me back to the post-9-11 era where somehow all of a sudden all Arabs and all Muslims were branded terrorists. And this utter polarization, the hatred that emerged from that were the Western media,

rather than try to educate their audience and be a rational and calming voice, demanding answers from leadership, was banging the drums of war. as the press, I do believe that we are meant to be on a quest for the truth. We are meant to be holding the powerful to account, to question all sides. But as we are seeing specifically in the events unfolding right now, that has not quite been the case. All too often we're hearing Palestinian voices and Palestinian leadership who have nothing to do with Hamas find themselves interrogated by the Western media. And that same level of interrogation, and questioning is not being applied to Israeli voices and to Israeli leadership.

And I find the fact that just by mere virtue of us needing to argue about this, that this is the topic of this debate, we should all also recognize that we're in some very, very dangerous territory when there is so little faith in the media from all sides and also in what governments are telling the general population. Thank you, Arwa, for that opening statement. Again, you're listening to our debate today, be it resolved, the media has an anti-Israeli bias. We're going to move to rebuttals. And again, just for the sake of time here, a lot to discuss in this debate. We're going to get to it all. Let's try to focus those rebuttals on just one or two things you want to highlight in these opening moments of the debate. Jamie, you're up first. Thank you. Well,

Aura, she took issue with the U.S. government questioning the Palestinian death tolls. I don't see why we shouldn't question what's coming out of the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry when we just saw with the All-Ali hospital fiasco. This was a, I mean, you talk about why people don't trust the media. Look at that story and how that was reported with utter credulity, utter credulity. Palestinian claim that 500 people had been killed in a hospital deluxe. deliberately bombed by Israel, every part of that story fell apart. We could go back to the so-called Janine massacre of 2000 during the first, during the second

intifada. And the Palestinians claim that Israel had massacred thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians dumping their bodies into mass graves. What happened later, international investigations by amnesty and human rights watch, which are hardly pro-Israel organizations, discovered that the actual number was something on the order of 56, I believe. and that most of them were combatants. There's the Mohammed al-Dura affair,

which was a young Palestinian boy who was crouching with his father. He was caught between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians in a firefight, and he was killed. And this story was, he was alleged by the Palestinians that an Israeli sniper killed him. This image was put on postage stamps across the Arab world.

That story also fell apart. So when the Biden administration comes out and says, you know what, we're not going to take these casualty figures, which, by the way, the Palestinians are not distinguishing between combatants and non-combatants in this figure that you've seen of 11,000 or 12,000 dead. When the Biden administration comes out and says, we need to wait until the smoke clears before we can confirm these numbers, I think that's the totally appropriate response. And I just point out, you've noticed Israel has actually reduced the number of dead from October 7th.

Initially, they said it was over 1,400. They'd now revised. that number down to 1,200, probably because so many of these bodies were so brutally dismembered and burnt that there was no remains in some cases. But you actually have Israel reducing the number of casualties. You never see that on the other side. It goes in the opposite direction where the Palestinians are claiming massive numbers. And then through further investigation, it's determined that those numbers are inflated. So that point to me, I think, is another illustration of why there is such a serious degree of media bias against Israel. Thank you, Jamie.

Okay. Arwa, your rebuttal, maybe pick up on a key point of Jamie's that you'd like to address at this point in the debate. Yeah, I would add to the list of D's, and I would add dehumanize to the list of D's, and the way that Palestinian life is not as valued as Israeli life, especially in the Western media. and I would expand on some of the points that that Jamie has made. And yes, it is true that there is a big, big focus on Israel.

And yes, it is absolutely true that, you know, Israel is held to a higher level of scrutiny. But that is exactly the way that it should be. Israel is a democratically elected nation state. And as such, the expectations from a democratically elected nation, state are going to be much higher than they are from any other entity. And this conflict, if that's what we're going to call it, between Israelis and Palestinians, it has been going on for decades. It has always been extraordinarily polarizing. And as such, yes, when something emerges, there is going to be a higher level of scrutiny as there should be. And if we're going to start

listing sort of misinformation that's out there, and look, I don't disagree. The explosion that happened at the Al-Ajli Hospital should not have been reported by either side as being one thing or the other. Because right now, actually, it's still to date right now, has not been completely and entirely debunked. Quite frankly, every single media organization is done. It's independent investigation. And the conclusions are all over the place right now. And if it comes to the reasons why there is such skepticism or why I would actually argue that there should be skepticism, when it comes to statements coming from the Israeli government,

it's because there has historically speaking been misinformation that has been put out there. We have the story of, you know, the 40 beheaded babies, babies who were allegedly beheaded, that the Israeli government then had to walk back. You have an idea of spokesperson taking the media around and pointing to a calendar and claiming that it's some kind of like Hamas, terrorist

rotation list. And when it comes to the numbers, I would point out that, look, Hamas, of course, not credible, should also definitely be second checked, double checked. But specifically when it comes to the issue of death tolls, up until this point,

