As we watch the many accolades coming in regarding Mike Wallace, there’s an important story to remember from Michael Emery, the late journalism professor at Cal State Northridge.
Described in part in the November 13, 1990 Village Voice and in more detail in On the Front Lines - Following America's Foreign Correspondents Across the Twentieth Century, Emery explains how Mike Wallace helped to bring the truth forward about what happened during the October 8, 1990 shooting at the Haram Al Sharif in Jerusalem which left 22 Palestinians dead and more than 100 more injured, and how the Israeli government officials completely distorted what happened. It cost Wallace a great deal, personally, to bring this story forward.
Initially, news reports indicated Palestinians threw stones from the Haram al Sharif on Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall. Upset Israelis began shooting at Palestinians. However, a nine month investigation headed by Judge Kama concluded the opposite: Israeli police rather than Palestinians provoked the violence.
It turned out two different tourists captured the event on video and became the basis for Emery's writing and later a segment on 60 Minutes. In his book, Emery explains the incident began when Border police used tear gas against "a group of Palestinian women which led Palestinian men to throw rocks. Border police began firing while being forced out of the grounds by the stone-throwing crowd." "The hail of rocks featured prominently on world television was aimed at the Israeli border police... those standing beneath a seven meters high wall could not see into the Western Wall Plaza... Border police stormed back into the Haram al Sharif and assumed control of the area after opening fire on unarmed Palestinians, some of whom were shot in the back from long-range distances. Hundreds of rounds were fired and audible on the two videotapes.”
According to Emery, none of the Israelis featured in TV and newspaper photos had been praying at the Western Wall, rather they had been in rooms adjacent to it. "Careless or opportunistic television editing gave the impression that the rocks were falling as they fled. A CBS editor said to me when he learned of the private videotapes, "You mean that we got the story backwards?"
Emery charged: "Many of the so-called witnesses (quoted in the global press) … were persons set up by Israeli agents or were agents themselves..." He also claimed Israeli officials created a “bogus story” that Saddam Hussein had plotted with Palestinians who had packed away tons of rocks for the occasion.
Emery traveled to the Middle East and was able to obtain a copy of one of the videotapes. He provided it to Wallace. 60 Minutes producer Barry Lando was in Jerusalem, working on a segment related to the First Intifada. An interview with an injured Palestinian nurse had convinced Lando to devote the entire segment to the shootings. Wallace personally interviewed her as well.
Wallace later told Emery that the story was one of the most riveting in his 60 Minutes experience... and one of the two most satisfying in his long career. Several days after the segment ran, Wallace told the journalism professor that there had been quite a few complaints. Moreover:
Wallace and (Don) Hewitt were attacked at a New York party by ABC's Barbara Walters, Mort Zuckerman of US News and World Report, and others who felt the show had been unfair and "anti-Israel." Hewitt walked out in a huff, leaving Wallace to defend the ship, which he did with his usual bluntness. The Jerusalem Post also attacked Wallace in its media review columns, calling him a "self-hating Jew." All I felt I could “add to this debate is that I found Wallace completely faithful to the facts as we knew them, honest in his evaluation of the people involved, and courageous in his telling of this bizarre incident. The entire team did a highly professional job, from start to finish...
interesting find. Because in general the I/P issue has been off limits on 60 minutes as much as the rest of TV MSM. Up until the last five years 60 minutes generally did not touch this issue.
I think Bob Simon did one or two quite good segments in the past year or so.
For example: link to newsbusters.org
Yep just opened up the last four or five years on 60 minutes. Leslie Stahl did a piece but I bet money was raised for the City of David Project from her program
interesting. i’d like to see that segment of 60 minutes. does anyone know if it is available?
He was born here but I read a long time ago that Wallace was an Iraqi Jew.
OK, Les, we’ll bite… where did you read that? Are you implying that Wallace had a motive to report the unsavory truth about Israel because his roots are in Iraq?
Wiki says his parents were Russian Jews, like the majority of Jews in Israel, actually, and the surname was Wallik. You’re Iraqi Jew theory took me 10 seconds to fact-check. Care to give us your source? Maybe Wiki missed something.
I believe the point still stands: Wallace was a Jewish reporter with the courage to say what needed to be said about Israel. An egregious majority of msm anchors are Jewish. How many of them have taken on stories like this one? If some one could please just give me a couple of examples of US msm Jewish investigative reporters or anchors taking on Israel over the Occupation, I’d be grateful. John King? Bernstein? Rivera? Couric? Chung? Safer? Simon? Blitzer? Koppel? Please, one or two objective stories re: Occupation. Most are, like Walters, about as objective as Bibi when it comes to Israel.
We are back Annie’s piece on Steves and the movie Peace, Palestine, and the Promised Land.
And if the anchors aren’t Jewish,they are usually well coiffed and made up ken or barbie doll goyim spieling vacuous BS.
A long time wonderment;How did the speech impeded Baba Wawa get to be a news anchor in the first place?I’ve read that her family are Jewish exiles who once ran Cuban casinos for the mob.WTF?Connections count.(see Chris Wallace)
And Mike Wallace,the fact that occasionally he sought balanced coverage doesn’t absolve him for all his unbalanced coverage,and his son is a neolibcon on Fox,is he not?
