The death of Palestinian Authority chairman Yasir Arafat together with Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s commitment to withdraw from the Gaza Strip may have injected new momentum into Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy, but European attitudes toward Israel continue to deteriorate. This antagonism has many causes—anti-Americanism, media antipathy toward the Jewish state, a perception that Israel is an outgrowth of colonialism, and anti-Semitism. An almost irrational hatred of Sharon, though, has catalyzed many of them, channeling anti-Zionism to new levels. The European obsession with Sharon increasingly makes its involvement in Arab-Israeli diplomacy more a hindrance than a help.

Many Europeans doubt that Israelis want peace, yet they believe Palestinians do.[1] In November 2003, for example, a European Union-commissioned survey found that an average of 59 percent of Europeans saw Israel as posing a threat to world peace, more than felt the Islamic Republic of Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, or Pakistan to be dangers.[2] Some 35 percent of Europeans believe that the Israel Defense Forces intentionally target Palestinian civilians.[3] Almost half of Frenchmen and Germans surveyed recently believe the White House should exert more pressure on Israel; less than one fifth want to see more pressure on the Palestinians. (American attitudes are nearly the opposite).[4] In another European poll, 39 percent agreed that “Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is similar to South Africa’s treatment of blacks during the apartheid regime.”[5] Fourteen percent felt Palestinian terrorism to be justified, and even those who did not agree believed Israel’s response to terrorism to be “excessive.”[6] Almost half felt that Israel was not an “open and democratic society.”[7]

The European antipathy toward Israel informs policies. Western European diplomats privately vilify Sharon and argue that the onus should be upon Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians,[8] often without regard to Israel’s security needs or right to exist as a Jewish state. European obsession of Sharon permeates public opinion, the press, and diplomacy. The consequences of Europe’s problem with Sharon extend beyond academic debate and image. The demonization of Sharon has translated into a further decline of European support not only for Israel’s security, but also for its legitimacy as a Jewish state. With media animosity toward Sharon shaping European public opinion, European diplomats have staked out positions that have undercut the efficacy of their diplomacy and international efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Anti-Zionism was not always so palpable in Europe. Jewish nationalism was born in Western Europe. Israel came into being in 1948 due to a United Nations partition plan supported by all European states with the exception of Greece, which voted against it, and the United Kingdom and Yugoslavia, which abstained. While the Soviet bloc subsequently withdrew its support from Israel, it was only after the 1967 Six-Day war that a Western European country—France—decided to downplay its relationship with the Jewish state in order to better ingratiate itself to the Arab bloc.[9]

Nevertheless, much of Western Europe remained firm in its support for Israel. Europeans mourned the Israeli athletes murdered by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics. The Netherlands backed Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur war and was, along with the United States, a target of the Arab League oil embargo. Two years later, Western European governments stood up to the majority of the Muslim and developing worlds to oppose the 1975 United Nations’ resolution equating Zionism with racism.[10] The tide began to turn in 1980 against the backdrop of rising oil prices and the Islamic Revolution in Iran when the nine members of the European community issued their Venice declaration, which demanded an end to “territorial occupation which [Israel] has maintained since 1967,” and called for self-determination for the Palestinians, negotiations for which the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) should have a role.[11]

The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the subsequent massacre by a Lebanese Phalangist militia of Palestinian residents at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps was a turning point in European public opinion. One British Labor parliamentarian wrote that the invasion produced “more criticism of Israel than anything since the state was founded in 1948.”[12] The European press began to depict Israel less as a haven for the Jews and more as an aggressor state akin to apartheid South Africa or French-colonized Algeria. Looking through the lens of anti-colonialism, the European Left began to depict the Palestinians rather than the Jews as the chief victims of racism and oppression. Sharon, then defense minister, became a symbol of the invasion and the Sabra and Shatila tragedy.[13] In a February 2004 interview, French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, author of the 1981 book The Imaginary Jew,[14] described the atmosphere in France. “The loathing of Israel today is so thick you could cut it with a knife. There is a consistent Nazification of the Jewish state … Of course, Sharon is an extraordinary alibi.”[15]

In 2004 more than half of Europeans viewed Sharon unfavorably, more than viewed Arafat negatively.[16] Despite his exoneration of direct responsibility by the 1983 Kahan Commission, European reporters and columnists often incorrectly describe Sharon as responsible for the 1982 massacre by Lebanese Phalangists of roughly 800 Palestinians in the Lebanese refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, an event many journalists recalled in the aftermath of Sharon’s September 2000 visit to the Temple Mount.

