Gaza presentation in the Lancet and the NY Times. Journalistic standards and lessons to be learned. - by Sheri Oz

...With Israel and the Palestinian Authority taking such a center-stage role in world news, with the issues so incendiary and sensitive, it seems only right that papers such as the Times step up their game and do what The Lancet did in this case.

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
05 May '18..

The New York Times (NYT) and other major papers could benefit readers by taking an example from the British medical journal, The Lancet. Let us look at the difference between the way the NYT and Lancet handled opinion pieces written about the March of Return in Gaza. These protests began on 30 March and will continue until 14 May.

On 27 April, the Times published an op-ed written by Fadi Abu Shammalah. He provides a first-New York Times and in my analysis of it, I found many errors (lies?).

person description of the demonstrations at the fence along the border between Gaza and Israel claiming them to be non-violent protests against the insufferable occupation and blockade committed by Israel against innocent Palestinian civilians. This piece was unchallenged in the pages of the

Of course, it is legitimate for a newspaper to publish an opinion piece that stands on its own. According to the editorial code of ethics, journalistic reporting must be distinguishable from commentary and opinion and the Abu Shammalah piece is clearly opinion. However, even here, newspapers have a responsibility to readers to provide them with enough material to develop informed opinions themselves regarding important current events in their own countries and around the world. With Israel and the Palestinian Authority taking such a center-stage role in world news, with the issues so incendiary and sensitive, it seems only right that papers such as the Times step up their game and do what The Lancet did in this case.

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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. 

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How an Anti-Israel Propaganda Platform was Turned Around - by Prof. Gerald Steinberg

A prominent medical journal published pseudo-scientific attacks on Israel for years—until it took the demonization one step too far. What accounts for its unprecedented turnaround?

Prof. Gerald Steinberg..
The Tower..
Issue 51 August-September '17..

The British publication The Lancet is one of the most influential medical journals in the world, and for many years, was used as a major platform for anti-Israeli demonization campaigns under the façade of science and medicine. Between 2001 and 2014, 264 articles on Palestinian and Israeli issues were published, a majority consisting of political opinion or commentary with little medical content. Many included distorted or unsupported claims that Israel was responsible for premature births, deaths of Palestinians at checkpoints, cancer deaths, psychological disorders, and more. In addition, The Lancet’s editor Richard Horton repeatedly condemned Israel, repeating the false allegations, for example, that “Tens of documented deaths, including of children, have been attributed to checkpoint delays.”

These statements and publications were, and continue to be, used as sources in anti-Israel campaigns, particularly in the health field. For example, a resolution introduced at the 2013 meeting of the American Public Health Association, referring to “apartheid-type policies in the occupied lands of Palestine,” included 16 references to The Lancet.

However, in September 2014, these attacks abruptly ended. Horton accepted an invitation from doctors at Haifa’s Rambam Hospital to visit Israel, and in public appearances and media interviews, expressed regret. He announced a new project that would portray Israel in a positive light, and in 2017, The Lancet published a special volume on Israeli contributions to medicine. This remarkable reversal is unparalleled among major platforms used in anti-Israel demonization campaigns.

(Continue to Full Story)

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. 

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Perhaps It's Time to Apply 'Physicians Heal Thyself" and End Your Anti-Israeli Hysteria

...The Hands off the Lancet group asked for determination of who was responsible in Gaza for violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. They need look no further. The United Nations report of April 27, 2015 makes clear that the violations were committed by Palestinians, specifically by Hamas that used UN buildings and schools as launching sites to fire rockets at Israeli civilians during the Gaza operation.

Dr. Michael Curtis..
American Thinker..
05 May '15..

Dr. Seuss, the world’s favorite physician, once explained “I like nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells.” Unfortunately, their own nonsensical behavior did not awaken a number of doctors and medical practitioners, mostly in Britain, when they published an immoderate and fallacious political diatribe against Israel in the British medical journal, The Lancet.

To the contrary, they have dishonored their professional code of conduct, betrayed the norms of medical science, and the understood ethics of impartial analysis. Dr. Richard Horton, editor in chief since 1995 of The Lancet, also ignored the code of conduct and the responsibilities of journal editors in publishing the diatribe.

What a difference a day makes! Dr. Horton, confessed his critical opinions of Israel had been shaped by pro-Palestinian friends and by the Western media, but after his one-day tour of the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa on September 29, 2014, he said he had completely changed his view of Israel.