Wallace doesn’t look like an Iraqi Jew.
link to google.com.au
Gromit, on the other hand …
“All I felt I could “add to this debate is that I found Wallace completely faithful to the facts as we knew them, honest in his evaluation of the people involved, and courageous in his telling of this bizarre incident. The entire team did a highly professional job, from start to finish…”
Did no-one remark on the NEED to say “courageous in his telling of this bizarre incident”? Why should news-reporting (especially of an event outside USA require “courage”?
Of course, we know, don’t we?
Back in 2004, 60 Minutes covered Israel’s Apartheid Wall, and discussed the suffering that this inflicted on the West Bank Palestinians. Bob Simon, a longtime journalist for 60 Minutes, led the coverage. Simon asked some tough questions of Israeli officialdom. The Electronic Intifada praised Simon’s coverage, in contrast with Thomas Friedman’s program on the same topic. (By the way, Bob Simon is Jewish).
link to electronicintifada.net
Coooooooh I’ve been loving so many mondo stories lately!
Terrific job modo guys and girls!
What a cool motley crew of town-criers you got yourselves there, Phil and Adam.
“Barbara Walters, Mort Zuckerman of US News and World Report, and others” seem to be much too anti-truth and anti-justice for modern society.
Just when it comes to the Palestinians and giving back the Golan Heights etc
So the first time Wallace is mentioned to be Jew, he is a “self-hating Jew”.
Wallace respected the truth in the case of that story (and the videotape didn’t lie) – and for a time in journalism truth really mattered … zionist israel’s desperate death-throes as it unwillingly transmutes into a pluralistic society and government sees it doing everything in its power to thwart the truth
Interesting
link to youtube.com
Mike Wallace tribute
link to pbs.org
Now here is an oldie goldie. Wallace interviewing Rod Serling (a favorite on mine)
link to rodserling.com
Wow, good one, Kathleen. Thanks.
Serling hits on just about every one of the 5 filters from Chompsky’s propaganda model.
This interview was before Twilight Zone aired. I think Serling is too dismissive of his own program and efforts in the interview. We never missed an episode. This was the one, probably the only, example of intelligent TV in the 1950′s. It got you thinking … even the phrase “another dimension” made a 10 yr-old stop and think.
Serling describes this era as TV at its nadir of mediocrity. But there was nothing mediocre about TZ; it’s amazing how 50 years later I can still recall many of those TZ plots, but not a single plot from Lassie or Roy Rodgers — not even the sexy new-born puppies episode.
I have seen footage of 60 minutes interviews be edited in a way that distorts the truth about I/P – but whatever else is true, Wallace’s interview with Meir Kahane were very important in letting americans know that Israel and Israeli’s can be more than capable of extreme racism and violence.
But before we give ANY american “reporter” the freedom medal – we should remember that Wallace, 60 minutes and the rest were all complicit in the war in Iraq.
Several things I recall about this incident, which occurred during the months between Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the start of the Gulf War:
It initially was met with harsh criticism of Israel for killing 22, but as usual, Israel turned straw into gold. The two major lies du jour were that 1) Israeli police were forced to fire to protect thousands of Jewish worshipers, who were being mercilessly attacked by homicidal Arab mobs raining stones down on their heads, and 2) that Arafat had orchestrated the entire disaster in order to deflect world attention away from pressuring his good friend Saddam to leave Kuwait. The 60 Minutes piece did an excellent job on the first lie, showing the home-made videotape that the square in front of the Western Wall had been entirely cleared of people when the Palestinian youths courageously threw stones at armed police officers firing at them, and some of the stones fell to the empty plaza below. Israel reported a handful of injuries among the worshipers, but eventually it turned out that not a single one had been hit by a stone, and all had suffered “injuries” such as sprained ankles as they were hustled out of the area when the incident began. I recall some prominent Rabbi on the show, and when the interviewer – Wallace I guess but cannot remember – asked him how thousands of stones could have rained down on thousands of worshipers, without a single one being hit, the old fool answered that God protected them – “it was a miracle.”
The second lie was widely disseminated, and I recall seeing it told by Netanyahu on Nightline. He was holding a rock that he said was one of the ones thrown by “the Arabs” in their attempt at mass murder of Jews. I was struck by how smooth and articulate a liar he was, and how persuasive he might seem to the less skeptical. It was a brilliant ploy – not only to deflect blame from the Israelis who committed the massacre, but to blame Arafat and Saddam. At the time, Israel was lobbying heavily not only for war against Iraq but for regime-change war. It also made the Palestinians out to look like insane lunatics, as the story was that Arafat ordered the entire affair to provoke the Israelis into killing his people, and his followers faithfully complied on their suicide mission, all to give brief PR protection to their brother Arab Saddam.
The whole affair was really a microcosm of the past several decades. Israel commits an atrocity — whether this or Gaza or Lebanon or the Mavi Marmara — that initially gives rise to bad press, which they effectively counter (at least here in the US) with a preposterous load of BS that is dutifully given credence by the powerful. The civilians casualties in Lebanon and Gaza were the result of Arab terrorists cowardly hiding behind civilians; the flotilla was a ship of armed militants trying to break the blockade to supply terrorists with weapons, etc. What made this incident unusual is that it was one of the very few instances in which an MSM organization cast doubt on the official Israeli lies.
Again, the story Wallace missed was the one Walt & Mearsheimer would so effectively cover years later.