A pro-Israel group called CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) takes the National Catholic Reporter to task for an anti-Israel slant to its reporting.
The notes of denial and fear whistled off the pages of NCR in late August, when Margot Patterson, an NCR staffer, wrote a 1700-word white-wash of Hezbollah. With the help of cooperative experts, Patterson portrayed the group – whose leader Hassan Nasrallah, has described Jews as “grandsons of apes and pigs” and “Allah’s most cowardly and greedy creatures” – as a “nuanced” and “sophisticated” organization. When readers wrote letters criticizing NCR for failing to offer even a hint of the group’s genocidal agenda in its coverage of Hezbollah, Patterson’s response was to assert that “many scholars and analysts would dispute that Hezbollah is a genocidal organization intent on the extermination of the Jews” and that “While Hezbollah is clearly anti-Zionist and rejects the legitimacy of the state of Israel, Hezbollah has stated that it would accept a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict if that is what the Palestinians desire.”
Interesting to see others criticize NCR for the liberal slant in its reporting on matters other than Catholic issues. CAMERA criticizes Patterson and NCR for whitewashing terrorist groups and blaming Israel for the terrorism. I’m not saying Israel is innocent in all the back-and-forth, but clearly Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist aggressors who won’t be satisfied with Israel pulling back to pre-1967 borders, as Patterson claims they would. They have publicly and repeatedly said that they seek in the end the complete annihilation of Israel and all Jews.
Technorati Tags:CAMERA, Catholic, Hamas, Hezbollah, Israel, media bias, National Catholic Reporter