Nevertheless despite his new enlightenment, Horton refused to retract or to apologize for the controversial “Open Letter for the People in Gaza” he had published on July 23, 2014 that rebuked Israel in inflammatory language for its “ruthless assault of unlimited duration, extent, and intensity” on Gaza in the summer conflict in 2014 in the Gaza Strip. The letter concluded, “we as scientists and doctors cannot keep silent while this crime against humanity continues.” They did, however, keep silent about the crimes against humanity, crimes that the United Nations has recently publicly revealed, committed by Palestinians during the conflict in Gaza.

The Open Letter asserted that Israel’s IDF reaction to the incessant rocket attacks by Hamas in Gaza in summer of 2014 was in fact “the creation of an emergency to masquerade a massacre.” The authors charged that only 5% of Israeli academics appealed to the Israel government to stop the military operation. The Open Letter was almost completely devoid of any reference to medical issues, the supposed concern of the practitioners of the medical profession.

Horton considered that the letter, condemning Israel’s Operation Protective Edge in Gaza, was a cry of anguish, but also that it did not convey the highly complex reality of Israel’s situation that he now understands, or pretends to understand, is the reality in Israel. He also expressed his realization that what he witnessed during his visit to Israel contradicted some of the claims of the Open Letter. However, he did not retract the letter, as critics suggested, or disparage its extreme egregious nature.

Israel bashers’ phony contrition by Caroline Glick

On August 19 Horton published a 1,600-word letter criminalizing Israel.

The Lancet editor Prof. Richard Horton
at Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center. (photo credit:
COURTESY RAMBAM MEDICAL CENTER)

Caroline Glick..
Our World/JPost..
06 October '14..

Dr. Richard Horton, the editor of the English medical journal The Lancet, was not transformed by his visit to Israel last week.

Horton came to Israel last week the guest of Rambam Medical Center in a bid to dig himself out of the hole he dug himself into. On August 19 Horton published a 1,600-word letter criminalizing Israel. In it, Israel was accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. The authors called for a boycott of Israel, including Israeli academia. Since its publication on Lancet’s website, the letter has garnered 20,000 signatures.

The letter made no mention of the fact that the war this summer was initiated by Hamas through its illegal missile, mortar and rocket offensive against Israeli population centers. The esteemed medical professionals who wrote the letter failed to mention that Hamas’s operational headquarters was located in Shifa hospital in Gaza. And of course, they ignored the underlying fact that Hamas’s entire campaign against Israel was a crime against humanity.

Immediately following its publication, Prof. Gerald Steinberg, the head of NGO Monitor, exposed that the letter’s principal authors are frothing-at-the-mouth anti-Semites. Dr. Paola Manduca and Dr. Swee Ang disseminated a video entitled, CNN, Goldman Sachs & the Zio Matrix. It was produced by the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke.

As Britain’s Telegraph reported, in disseminating the video, Ang exhorted her audience to understand that the Jewish threat outlined in the video is a threat to humanity. In her words, it “is not about Palestine – it is about all of us!” For her part, as the Telegraph reported, Manduca has accused Israel of responsibility for the Boston Marathon bombing. And she disseminated an article comparing Israel to a “strangler fig,” which as the Telegraph explained, “grows around other trees and takes their sunlight, often resulting in the deaths of the original trees.”

Steinberg cataloged Horton’s long record of publishing anti-Israel slanders under the guise of a scientific research. Horton responded with indignation to the initial criticisms of his decision to publish the defamatory letter. He told the Telegraph that the anti-Semitic views of letter authors were “utterly irrelevant.” He called criticism of his decision to publish the letter, “a smear campaign.”

Horton then pledged not to retract the letter – which is still posted on Lancet’s website – “even if [criticism of the authors] was found to be substantiated.”

Yet as the outrage mounted against him, and the stench of the Jew hatred of his colleagues grew stronger, Horton began to feel the heat. So after refusing to publish a letter from Israeli doctors from Rambam rejecting the libelous attacks against Israel, Horton accepted Rambam’s invitation to come to Israel last week and learn firsthand how none of his allegations were true.

At the end of his three-day visit, Horton gave a lecture at Rambam where he condemned the Cossack-style Jew hatred of his colleagues Ang and Manduca. But despite his seeming contrition, Horton did not disavow their letter. He did not agree to remove the slander from The Lancet’s website.

Doctors Respond to Lancet Article on Israeli Doctors and Torture

Alex Margolin..
Honest Reporting..
18 March '13..