Hamas' death tolls have been fairly accurate. And in fact, they were very similar, for example, to the death tolls that were then put out by the Israelis back in the, I think it was 2000, and 2014 conflicts that emerged. So yes, I agree. Hamas is not necessarily credible,

but when it comes to death tolls, it is. And by shedding, you know, by questioning the Palestinian deaths, especially by the Biden administration, this put Palestinians in a horrible position where they had to actually come out with lists and lists and lists of the names that they were able to verify, keeping in mind that this number of, you know, 12,000-plus Palestinians who have been killed

does not include those that are still underneath the rubble at this stage. And I also think that we need to be very careful where when we say that an organization is questioning what Israel is saying, that does not necessarily make them pro-Palestinian. That means that they're doing their job. Thank you, Arwa. Let me join the conversation now and try to think of some questions that are top of mind for our listeners tuning into this excellent debate, our motion be it resolved. The media has an anti-Israeli bias. Let me come to you first, Jamie. Darwa mentioned something earlier, and I assume both of you as journalists agree to this, the pursuit of the truth, as complicated and sometimes ultimately as unsatisfying as that is,

is kind of the purpose of journalism, is part of the sense of bias, Jamie, is it simply because the media is doing its job? It's trying to represent different views. And in this conflict, because of the nature of their participants, it is forced into, to trying to represent the views of Hamas. And that may be morally reprehensible to many of us, but Hamas is the combatant with which Israel is fighting, both militarily and politically and diplomatically.

So when you characterize something as bias, is that just the media doing its job? If the media did its job, it would protestation reporters. in Gaza and not rely upon actual supporters of Hamas. As we've seen quite scandalously, a number of photographers who have been used by the AP and Reuters had prior knowledge of this attack. And we're basically traveling with Hamas fighters as they raped and pillaged.

And they've had to now disown these photographers. There's been a number of cases of this of Palestinian freelancers and stringers who are basically moonlighting, but are actually Hamas supporters. It's also, look, I understand it's very dangerous to report in the Gaza Strip. And there are repercussions. But you know what? The media has done excellent work on reporting on Russia, on China. They've risked the lives of their reporters.

One of them, Evan Gershkovich, is in jail right now, a Wall Street Journal reporter. A former colleague of mine at Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, was also just detained in Russia. There's been excellent reporting from the Western media on corruption in China in the Communist Party. So we know the media is capable of doing these stories in dangerous places. But when it comes to this conflict, you hardly see stories about Palestinian Authority corruption, which is massive. You don't really see stories about the failings, the massive failings of Hamas and the fact that it's been building this tunnel network for years. And there's a former AP reporter, Maddie Friedman, who left the agency and wrote about this. He tried to get the AP to publish stories about the billions of dollars that Hamas was stealing

in international aid money and siphoning off and supplies and whatnot to build these tunnels, which they now use successfully in prolonging this terrible, terrible war. Where were the Western media stories on this? They just weren't there because, again, the media has a frame. And the frame is Israel is the oppressor and the Palestinians are the oppressed. The Palestinians have no agency in this. Everything they do is a response to Israeli aggression. And that is, I think, just a clear case of bias. That's not objective reporting. So, Arwa, to pick up on this thread, you mentioned earlier that, you know, there is a distinction

between Hamas and Israel. One is an internationally recognized terrorist group in most Western countries. The other is a democratic state, albeit with imperfections, like many. democratic states, including, I would say Canada, where I'm coming to you from. I mentioned this because as a reporter, isn't there some additional credence, some additional authority that we should give to the information that comes out of a military and a diplomatic corps and a prime minister's office who are functioning within the rules and strictures of a democratic state? And haven't we seen our what this kind of false equivalency drawn somehow between Hamas and the information it provides and its narratives versus that of Israel, when in fact these two entities are literally light years

apart. They are apples and oranges. And to somehow assume or infer that the information that comes out of the IDF or the prime minister's office in Israel is as valid. as authoritative as the information that comes out of Hamas in either Gaza or Qatar, isn't that stretching readers credulity? Well, I think part of the issue is that the Israeli government and the U.S. government, for that matter, and of course, Hamas, yes, have not entirely been honest. And there are numerous examples of either a deliberate manipulation of information.