Why does media coverage matter? On both sides of the Atlantic, media molds perception of international events. While much of the public turns to television for information,[17] print journalism shapes the news. More Europeans than Americans get their information from newspapers.[18] Newspapers hold a particular influence, especially among the intellectual elite who drive public policy. European morning news shows, for example, will feature segments discussing that day’s newspaper headlines. The printed word is also lasting; television sound bites are fleeting.

Studies suggest that, in Europe, unfavorable views toward Israel are proportional to the closeness with which citizens follow media coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict.[19] The European media has embraced the Palestinian narrative. In the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Denmark, and Germany, anti-Israel sentiment was far greater among those who said they learned about the conflict through the media. In the United Kingdom, for example, sympathy for the Palestinians registered 30 percent but rose to 41 percent among those who followed the media coverage “a good amount” or a “great amount.”[20]

While independent institutes ensure a broad debate in U.S. newspapers and on U.S. news channels, increasingly, European media outlets do not tolerate analysis deemed favorable to Israel in general and Sharon in particular. In an interview with the British left-of-center Guardian daily, Martin Newland, editor of the conservative The Daily Telegraph, revealed that he fired editorialists Dean Godson and Barbara Amiel for being too pro-Israel. “It’s OK to be pro-Israel but not unbelievably pro-Likud Israel,” he said.[21] The French press has embraced more extreme positions. In 2002, the French daily of record, Le Monde, published a comment likening Israel to a cancer. In April 2005, a French court found Le Monde’s publisher and the article’s authors guilty of racist defamation. The verdict, now under appeal, went largely uncovered by the French press.[22]

The anti-Israel bias has extended to television news. In October 2000, a journalist from the Italian television network RAI wrote a letter of apology in the Palestinian daily newspaper Al-Hayat al-Jadida for its broadcast earlier that month of Palestinian police and civilians lynching Israeli reservists dragged from a Palestinian police station. In the letter, he promised that in the future RAI would obey the media rules of the Palestinian Authority and prevent such images from being shown.[23]

The unwillingness to consider the Israeli government’s perspective has stilted European understanding of the conflict and enabled conventional acceptance of politicized and false analogies. Several assumptions underlie the European media’s bias against Israel. Many reporters, for example, suggest that Palestinian terrorism, while unfortunate, is an understandable expression of grievance by a weak party while Israel’s use of force is excessive, counterproductive, and the product of a more sinister agenda.[24]

The result is often simplistic analysis. BBC Middle East correspondent Orla Guerin has likened Israel’s government to Zimbabwe’s.[25] In one story, she described how “the Israelis stole Christmas.”[26] Her overdramatic reportage has won plaudits from her colleagues[27] and Guerin later won the 2002 Broadcaster of the Year Award from the London Press Club. The following year, she received the News and Factual Award by Women in Film and Television UK.[28]

A more disturbing theme in European media coverage of Israel is an analogy equating the Israeli government with Nazi Germany. The Italian daily Il Corriere della Sera conducted a survey to ascertain anti-Semitic attitudes and public opinion on the Israeli conflict. The survey found that close to 40 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that “the Israeli government is perpetrating a full-fledged genocide and is acting with the Palestinians the way the Nazis did with the Jews.”[29] Israel-Nazi equations are even greater in Germany where, according to a December 2004 survey quoted in The Jerusalem Post, 51 percent of respondents felt Israel’s treatment of Palestinians “was not so different” from the Nazis’ treatment of the Jews during the Holocaust. The same poll found an even broader segment of the German public, 68 percent, agreeing with the proposition that “Israel is waging a war of extermination against the Palestinians.”[30] European journalists had a major role in transmitting such views to their audiences.

