Thursday, September 29, 2005
In his book on The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn cites an experiment to illustrate the problem that people have registering information that contradicts their expectations (what he calls "anomalies" to the prevailing paradigm). The subject sat and watched pictures of playing cards flashed on a screen in front of him and identified them. In the deck were some cards with red spades and black hearts. Initially subjects ignored the anomalous data and read the cards as normal ones. Only when the picture was held up for long periods of time could the subjects identify the anomaly. Only once they readjusted their expectations did they then recognize these cards.
We have a similar phenomenon, only far more serious in its consequences, in the way that the media handled this picture that was taken five years ago today in Jerusalem.
AP: "An Israeli policeman and a Palestinian on the Temple Mount."
The AP caption, repeated by the NYT, identifies the bloodied civilian as a Palestinian, the policeman brandishing a club – implicitly the author of the youth’s wounds – as an Israeli, and the location as the Temple Mount. I guess one out of three IDs isn’t bad for AP when it comes to the Middle East conflict, although the thrust of the errors literally transforms the meaning of the photo. What the AP did with this caption is to impose upon it the firm expectations of their Politically Correct Paradigm: since the Palestinians are the David and Israel the Goliath, then a bloodied civilian near an Israeli with a club must be the soldier’s victim. And since Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount the day before had provoked Palestinian rage to which the Israelis had responded with deadly force, the injuries must have been inflicted on the Temple Mount.
What happened differs radically. The victim, Tuvya Grossman, was an American seminary student in Jerusalem whose taxi-driver went through an Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem where rioting crowds dragged him from the car, beat and stabbed him nearly to death. He managed to escape and reach the place where this Israeli soldier protected him from his pursuers. This story here actually illustrates the Jihad Paradigm, not the Politically Correct Paradigm. Palestinians, whipped into a rage by false rumors that Sharon had desecrated the al-Aqsa mosque, broke into wild rioting, which Israelis, as much as possible, constrained with non-lethal weapons (like this baton). The Jewish civilian here is the victim, and the Israeli David, scantily armed, stands up to the Palestinian mob.
(Nota Bene: The very term intifada illustrates the way in which the Palestinians themselves – part of the greater Arab world (300 million) and Muslim world (1 billion) – view the relationship of forces. The word, before it became a term for uprising, means to shrug off, as in the way a camel or a horse shakes its hide to chase away a fly.)
It took the NYT 4 days to acknowledge the error identifying the victim as "Tuvya Grossman, an American student in Israel" and a week to do a story on the beating. But by then the damage had been done. Not only was the PCP firmly set in place, but the picture had become an emblem of Palestinian victimization. (This incident triggered the formation of the media watchdog group, Honest Reporting).
This subsequent retraction, and a successful lawsuit against both AP and the French paper Libération, had little impact on those who wanted to believe in Israeli villainy. As in the case of the poison accusations of 1983, Palestinian and Arab media, like the Egyptian Government and their Post Colonial Paradigm supporters, have continued to use the picture as part of their Palestinian victim narrative. To this day, Tuvya Grossman's picture adorns a poster calling on everyone in the world to boycott Coca Cola in order to stop Israelis from killing Palestinians.
No picture better illustrates the mood of the media at the outbreak of the intifada. "Already already listening" as Werner Erhardt might have put it. The storyboard was up, they just needed the material to start pinning to it. On September 29, it was Tuvya Grossman. The next day, it was Muhamed al Durah.
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Black Hearts and Red Spades: The Media Gets the "Intifada" Wrong by Richard Landes.
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Richard Landes, who recently launched 'The Second Draft', draws upon a psychology experiment to make a brilliant point on coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- expectations, group-think, and established 'scripts' dictate much of the coverage.... Read More
and it still continues today with Reuters and AP lack of reporting of the rockets 40 of them shot into Israel - giving equal weight to Hamas's blatant lies justifying the 40 rockets (parade rockets blowing up) and the kidnapping of an Israeli citizen....
When Palis are blatantly aggressive and violent its either not reported or equally weighed using "Israel says"
When Israel responds then its
"Israel attacks as Hamas declares ends to attacks"
Excellent post, thank you. I remember when that picture appeared on the front page, above the fold in the Boston Globe. As you point out, this phenomenon occurs under many circumstances, but I think we watch it on a daily basis with the media's treatment of Israel.
great post, but is the muhammad al-dura incident settled.. that is, is there proof it wasn't israeli fire that killed him?
Jay,
Just from the ballistics investigation done at the time (2000 - 2001), and reported by a German TV crowd (isn't that footage available?), it was obvious from the angle from which the shots were allegedly fired and the shape of the bullet holes in the wall behind the boy and his father that the boy was not killed by the Israelis. The holes in the wall behind the boy were made by rifle fire perpindicular to him and his father.
The lack of convincing marks on the concrete drum behind which they sheltered also raises doubts.
The real problem is, who is there to "settle" it? You could get the father on tape admitting it didn't happen as advertised and a wider-angle video that shows the set up and still, you'd have people peddling the fraud. Hell, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is still a best seller.
When The Second Draft releases their al Dura material -- which includes footage of the shooting -- when taken in context with everything else that happened that day, it will go a long way toward "settling it" for many people.
An important post... and one that bears repeating every so often. Thank you for revisiting this topic.
One minor correction: I would not refer to the Israeli Border Policeman in the picture as "scantily armed". The IDF -- and the Israeli Border Police -- value civilian lives, certainly, but they value the lives of their own troops as well, and do NOT send them into trouble spots unarmed. (They generally have strict orders about when their weapons should be used, but that's another matter.)
And indeed, if you look carefully at the picture -- and know what you're looking for -- you'll see that the policeman in question has an AR-15 automatic weapon slung around his neck and right shoulder, in the approved IDF manner. The handle and folding stock are barely visible at his right hip. The weapon's bright green strap can be seen clearly, making a vertical stripe on the policeman's left chest.
This doesn't affect the point you're making, though. The policeman is not USING his rifle; he's not holding it or pointing it or even touching it. He is, indeed, behaving correctly by IDF doctrine -- the Israeli military trains troops not to use lethal force when non-lethal means will solve the problem, which is precisely what we see here.
(By the way, some early newspaper reports, anxious for a dramatic story, even placed the scene of this event on the Temple Mount. This is easily disproved by anyone who's ever been there. The background of the photo, readily identifiable to any Israeli motorist, is an Israeli gas station; there are no gas stations on the Temple Mount.)
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
thanks to daniel in brookline for the correction. true, not scantily armed, but also not using his weapons despite the situation. a european friend of mine who had not been to israel before remarked to me that what struck him most after being surprised by how many guns there were in public, was how lightly the israelis wore their weapons. in most countries, he remarked, you can tell if someone wears a gun even without seeing the gun -- just by how they hold themselves (a lot more macho). in israel, you can't tell if they're wearing a gun *unless* you can see it because their bearing is the same as anyone else.
as for the al durah dossier, sorry for the delay, but we'll be up within ten days. meantime come view what we do have available http://seconddraft.org/aldurah_temp.php . i hope being able to view the footage will take this out of the choir and into the nave and to the square beyond... if you know what i mean.
hello richard landes, i think we met in paris a few years ago, and had shabbos supper together at your family's apartment next to rue Archives.thanks very much for this website and project which i just stumbled upon. i am in the process of settling in safat,israel with my family; please come for dinner when you're in the neighborhood; i don't know how i can help 2cnd draft yet, but i'd sure like to. best wishes and siyatta d'shmaya, dovid goldstein
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