or trying to put out a narrative that quite simply is not true. When you have a senior Israeli official who posts, you know, on his social media, a claim that a video clip was Palestinians faking their own deaths when actually it was behind the scenes from a Lebanese short film, that's a problem. When you have an IDF spokesman, you know, parading media in front of a document, claiming that it was a guardian list on which every single terrorist writes his name,

that becomes a problem. And when you have IDF and Israeli government speaks people saying there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza, that's a problem. When you have Israeli officials denying that children have been killed in Gaza, that's a problem. Look, I've been to Gaza. I've been on the ground in Gaza. I know what it's like in there. And I can actually say that, that while I was in Gaza, I was never prevented from going somewhere. I was able to, you know, go around and pretty much, you know, do my job as a journalist, the same way I've been able to do it anywhere else. Now, does Hamas, of course, try to manipulate a narrative? Yes, it does. It's a warring party. We need to realize and recognize that every single entity who we speak to, even those that

we would like to hold to a higher standard has an agenda and that we, the media, are constantly being played at all times. And when we talk about the risk, look, Jamie, you have a very valid point. The Western media should be doing more coverage from Palestinian territories. But that is not out of a sort of anti-Israel bias that it's not happening. It's quite simply because of just how schizophrenic, you know, media tension is, especially when we're talking about the mainstream media. And the sad reality is that when it comes to news coming out of Israel or Palestine, that news really only comes out when something violent has been taking place. And I would very much agree with you, yes, there should have been more Western media reporting out of Palestinian territories. They should have been reporting out of Gaza, not just on the various things that you mentioned, but also on what life in Gaza was before October 7th. What life in Gaza is when the bombs aren't falling. Because while Hamas does have a very, very low right now, popular. standing prior to October 7th. Had there been elections in Gaza, Hamas would not have won those elections. I think their candidate was polling at like 24%. But the media should have been reporting on

how there is life in Gaza. There are people who go to university. There are families who get together, who laugh and love just like anybody else. And the Western media should have also been reporting more heavily from the West Bank, where prior to October 7th, there were significantly more deaths than any other year where illegal settler activity has been inflaming the situation, and this is activity that even Israel itself deems to be illegal and yet facilitates and allows to move forward. So yes, has the Western media been failing to report on what's happening outside of Palestinian territories? I agree with you. Jamie, let's have you react to that in a sense that what is perceived as anti-Israeli bias is, in fact, Israeli favorit to.

that there is a lack of sustained focus, media attention on the Palestinian side of this conflict, and that that predates this war. And it's intensified during the war that Gaza has been rendered in a sense a black box to many Western viewers or readers. And we're left with this impossible task of trying to sift through the claims of, you know, the two combatants with, I guess, the media as our guide. as to what's propaganda and what's not, but we don't really have any sense of what's happening to Palestinians on the ground, either before the conflict or now.

I think there are more foreign correspondence in Israel per capita than any other territory on earth by a massive, massive margin. And I think to take the Associated Press as one example, there was something like 50 Associated Press reporters

in the Jerusalem Bureau, which is, I believe, more than there are in Russia and China and all of sub-Saharan Africa combined. So this notion that, you know, settlement activity is not being covered extensively enough, I just cannot understand how that is even a legitimate argument. I mean, Israelis decide to build a couple of houses in this territory. It becomes front-page news around the world.

And I'll just go back to the conflicts I cited at the beginning of this story. Is settlement activity in the West Bank really on par with what's going on in Pakistan right now where hundreds of thousands of Afghans are being deported back to the, to the tender mercies of the Taliban. Does it even approach the level of what the Azeris are doing right now in Nagorno-Karabakh or in Sudan? Of course it doesn't. It's not even close what Israel is doing. The human suffering is not even close to what's going on in these other conflicts. But because the Western media has an obsession with Israel.

And I would say it comes from a rather unhealthy obsession with Jews is what I really think is driving this. That's why you see this hugely disproportionate coverage of this conflict, which is totally out of death. So this is an important point, RWA, to come to you on. I mean, there was a siege of the city of Mosul in the fight against ISIS, the Western Alliance-led attack to destroy ISIS as a military and political force. in, I guess that was 2017 through 2019, the claims arguments that maybe upwards of 100,000 people in the city of Mosul were killed by allied forces, Canadian forces included predominantly American shelling and airstrikes.

