An important statement from I.H. Asper, the owner of one of 
the large media corporations in Canada.

I.H. Asper, O.C., O.M., Q.C. National Post

Thursday, October 31, 2002

Throughout my lifetime I have had an unshakeable commitment 
to three cornerstones of my personal value system: my first 
commitment is to this great nation, Canada. My second is to 
Israel as a symbol and teacher of excellence for all of 
humankind, and the third is to the media as the most honourable 
and steadfast advocate, defender and distributor of truth, 
honesty, fairness, freedom, democracy and human rights.

With a combination of sadness, fear and anger, I must now tell 
you that both Israel and the honour of the news media are under 
grievous assault. And, even more painful for me, even though 
at first glance those two pillars should be separate, I regret 
to say, they are both threatened by the same cancer and have 
thus become inextricably linked. This is because dishonest
reporting is destroying the trust in and credibility of the 
media and the journalists, and the same dishonest reporting is 
biased against Israel, thus destroying the world's favourable 
disposition toward it.

I want to make it clear that I am not here speaking for our 
own media company, CanWest Global Communications, but only as 
a concerned Canadian and a long-time journalist myself. 
As well because my company competes with most Canadian media, 
I will not make specific reference to our competitors' record, 
with one exception. That exception is the CBC -- because all
Canadians own it and the governments we elect are responsible 
to us and it for its quality, and integrity.

Before turning to specific examples and analyzing the causes 
of this outrage, we should touch on some fundamental lies on 
which many reporters and analysts base their view of the war.

The first and worst lie is what this war is all about. 
Dishonest reporting tells you that it's about territory, and 
Jerusalem, and Palestinian statehood, and alleged refugees. 
Honest reporting would tell you that it is a war to destroy 
Israel and kill or expel or subjugate all the Jews. That is
proved by the words and deeds of all the key Arab Palestinian 
leaders. But the media has bought and reported dishonestly and 
relentlessly the big lie. That big lie is that this war could 
be ended by Israeli land concessions.

The second fundamental big lie disseminated by world media, 
including those in Canada, is what gave rise to the current 
version of the Arab war of extermination of Israel and the 
Jewish people -- the so-called al-Aqsa uprising or intifada.

The truth is that when Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, 
one of the world's most cruel and vicious terrorists for the 
past 30 years, that corrupt dictator and thief of billions of 
dollars of world-intended aid for his people, could not get 
the extravagant concessions he demanded from the Clinton Camp 
David meetings, he planned the uprising of terrorism as a
means of intimidating the U.S. and Israel into giving in to 
his maniacal demands.

But he needed an excuse, an appealing argument in which to 
clothe his new latest war.

And so, in early September 2000, when parliamentary opposition 
leader Ariel Sharon (he wasn't even prime minister) told both 
Israelis and Palestinian officials he intended to visit the 
Temple Mount in Jerusalem, legally part of Israel which is 
co-sited with the Muslim al-Aqsa mosque, they agreed and both 
Palestinian and Israeli Security detachments accompanied him 
on his brief tour.

This was the opportunity Arafat sought. He immediately 
unleashed the rioting, stone-throwing and armed attacks 
allegedly as a "spontaneous" uprising against Israel allegedly 
in response to Sharon's provocation!

It was then that most of the world media bought the propaganda 
that launched the second big lie of the current warfare: 
"Sharon's visit provokes Palestinian rebellion." They didn't 
even ask the fundamental question: Is this true?

The third big lie is that the current conflict arises from 
Palestinian frustration over the slowness of the so-called 
"peace process."

The central, and conveniently ignored, fact is that the 
current warfare is merely the latest chapter in a war against 
the Jewish people. That war began in earnest 85 years ago, 
when in 1917, Britain and the League of Nations declared, 
with world approval, that a Jewish state would be established
in Palestine.

The region's Arabs have engaged in terrorist slaughter, riots 
and multi Muslim states military invasion against the Jewish 
nation ever since. The only periodic lulls in this savage and 
often barbaric assault, specializing in seeking women, 
children and elderly victims, has occurred when the Arabs 
have been resoundingly defeated.