Inject Ariel Sharon into the already volatile mix, and anything goes. Hatred and distrust of Sharon has become so ingrained that journalists accept dubious spin and questionable facts uncritically, all of which contribute to a false conventional wisdom. Within the European press, hatred of Sharon and its reflection on Israel often trump accuracy. The catalyzing effect of this hatred for Sharon to anti-Zionism has been laid bare by three events in recent years: Sharon’s September 2000 visit to the Temple Mount; Israel’s Operation Defensive Shield, launched in late March 2002 to root out terror cells in the West Bank and Gaza; and Israel’s targeted killing of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in March 2004.

On September 28, 2000, Sharon toured Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, known to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif (noble sanctuary). The next day, following Friday prayers, riots erupted. Both the European and U.S. media blamed Sharon’s visit for the riots. Free access to Jerusalem’s holy sites has long been central to Israel’s religious freedom policy, though Sharon, then leader of the opposition, no doubt used his visit to make a political statement. But to ascribe Sharon’s actions as the only cause ignores both context and fact. More than a month before the outbreak of the second intifada, Palestinian police commissioner Ghazi Jabali told the Palestinian Authority’s official newspaper, “The Palestinian police will be leading, together with all other noble sons of the Palestinian people when the hour of confrontation arrives.”[31] On the one month anniversary of the collapse of Camp David II, Palestinian Authority justice minister Freih Abu Middein declared, “Violence is near, and the Palestinian people are willing to sacrifice even 5,000 casualties.”[32] The day before Sharon’s visit, a remote-controlled bomb detonated beside an Israeli convoy in Gaza, killing one.[33] Palestinian leaders openly endorsed the violence. Marwan Barghouti, for example, admitted that the “explosion of violence would have happened anyway,” that “it was necessary in order to protect Palestinian rights, but Sharon provided a good excuse.”[34] The Palestinian communications minister, Imad al-Faluji, told a Palestinian radio program on December 5 that “Arafat ordered preparations for the current intifada immediately after the Camp David summit, as part of the negotiating process with Israel.”[35]

While Sharon’s visit may have been a factor in the timing of the Palestinian uprising, the fact that the European media focused on Sharon as the instigator tarnished Israel’s image. In the five days following Sharon’s visit, of the twenty-eight stories in the four major British broadsheets about the onslaught of the intifada, only six of them mentioned Palestinian incitement as a possible cause for the outbreak of violence. One of those six discussed the brewing Palestinian violence by glorifying a Palestinian terrorist. Most of the others suggested that a Palestinian uprising might have been imminent but that blame for the escalation of violence should still be ascribed to Israel generally and Sharon specifically.[36]

The European media almost uniformly blamed Sharon for sparking the intifada. The Independent‘s Jerusalem correspondent, Phil Reeves, opined that Sharon “made himself look ludicrous with his reckless visit to the Temple Mount earlier this week.” In the same story, he declared that “Mr. [Ehud] Barak has yet to deliver on the promise of peace that led to his landslide victory in May last year.” He made no mention of unfulfilled Palestinian promises that undercut the previous summer’s Camp David II summit.[37] The London Guardian labeled Sharon’s visit a “blatant display of Israel’s iron grip on the heart of Muslim Jerusalem.”[38]

The European press exaggerated Sharon’s role in the Sabra and Shatila massacres and used it as original sin to cast blame upon Sharon and, by extension, Israel for subsequent events regardless of fact. In an October 2 editorial, the French establishment daily Le Monde declared that Sharon’s “provocation” was “enormous,” and cited his role in covering up “the massacre by his Lebanese allies of a thousand [sic] women, children, and old Palestinian men in the camps of Sabra and Shatila.”[39] Von Heiko Flottau of the German Sueddeutsche Zeitung described how Sharon’s troops “watched” as the massacre unfolded. Alexandra Schwartzbrod of the French Libération declared Sharon to be “responsible” for the massacres.[40] Seldom is any other detail of Sharon’s career, such as his coordination of the dismantling of the Sinai settlement of Yamit, mentioned.