Yet that never featured, certainly in my news feeds. I read very little about it in American and Canadian news. newspapers. So why is there this disproportionate and intense coverage of this war as opposed to the war, let's say the civil war in Syria that may have killed upwards of a million people over the last decade? Isn't that a sign of some anti-Israel bias? I think you're asking the wrong journalist that question because I was actually in Mosul from the get-go and I intensely covered the operations against ISIS and the lead up to Mosul and then in Mosul itself. And I can tell you right now, I took the Americans and the Iraqis and the coalition to town over the bombing campaign of

Mosul, which was absolutely despicable because there we knew that almost every single house had a civilian family, if not families, in it. And there were a number. number of occasions when we were able to get footage out and actually present it to the coalition to say, no, look, you're hitting this, you're saying you killed five ISIS fighters. Well, here's 40 civilians that were also killed in this. And there has been a lot of not sufficient, however, analysis of what the U.S. could have and should have done better when it comes to how it decided to address the battle for Mosul. And I think it's a big problem when it comes to holding militaries accountable, whether it's, you know, the Israeli military or the American military.

These powerful countries like Israel and the U.S., they do get a free pass when they kill civilians all the time. Can I say something? Just one second. Sorry. And also, like, Jamie, you know, you're talking about, you know, you say settlers built a couple of houses in its front page news. I mean, a couple of houses. it's a lot more than a couple of houses.

It's on land that is not theirs. I mean, it's the sort of thing that shouldn't be. It just shouldn't be happening. I mean, can we just shift this a little bit and agree that there are such longstanding fundamental wrongs that have been happening here, that we have two populations that are both deeply, deeply, historically traumatized and have been traumatized for decades.

And that that trauma deeply plays into what we're seeing right now. Yes, the Associated Press might have more staff based in Israel than it does anywhere else, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's somehow relating to pro-Palestinian coverage. And yes, of course, should the media be paying attention to what's happening in Pakistan, with the Afghans being sent across and in Nagorno-Karabah and in all of these other areas? Absolutely 100%. I agree. And that goes to another bigger issue than what we're debating right now.

and that is that the Western media is generally speaking pro-Western, and that what's happening to people in other parts of the world, if it's not happening in the U.S., Europe, or Israel, is deemed as not being all that important. I mean, I admire you for your consistency on covering the allied military in Iraq with scrutiny, but we're not here to debate your journalistic record. We're here to debate the Western media's. And that's the problem, is that most of your colleagues are not holding Israel to the same standard,

that they hold every other military in the world to. And that's the source of the bias. As for the settlements, we're here to debate the media coverage of this conflict and not the actual merits of the conflict itself. I mean, I would just say that the occupation is a symptom of this. conflict rather than the cause of it, and that the occupation began in 1967 with an attempt to destroy the state of Israel. And that in reaction, in defending itself, Israel came into possession of these territories. And it has not been able to find a resolution with the Palestinians that would

lead to a two-state solution. You know, the disposition of the settlements personally, I think they've been very destructive and not helpful towards the goal of a two-state solution. But even there, I think that the media's obsession with the settlements, and it's acting as if the settlements were the cause of this problem, rather than Palestinian, I would say, broader Arab and Muslim rejectionism of the existence of the state of Israel. That is the source of this conflict. It is the rejection of a Jewish presence in this tiny strip of land. That has been the source of this conflict since before the state of Israel was created. And it continues to be the root of this conflict. Hamas is a genocidal terrorist organization that does not, that wants to kill Jews everywhere,

not just Israelis, right? And so as long as that organization exists and is in power, you cannot expect Israel to agree to a two-state solution. So I think that the obsession with the settlements and the belief that if Israel were to uproot settlements, this conflict would end, is wrong. And we know that because Israel uprooted its settlements in Gaza in 2005. And look what it got. in response. Conscious of our time. So, Arwa, I'm going to give you a response here to Jamie and then we'll move to closing statements.

I mean, look, there's a couple of things here, right? And like, if we were to get into the whole debate of what should have could have happened, like we'd be going back decades, I just want to say that, you know, there was a point in time when Jews and Muslims lived in that stretch of land way before all of this. So I wouldn't argue, and I would counter argue very strongly to this notion that, you know, the cause of this is because Arabs and Muslims reject Jews. I think the issue is that when the state of Israel was founded, the state of Palestine was not. Unfortunately, we can. Why was that?