Then, they sue for peace, issue poor-me hand-wringing pleas 
for international help, and use the lull in the battle to 
regroup, re-arm and plot their next assault -- and it is 
routinely launched.

Any reportage or commentary that is not clothed in this 
context is, at best, misleading, or ignorant and plain 
dishonest at worst.

A great deal of the dishonesty arises from the failure to 
report and the failure to opine on many factors which must 
be considered in judging the Middle East war. Such as:

- Failure to report honestly an incident in February, 2002. 
CNN reported "Israeli police shot and killed a Palestinian 
in a gun battle Sunday near an army base in northern Israel 
and another Palestinian died nearby when a car exploded."

CNN failed to report that the two Palestinians were in the 
process of attempted double suicide bombings. They were 
strapped with explosive belts.

- Failure to report that money granted to the Palestinian 
Authority by Canada has gone to produce anti-Israel propaganda 
distributed to Palestinian children.

- Failure to report how the Saudi, Syrian and Egyptian media 
continue to write and propagate the myth that Jews use human 
blood for their holiday celebrations.

If the omissions don't adequately make the case of planned 
and engineered media bias, then the commissions of misleading 
reporting certainly cement a bulletproof case against the 
media.

And now let me turn to by far the worst offender in Canada.

- The CBC, along with The New York Times and other left-wing 
media, will still not label the Palestinian murderers as 
terrorists. By any world recognized definition of terrorism, 
they are terrorists, but the CBC, particularly in the person 
of Neil Macdonald, simply refers to them as "militants."

- CNN has reported that 30 Palestinian women have died in 
labour while being held up at Israeli checkpoints. The story 
is a complete fabrication, generated from Palestinian 
spokesperson, Nabil Sha'att. To this day, CNN has neither 
published a categorical withdrawal nor the main proven fact,
that not a single woman had died.

- To prove that many journalists have been enlisted in the 
propaganda army of the Palestinians, in May last year, 
Fayad Abu Shamala, the BBC correspondent in Gaza for the 
past 10 years, spoke at a Hamas rally and declared: 
"Journalist and media organizations are waging the campaign
soldier-to-soldier together with the Palestinian people."

BBC countered outraged complaints against his journalistic 
ethics, by saying that his remarks were made in a "private 
capacity."

But if nothing else in this entire sad and sordid story 
irrefutably demonstrates the dishonest reporting and inherent 
media bias against Israel, it is the Jenin massacre myth on 
which the herd of ravenous reporters descended with 
vulture-like hysteria.

Hysterical, hyperbolical Palestinian propagandists shrieked 
"massacre -- 5,000 innocents slaughtered," and the United 
Nations, the Third World pawns, dutifully closed ranks to 
condemn Israel, as is routine for that corrupt organization. 
Soon the Palestinians reduced their alleged death toll to
3,000. Then the number of alleged deaths claimed mysteriously 
dropped to a mere 500, but the media still sang the massacre 
melody.

Finally, when the UN Commission declared that only 54 Palestinians 
had died, and over half of them were armed combatants, the 
myth exploded. However, few media apologized or retracted the 
charges of "genocide," "war crimes" and "heinous Israeli 
atrocities" they had falsely trumpeted to the world.

Why is this happening? The answer is plain to see.

Firstly, too many of the journalists are lazy, or sloppy, 
or stupid. They are ignorant of the history of the subject 
on which they are writing.

Others are, plain and simple, biased, or anti-Semitic, or 
are taken captive by a simplistic ideology.

The result is that the biggest casualties of the Palestinian-
Israeli war are truth, and the integrity of the media.

Every one of us must do what we can to correct this travesty. 
It is time to say "enough!" The solution starts on the campus, 
and in the journalism schools, then it goes to the boardrooms 
of the media owners, and finally, and most importantly, with 
the public.

At this time, the appropriate position for all Canadians 
should be to stand tall in support of honesty in reporting, 
as well as for the right of Israel to exist and to take 
whatever actions it needs to battle its savage attackers, 
and to demand that our media and our politicians act with
honour in this quest.

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I.H. Asper is President of the Asper Foundation and 
Executive Chairman of CanWest Global Communications Corp. 
This an excerpt of Mr. Asper's speech to the Israel Bonds 
Gala in Montreal last night.