Sharon was defense minister during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. But he was not at the camps during the raid, nor did he order the Lebanese troops to wage such an atrocity. The Israeli army ordered the Lebanese Phalangists out of the camps as soon as they heard that the massacre took place. While the Kahan Commission found Sharon one of the persons “indirectly responsible” for the massacre because he did not foresee the possibility that Lebanese troops might wage a massacre, it labeled “baseless libel” the accusation that Israeli troops were in the camps at the time of the massacre.[41]

Both the fundamental bias and ignorance of the European media is exposed by the fact that few raised concerns that Elie Hobeika, the Phalangist leader who ordered the massacre, subsequently became a minister in the Syrian-dominated Lebanese government in which capacity he met with a number of EU officials. Karen Coleman, foreign affairs editor for Dublin’s NewsTalk 106 FM radio, condemned Sharon for perpetrating the massacre but had not heard of “allegations” of Hobeika’s involvement.[42] Hobeika subsequently held several Lebanese ministerial positions under pro-Syrian governments[43] in which capacity he met with European officials and journalists who did not mention his past. For example, in February 1998, a German news agency covered a pan-Mediterranean energy conference in Beirut opened by the head of the European Commission and featuring then minister of water and electricity Hobeika; it made no mention of his past.[44]

Whereas before his Temple Mount visit European journalists criticized the Likud leader, the European press increasingly demonized Sharon following the outbreak of the second intifada. The Guardian’s October 3, 2000 editorial suggested that Sharon’s provocation was “only to be expected from a man reviled in the Arab world and beyond,” and suggested that he had “clearly learned nothing over the years about the ultimate futility of racial and religious hatred.”[45] Opinion pieces in major French, German, and British papers conveyed strongly the message that Sharon, the great provocateur in the conflict, is a warmonger without desire for peace.[46] European editorialists portrayed Sharon as pugnacious[47] and warmongering.[48] Such criticism eased the conflation of Israel with Nazi Germany. One cartoon showed Sharon as a Nazi officer;[49] another showed the prime minister as a Christ-killer.[50]

When Sharon was elected prime minister in February 2001, the European press saw the victory for Sharon as a loss for the process of peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. A Le Monde article published the day after Sharon’s election headlined: “Quand on me dit qu’il peut faire la paix, je rigole” (When it is said to me that he can make peace, I laugh).[51]

Sharon has also been vilified for his decision to launch Operation Defensive Shield, an antiterrorism operation that began on March 29, 2002, during which the Israeli army reoccupied areas of the West Bank for the first time since conceding portions to Palestinian Authority control under the Oslo accords.

Despite a terrorist bombing campaign that killed sixty-three and injured over 400 Israelis in the month before Operation Defensive Shield,[52] the Western European media ignored the casus belli and cast blame on Sharon’s actions, nourishing the chimera that the operation was unprovoked. It gave little context in reporting Israel’s action—most egregiously in reporting the Israeli incursion into Jenin, which was widely recognized as a hotbed of Palestinian terrorist organization.[53] European papers spoke of Israeli atrocities and of Sharon’s “talent for wanton destruction.”[54] While the Israeli Defense Force acknowledged destruction of 130 out of 1,896 buildings in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank,[55] some of this was the result of booby-trapped buildings. Even Palestinian terrorists acknowledged that some of the damage was due to their actions. An Islamic Jihad bomb maker, for example, acknowledged rigging civilian homes with explosives in an interview with an Egyptian newspaper.[56]

Worse, the European media never hesitated to portray the incursion as a slaughter of Palestinian innocents. In many instances, European papers reported that Israeli forces had murdered hundreds of Palestinians. The Spanish paper El Pais headlined, “500 Palestinians Have Died in 12 Days According to the Government of Arafat,” without acknowledging estimates—in retrospect far more accurate—by Israeli officials.[57] “More than 200" Palestinians had died, according to Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which also did not offer any other estimates.[58] The U.S. media, in contrast, was more balanced. A 14-year-old member of Islamic Jihad who was in Jenin during the incursion told a reporter from the Boston Globe that this “was a massacre of the Jews, not of us.” The reporter wrote that, after being prompted by bystanders, the teen “revised” his statement saying, “I think there was a massacre here—maybe 100 people.”[59] The final United Nations report found that 52 Palestinians died in the Jenin fighting, approximately half of whom were civilians. In addition, 23 Israelis died in the town.[60] By comparison, roughly 1,200 Iraqi insurgents and 50 U.S. servicemen were killed in the November 2004 battle for Fallujah.[61]

