(Excellent) The Professor, Israel and the Arab Infant Mortality Rate - by Varda Meyers Epstein

...Here is the truth: The Jewish State deserves the widest recognition possible for protecting and nurturing its largest minority population, a sector that is overwhelmingly hostile to Israel and the Jewish people. Israel’s methodology for lowering the Arab population’s infant mortality rate is one that might well be emulated throughout the Arab world and studied in the halls of academia.
If only we could find an honest teacher.

Varda Meyers Epstein..
Judean Rose/Elder of Ziyon..
17 October '18..

Google the phrase “arab infant mortality rate” and step into Wonderland gone wrong. The featured snippet is from a Times of Israel piece: “In Israel, infant mortality rate 3 times higher among Arabs.” Based on the title alone, without further investigation, who wouldn’t curse a blue streak, damning Israel to hell for its villainy against the Arab people—damning Israelis as baby killers?

Unless you were a thinking person, that is, who knows better than to accept what the Times of Israel wants you to believe about the disparity between the Arab and Israeli infant mortality rates. If you were a thinking person, you’d look to confirm the statistic. And assuming it were true, well then you’d want to know the context.

But of course, it’s ever so much easier to blame Israel. Or alternatively, the “occupation,” another thing you might read about in the media and accept as true without a second thought. After all, you think, a news site wouldn’t print something untrue. They’d get caught. They’d lose credibility, you are sure. And so you believe what you read.

That’s if you’re a regular joe. But what if you were someone who lived in the ivory towers of academia? Someone with a higher education who had successfully defended a PhD thesis, someone entrusted with teaching young students. Wouldn’t such a person know better than to accept at face value what he or she reads in the news?

Wouldn’t a college professor be aware, when reading a title like that in the Times of Israel, or a similar one in Haaretz, “Huge disparities between Israeli Palestinian health systems,” that media bias may be in play here? When the title contains such a glaring smear, thinking people are supposed to stop short and think: wait a second—is that really the whole story?
Often it is not. As in this case. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

.