Ethan Bronner’s piece in the Times today on the likely prisoner-exchange deal for Gilad Shalit underscores the lack of diversity in the Times reporting staff. The article is written completely from an Israeli and Jewish perspective. It repeatedly refers to Palestinian prisoners–there are over 10,000–as "murderers" and "terrorists," when we all know that this number includes a great number of political prisoners, like Mohammad Othman.
Alon Liel, who spent 30 years as an Israeli diplomat, including as director-general of the Foreign Ministry and now lectures in international relations, said he knew of no other country whose foreign ministry included a division for rescuing its citizens facing difficulties abroad.
“We have a division for it and a budget for it,” he said. “It is not unusual for a senior diplomat to go 300 or 400 miles to a village where an Israeli has gotten lost or kidnapped or injured. A lot of other nations refer you to your insurance company.”
If the Times had a Palestinian correspondent based in Ramallah, would they have filed this kind of Israel-chauvinist rhetoric? Would we maybe hear about Othman’s case? If one of the Times correspondents were not married to an Israeli, would we be saved some of this propaganda?