The British press was particularly virulent regarding Defensive Shield. Jenin was “The Camp that Became a Slaughterhouse,” according to an Independent headline.[62] The lead Guardian editorial emphasized “the stench of decaying flesh” that pervaded Jenin.[63] The British Broadcasting Corporation, for example, reported, “Jenin ‘Massacre Evidence Growing,’” comparing the slaughter to massacres in Bosnia and Kosovo in which tens of thousands died.[64] Janine di Giovanni of the London Times wrote that “rarely in more than a decade of war reporting from Bosnia, Chechnya, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, have I seen such deliberate destruction, such disrespect for human life.”[65] Two American reporters pointed out the irresponsible journalism of four British broadsheets, which relied on the same Palestinian eyewitness in order to depict the events.[66]

Editorial commentary during Operation Defensive Shield was venomous. On April 1, 2002, the largest selling Greek paper, Ta Nea, printed a cartoon depicting an Israeli soldier pointing a gun at the head of a kneeling Arab and saying, “I’m not sorry that what we are doing to you is what the Nazis did to us.”[67] During April 2002, anti-Semitic articles, caricatures, and letters to the editor pervaded the Greek press. They often portrayed the Jews as “global conspirators” responsible for the world’s evils and compared Sharon to Hitler, Israeli soldiers to Nazi storm troopers, and Palestinians to Jewish Holocaust victims.[68]

What was true of the Greek press was true elsewhere in Europe. On March 31, 2002, the Italian daily Corriere della Sera published a front-page cartoon of Sharon with a rifle in his hand sitting on a casket in order to keep it closed. Written on a haloed angel in the background is “he will not resurrect.”[69] On April 2, 2002, as the Jenin incursion was coming to a close, the popular Italian daily La Stampa published on its front page a cartoon depicting a large tank adorned with the Star of David pointing at a frightened baby Jesus who asks, “What? They want to kill me a second time?”[70] In April, Le Monde published a cartoon that pictured almost identical sketches of a person crying over piles of rubble. One frame says “Warsaw 1945"; the other says “Jenin Today.” While the comparative death toll was off by several orders of magnitude, the bubble reads: “History has a strange way of repeating itself.”[71]

A third incident under Sharon’s governance further rallied European press antipathy toward Israel. In the early hours of March 22, 2004, an Israeli helicopter gunship fired several missiles at the leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, while he was returning home from morning prayers in Gaza. The Israeli government believed Yassin was the driving force behind Hamas’s terror campaign that had killed more than 225 Israelis since January 2002.[72]

The European media generally eschewed objectivity and did not report Israel’s justification for the assassination. Rather, it denounced the event, embracing a narrative that suggested the assassination was a futile gesture that threatened peace negotiations and risked a backlash.[73] Britain’s Daily Mirror, the third-largest circulation English-language newspaper, declared—ignoring evidence to the contrary—that "[t]errorism can never be defeated by force and violence. An eye for an eye simply does not work in dealing with fanatics.”[74] The personal animus toward Sharon permeated; according to the Daily Mirror, “Sharon’s ruthless decision to exterminate [Yassin] was a terrible miscalculation.”[75]