For a number of different reasons that we don't necessarily need to get into right now, but we can also say that, you know, the U.S. basically broke its promise to the Palestinian people at the time. But I just feel as if we are all losing an ability to actually listen to each other. And when we stand here and have this debate, and, you know, Jamie, you point to other examples of what's happening in other places, you know, as if that somehow is justifying, you know, what's happening in Israel or an approach towards Israel, I would hope that we could move towards a point where we can actually agree that every single government and every single entity should be approached with the same level of scrutiny. And that every single civilian who comes on a broadcast to speak about their pain and their personal experience is treated with the same

level of respect. Because we don't see that. And counter to what you're saying, I would actually argue that when Israeli spokespeople and government officials are on the Western media, they are allowed to get away with some of the most ludicrous statements, like there's no humanitarian crisis in Gaza, or we're not killing children, or we're trying to protect, you know, the civilian population. And they get no pushback on these statements. And that is a big failing of the media, because we do need to be holding officials to a higher standard. And we do need to be holding them to a higher account. And I don't believe that we should be saying that the media is somehow trying to present the views of Hamas. I actually don't believe that the Western or any

media is trying to present the views of Hamas. I think what the media should be doing, and I would actually argue as failing to do, is adequately explain the circumstances that led us to this point, because we can't understand how we got to a certain point without understanding the factors that lead a person to pick up a gun. Irrespective of who is to blame, we need to understand why someone picks up a gun and we need to be able to put forward concrete options as to how to prevent that from actually happening. The media, the Western media, does not present the views of Hamas. What the Western media is failing to do actually is probably present the views and the narrative of a Palestinian population that has nothing to do with Hamas.

Did you know that you could give the gift to the monk debates this holiday season? That's right. are offering both our curator and supporter memberships as charitable gifting opportunities. You can do that right now at our website, Triple W Monk, MUNK, Debates with an S.com. Click on the join button, go to the bottom of the page, and select either a supporter or curator membership. Supporters get access to our entire content library, a complimentary e-book, advanced ticketing privileges to our debates, our Friday focus. podcast and so much more. If you're feeling especially generous this holiday season,

consider conferring curator status on your gifting. That'll give them two guaranteed seats in each and every monk debate at Roy Thompson Hall. You can do this all right now at our website, www.w monk debates.com. Give the gift of the monk debates this holiday season. So final question for you, Jamie, and then we'll go to closing statements just to build on what Arwa said there. Well, you might consider anti-Israeli bias. Isn't what the media is trying to do is calibrate to show some nuance in terms of who the two protagonists in this war are.

One, a sophisticated first world nation state with a full filenance of military, diplomatic, and other assets that it's to be. to pursue its interests and its objectives. And on the other side, a kind of shattered people who are living within shattered institutions and failed or failing political structures. So why isn't it right, Jamie, for the media to provide some accommodation there, to express that reality, to try to bring forward the Palestinian story in a way that shows some parity, some kind of equality with how Israel is effectively communicating its story

with all of its resources that dwarfs those of the Palestinians at a ratio that's hard to even contemplate. Well, I think the framing of this as an Israeli-Palestinian conflict is also incorrect. This is an Israeli-Arab, or you can even say Israeli-Muslim conflicts because we haven't mentioned Iran, right, which is behind all of this. We have normalization. We have normalization, on the horizon between Israel and the most important, at least religiously Muslim country in the world, Saudi Arabia. And what does Iran do? Iran is in a bid for regional hegemony. And so it's been supporting all these forces across the Middle East. Hamas, Hezbollah on Israel's north, the Houthis in Yemen, who are firing rockets into Israel and firing rockets into Saudi Arabia. They're trying to control Iraq with Shiite militias. And they backed the genocide, the real genocide, of Sunni-Muslim,

in Syria by their partner Assad. So that's what Israel's up against. Israel's not just up against the Palestinians. If this is for just an Israel-Palestinian conference, I would agree with you. Absolutely. Of course, Israel is in the driver's seat. It's much more powerful than the Palestinians in that sense. But you have Israel in a neighborhood where it is confronting hundreds of millions of people who don't want it to exist. And a millenarian religious, fascist regime in Iran that is on the cusp of obtaining nuclear weapons and is committed to the destruction of the state of Israel, in word indeed. So if the Western media wants to portray this situation accurately, it would take that regional picture into account. But it's much easier, again,

to go back to its framing of poor, pitiable Palestinians and racist Israeli colonizers, because that fits into this Western progressive worldview that has infected. really everything in our culture, in our academy, much of our nonprofit sector, and unfortunately in our Western media. Thank you, Jamie. Let's go to closing statements. It's been an excellent debate. Our motion today be it resolved.