Cartoons published after the assassination depicted it as an act of uncommon cruelty, given that the sheikh, a quadriplegic since his teenage days, was confined to a wheelchair. They combined Yassin’s wheelchair and his status as a religious leader to solicit sympathy for the terrorist leader and to depict Sharon’s decision as a deranged act of gratuitous brutality against a harmless spiritual leader. These cartoons reflect a uniform theme: Yassin’s assassination was an act of madness which would only lead to further deaths, the responsibility for which would lie with Ariel Sharon. The Guardian‘s cartoonist Steve Bell set the tone for this interpretation of events. In a March 23, 2004 cartoon, he depicted a grotesquely fat and thuggish-looking Sharon throwing a Molotov cocktail. The bottle, already on fire, has the shape of Yassin’s face. On the same day, Petar Pismestrovic, cartoonist for Austria’s daily Kleine Zeitung, showed Sharon sitting on a gunpowder barrel. Having just shot at a target bearing the name of Yassin, a fire is leading back to the barrel while Sharon, unaware, blows smoke from his pistol. Julius Hansen, in the pages of Denmark’s Horsen Volkeblad goes even further: his March 23 cartoon shows a charred wheelchair, symbolizing Yassin, surrounded by a Star of David made of blood. The message is clear: Israel is to blame for future attacks by Palestinian terrorists on its citizens—not the terrorists themselves.

Israel is a controversial nation and Sharon a controversial figure. But the European media’s demonization of Sharon has become irrational. This bias has become so customary that, within Europe, the legitimacy of Israel-bashing and Sharon-baiting has enabled a mainstream airing of conspiracies. Recently, for example, a Guardian column suggested Israeli rather than Syrian responsibility for the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.[76]

Hatred of Sharon and condemnation of Israel have also made anti-Zionism mainstream. In a May 2001 European parliament session, Paul Marie Coûteaux, a French deputy, said Europe “must consider giving the Arab side a large enough force, including a large enough nuclear force, to persuade Israel that it cannot simply do whatever it wants.”[77] The president of the British Humanist Association, Claire Rayner, said in April 2002 that the idea of a homeland for the Jewish people was a “load of crap.”[78] In a 2004 lecture in Alexandria, Egypt, former French prime minister Michel Rocard called the Balfour Declaration, which allowed for Israel’s creation, a “historic mistake.”[79]

The growing legitimacy of anti-Zionism has contributed to a resurgence of European anti-Semitism, again often wrapped with and, in many European eyes, legitimized by the caricature of Sharon. Violent anti-Semitic incidents in Europe have risen in proportion to the violence between Israel and the Palestinians, which suggest a relationship between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.[80] In Dublin, there were banners of swastikas over stars of David which read “Stop the Palestinian Holocaust"; in Paris, posters read “Hitler Has a Son: Sharon"; in Berlin, they read, “Stop the Genocide in Palestine” and “Sharon Is a Child Murderer.”[81] The European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia has shown that during the second Palestinian uprising, anti-Semitic incidents increased by more than 600 percent in France alone.[82]

Israel has often been isolated. Pilloried in the United Nations, both European and U.S. media put the Jewish state’s actions under a magnifying glass. Media influences public opinion, and its bias in Europe has encouraged prominent Europeans to speak out openly against Israel. This in turn colors European policy already ambivalent about Israel. A vicious cycle ensues.

The monomaniacal criticism has taken a new edge under Sharon that threatens to undercut the productiveness of any European contribution to regional peace. Many European officials, diplomats, and journalists translate their hatred of Sharon into skepticism for any position he takes. They dismiss the security fence because Sharon implemented it, even if it was Nobel Laureate Yitzhak Rabin who first declared, “We have to decide on separation as a philosophy.”[83] Likewise, while Sharon pursues unilateral disengagement from Gaza, a concession more significant than Menachem Begin’s decision to withdraw from the Sinai, European commentators cast doubt upon Sharon’s motives. As the Israeli government begins to face other issues—such as the future of Jerusalem, defensible borders, the Iranian nuclear bomb, and demographic requirements to remain a Jewish state—Europe’s media-driven hatred of Sharon has emboldened forces questioning Israel’s legitimacy and, in the process, both undercuts peaceful solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and jeopardizes the lives of Israel’s six million citizens.

[1] “Attitudes toward Jews, Israel, and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict in Ten European Countries,” Anti-Defamation League, Apr. 2004, p. 32.
[2] “Flash Eurobarometer 151,” European Commission, Nov. 2003, p. 81.
[3] “Attitudes toward Jews,” Anti-Defamation League, Apr. 2004, p. 23.
[4] “After the U.S. Election: A Survey of Public Opinion in France, Germany, and the United States,” German Marshall Fund of the United States, Feb. 7, 2005, p. 5.
[5] “Attitudes toward Jews,” Anti-Defamation League, p. 23.
[6] Ibid., p.13.
[7] Ibid., pp. 23-4.
[8] See for example, speech by Christopher Patten, EU external affairs coordinator, Strasbourg, Apr. 9, 2002.
[9] See Olivier Guitta, “The Chirac Doctrine,” Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2005, pp. 43-53.
[10] U.N. General Assembly Resolution 3379, Nov. 10, 1975.
[11] “Venice Declaration of the Middle East,” Venice European Council, June 13, 1980.
[12] The Guardian, Sept. 14, 1984.
[13] The Guardian, Nov. 14, 1985.
[14] Paris: Seuil, 1981.
[15] Fernanda Eberstadt, “A Frenchman or a Jew?” The New York Times Magazine, Feb. 29, 2004.
[16] “Attitudes toward Jews,” Anti-Defamation League, p. 24.
[17] “Global Attitudes: 44-Nation Major Survey (2002),” The Pew Global Attitudes Project, T-96.
[18] Ibid.
[19] “Attitudes toward Jews,” Anti-Defamation League, p. 34.
[20] “European Attitudes toward Jews, Israel, and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict,” Anti-Defamation League, June 27, 2002, p. 18.
[21] The Guardian. Nov. 15, 2004.
[22] Tom Gross, “J’Accuse: Anti-Semitism at ‘Le Monde’ and Beyond,” The Wall Street Journal Europe, June 2, 2005; Ha’aretz, July 1, 2005.
[23] Fiamma Nirenstein, “The Journalists and the Palestinians,” Commentary, Jan. 1, 2001, pp. 55-8.
[24] Justin Huggler, “Middle East: The Crisis Continues: The Refugee Camp: Families Scrabble in the Dust to Find their Dead,” The Independent (London), Apr. 18, 2002; David Pilditch, “The Lucky One,” The Mirror (London), Apr. 19, 2002.
[25] David Rowan, “I Don’t Believe in Ceasefires,” The Evening Standard, Dec. 10, 2003
[26] Orla Guerin, “Christmas ‘Stolen’ From Bethlehem,” BBC News, Dec. 21, 2002.
[27] Quentin Letts, “The Woman with a Bias towards Bloodshed: Orla Guerin’s Poignant BBC Reports from the Middle East Have Won Her Enemies in Israel, but Only Admiration from her colleagues,” The Evening Standard, Apr. 10, 2002.
[28] “Orla Guerin,” BBC NewsWatch profile, Nov. 24, 2003.
[29] Il Corriere della Sera (Milan), Jan. 26, 2004.
[30] The Jerusalem Post, Dec. 7, 2004.
[31] Al-Hayat al-Jadida (Gaza), Aug. 11, 2000.
[32] Al-Hayat al-Jadida, Aug. 24, 2000.
[33] Agence France-Presse, Sept. 28, 2000.
[34] The New Yorker, Jan. 29, 2001; Joshua Muravchik, Covering the Intifada: How the Media Reported the Palestinian Uprising (Washington, D.C.: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2003), pp. 9-10.
[35] The Jerusalem Post, Dec. 12, 2000.
[36] The twenty-eight articles appeared in the Financial Times, The Guardian, The Independent, and The Observer and contained the words “Ariel Sharon.” Of the four newspapers surveyed and based on the twenty-eight articles, the Financial Times coverage was the most balanced.
[37] The Independent, Sept. 30, 2000.
[38] The Guardian, Sept. 29, 2000.
[39] “À Jerusalem,” Le Monde, Oct. 2, 2000.
[40] Alexandra Schwartzbrod, “Violents Affrontements à Jerusalem,” Liberation (Paris), Sept. 29, 2000.
[41] “Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Events at the Refugee Camps in Beirut (The Kahan Commission),” Feb.7, 1983; The New York Times, Feb. 9, 1983.