The media has an anti-Israeli bias. Arwa, you're up first. What are the key points or ideas that you want to leave audiences with as we wrap up this discussion? I think one of the important things to point out is that. But to try to bring Iran into all of this and say that it's a broader Muslim issue and giving examples of Iran's various proxies, I mean, that doesn't make sense because a lot of the time when we actually see Iran employing its proxies into action, it's Muslim on Muslim.

And it goes down to a whole Sunnishea conflict here. Of course, Iran is trying to launch a number of power plays across the region. I also feel like just using like rhetoric when talking to Palestinians about Palestinians as like poor, you know, Palestinians the way that Jamie was is kind of an example of what I was talking about because that tone, which is what we actually see applied when referring to Palestinians across the Western media, is a clear example of the dehumanization that has been taking place for decades. There isn't this overall framing of Israel as being the big evil monster in the Western media. If that had actually been the case, we probably wouldn't be seeing the current

dynamics that we're seeing right now. We wouldn't be seeing Western countries rallying behind Israel no matter what it is that Israel does. And the continued conflation of certain issues, such as a Palestinian voice, simply talking about Palestinian suffering, somehow being conflated as pro-Hamas, is incorrect. The idea that criticizing Israel or wanting to hold Israeli officials to account, wanting to hold the Israeli government to a higher standard, to the actual rules of law, as somehow being anti-Israeli, it's not. It's exactly what the media is supposed to be. doing and I would counter argue all of this very strongly by saying that the media is failing. I agree. I believe that the media is failing and holding Israel to account and questioning every

single one of its actions, starting with putting 2.3 million people under siege and completely cutting them off from humanitarian aid. The first move that Israel undertook following the atrocities of October 7th was not to launch a bomb. The first thing Israel did was to shut off food, water, electricity, and fuel. These are all things that need to be called into question. And we do need to be having debates about whether or not Israel's military option that it put on the table and portrayed as being the only option was in fact the only option. And if it was in fact the best option to ensure longer lasting security, we hear over and over again military analysts, saying you can't kill yourself out of this thing. So why is Israel trying to kill itself out of this

thing that we're seeing happening right now? And we need to all recognize again that all lives are equal. Thank you, Arwa, for that closing statement. You're listening to our debate, be it resolved. The media has an anti-Israeli bias. Jamie, you've been arguing for the motion. Let's have you wrap up this debate for us. Yeah, I want to agree with Arwa that Palestinians are being dehumanized. And it's not just the handful of Israeli officials who have made unacceptable statements, including one government minister who entertained the idea of dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza, who was then dismissed by Prime Minister Netanyahu al-Aad. But the chief dehumanizers of Palestinian life are Hamas. Hamas broke a ceasefire

on October 7th with its barbaric pogrom in Israel. It knew what it was going to get in response. We haven't even talked about the ways in which Hamas uses its own fellow Palestinians civilians as human shields, how they station their weapons in mosques and hospitals and schools. Right. So this terrible war that's going on right now in the deaths of Palestinian civilians, which I agree are absolutely horrific and should not be happening, it's Hamas's fault. Hamas started this war. Hamas is getting what it wants.

It wants sympathy in the West. And what it wants is a credulous Western media to report this conflict in such a way that Israel is blamed for the deaths of Palestinian civilians. And by playing into that game, the Western media is playing Hamas' game. and it is revealing its bias, and it is showing that the media is not just a bystander in this conflict. It's an actual participant. It is aiding and abetting the forces in this conflict who do not

want a two-state solution. Okay, this is not, these are not moderate Palestinians whom they are aiding and abetting with this media coverage. They are aiding and abetting the eliminationist, rejectionist forces of Hamas. Thank you, Jamie, and thank you, Arwa, for a terrific debate. We've covered so many of the issues and ideas that I hoped we would. And more importantly, we've really done that with civility and substance. So that's a credit to you both. And I appreciate your willingness to engage on a difficult debate, a difficult issue at a difficult time. So on behalf of the monk community and our membership, thank you so much for coming on the program today.

Thank you. Well, that wraps up our debate today. I want to thank our participants, James and Arwa. They certainly give us a lot to think about. If you have feedback or reflections on what you've just heard, please send us an email to podcast at monkdebates.com. MUNK DebateswithanS.com. Also, reminder, you can check out in this very same podcast feed a sample of our highly acclaimed weekly current affairs show, Friday Focus. Guess what?

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