[42] Author interview with Michael Rubin, American Enterprise Institute, Washington, D.C., summer 2004.
[43] Gary C. Gambill and Bassam Endrawos, “The Assassination of Elie Hobeika,” Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, Jan. 2002.
[44] Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Feb. 13, 1998.
[45] “The Price of Failure: Enemies of Peace Fill the Middle East Void,” The Guardian, Oct. 3, 2000.
[46] See, for example, Schwartzbrod, “Violents Affrontements à Jerusalem.”
[47] Le Figaro (Paris), Oct. 14, 2000.
[48] “Ariel Sharon Lacks a Conscience,” The Daily Mirror (London), Nov. 14, 2004.
[49] Eleftherotypia (Greece), Mar. 24, 2004, reproduced in “Anti-Semitic Caricatures in Greece Following Yassin Operation,” Anti-Defamation League, Mar. 30, 2004.
[50] Emilio Giannelli, “Pasqua 2002,” Il Corriere della Sera, Mar. 31, 2002.
[51] Le Monde, Feb. 8, 2001.
[52] “Suicide and Other Bombings in Israel Since the Declaration of Principles (Sept. 1993),” Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, accessed June 22, 2005.
[53] “What Really Happened in Jenin?” Jerusalem Issue Brief, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, May 2, 2002.
[54] The Guardian, Apr. 17, 2002.
[55] “What Really Happened in Jenin?” May 2, 2002.
[56] Al-Ahram Weekly (Cairo), Apr. 18-24, 2002; “Report of the Secretary-General A/ES-10/186,” United Nations General Assembly, July 30, 2002, p. 8.
[57] El Pais (Madrid), Apr. 11, 2002.
[58] Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Frankfurt), Apr. 10, 2002.
[59] The Boston Globe, Apr. 29, 2002.
[60] “Report of the Secretary-General A/ES-10/186,” p. 11. Other sources, including official Israeli sources, declare that far more than half were combatants.
[61] The New York Times, Nov. 28, 2004.
[62] The Independent, Apr. 14, 2002.
[63] “The Battle for the Truth: What Really Happened in Jenin Camp?” The Guardian, Apr. 17, 2002.
[64] BBC News, Apr. 18, 2002.
[65] The Times (London), Apr. 16, 2002.
[66] NationalReviewOnline, May 13, 2002; Martin Sieff, “Part One: Documenting the Myth,” United Press International, May 20, 2002.
[67] “Examples of Anti-Semitic and Problematic Cartoons (concerning the Middle East conflict) in the Western Media,” www.honestly-concerned.org, accessed June 21, 2005.
[68] “Twenty Months of Anti-Semitic Invective in Greece: Mar. 2002-Oct. 2003,” The Simon Wiesenthal Center, New York, Oct. 14, 2003.
[69] Giannelli, “Pasqua 2002.”
[70]“Examples of Anti-Semitic and Problematic Cartoons.”
[71] Simon Wiesenthal Center, news release, May 2, 2002.
[72] “Suicide and Other Bombing Attacks in Israel,” Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, accessed June 22, 2005.
[73] “Futile Killing Will Come Back to Haunt Us All,” The Daily Mirror, Mar. 23, 2004.
[74] Ibid.
[75] Ibid.
[76] Patrick Seale, “Who Killed Rafik Hariri?” The Guardian, Feb. 23, 2005.
[77] Paul Marie Coûteaux, “Situation au Moyen-Orient,” Débats du Parlement européen, May 16, 2001.
[78] The Independent, Apr. 21, 2002.
[79] Manfred Gernstenfeld, “Are European Socialists Tilting against Israel?” The Jerusalem Post, Feb. 13, 2005.
[80] “France,” Manifestations of Anti-Semitism in the EU 2002-2003 (Vienna: European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, 2004), p. 98.
[81] Gabriel Schoenfeld, “Israel and the Anti-Semites,” Commentary, June 2002, pp. 14-5.
[82] “Executive Summary,” Manifestations of Anti-Semitism in the EU 2002-2003, p. 16; Agence France-Presse, Mar. 21, 2005.
[83] David Makovsky, “How to Build a Fence,” Foreign Affairs, Mar./Apr. 2004, p. 52.