Guest Post:  Dr. Jeffrey Goldstein and Dr. Steve Samuel are members of DARA (Doctors Against Racism and Antisemitism), which seeks to ensure that medical publications avoid promulgation of subjective articles aimed at vilifying any race, nation or country. Visit their website at www.daradocs.org.

“Israeli Doctors Accused of Collusion in Torture”. This is only an accusation, but when it appears in a piece of purportedly credible, medical journalism, it conveys a presumption of guilt. The reality is that this is a recent headline in the medical journal, The Lancet.

Sharmila Devi’s article makes claims and repeats statements inconsistent with objective journalism and clinical medicine. The tragic death of Arafat Jaradat, a 30-year-old father of two and member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, has been turned into an opportunity to besmirch the Israeli Medical community.

An autopsy conducted the next day by Israeli forensic pathologists concluded the likely cause of death to be a heart attack (myocardial infarction). It does not dispute that vigorous attempts at cardiopulmonary resuscitation were carried out for almost an hour. Palestinian Authority’s chief pathologist, Dr. Saber Aloul, who attended the autopsy, is reported as saying that “bruising on the body was evidence of torture.”

Plosker - Terminally Ill: Medical Journal Infected With Anti-Israel Bias

Simon Plosker
Honest Reporting
07 July '11

http://honestreporting.com/terminally-ill-medical-journal-infected-with-anti-israel-bias/

The UK medical journal, The Lancet, has returned to its annual Israel-bashing issue exploring health conditions in the Palestinian territories.

Last year, the journal employed active supporters of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel as supposedly expert commentators on the situation, which earned it a 2010 Dishonest Reporter Award. Lancet editor Richard Horton even posted a snide response aimed at HonestReporting.

This year, it has, for the most part, toned down the politics in favor of medical analysis.

One article, however, shows that the Lancet has not dropped its political campaign against Israel. This standout piece, highlighted by the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency, deals with “Childbirth at checkpoints in the occupied Palestinian territory“. As Richard Horton puts it in his overview of the reports:

A legal analysis of the evidence of denial of free movement for Palestinian women in labour and the consequences for their children supports the conclusion that Israel’s policy “is consistent with the criteria for crimes against humanity”.

While we do not question that the need for IDF checkpoints may very well affect freedom of movement to the detriment of the Palestinian population, we do take serious issue with the highly politicized interpretations of the article’s author Halla Shoaibi:

The denial of passage to Palestinian women in labour, resulting in increased numbers of childbirths at checkpoints and en route to the hospital, is consistent with the criteria for crimes against humanity in accordance with article 7(1)(k) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court – ie, “other inhuman acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health”, and meets with the presence of “widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population”. Further research is needed to assess whether and how such a case could be made to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

We can save Shoaibi the need for further research. The accusation above contends that Israeli forces are causing suffering to pregnant women with intent to do so. This is an absurd and particularly vicious canard that purposely ignores the reasons behind Israeli checkpoints in the first place and promotes a view of Israeli soldiers as being inherently evil.

Shoaibi fails to mention the well-documented Palestinian abuse of ambulances and medical facilities to transport and harbor terrorists. And what about female Palestinian suicide bombers disguising themselves as pregnant women?

The Lancet’s absurd and unsupportable conclusion that Israel is intentionally trying to harm pregnant Palestinian women is a form of demonization that crosses the line from reasonable criticism, especially from a medical journal. Perhaps it is really The Lancet that is intentionally trying to harm Israel’s image in the world arena and the medical profession. At the very least, the credibility of this supposedly respectable journal continues to be harmed by its exploitation of medical research to serve a narrow political goal.

If you are a certified medical professional, please administer a dose of medicine by sending your considered comments to The Lancet’s Ombudsman, Charles Warlow – ombudsman@lancet.com

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Israel Skewered by Medical Journal

The Lancet publishes a multi-article series on Palestinian health written by Israel boycotters that goes way beyond accepted medical norms.


Honest Reporting
Media Critique
14 July '10

The history of politicization of science for political ends is long, and sadly, destructive.

As HonestReporting has previously highlighted, formerly credible medical media outlets such as the British Medical Journal have drifted away from scientific exploration to scientific exploitation, particularly when concerned with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Lancet describes itself as "one of the world's leading medical journals" and claims an online registration of some 1.8 million users. On July 2, 2010, it published the "best peer-reviewed abstracts" from a meeting of the 2nd Lancet-Palestinian Health Alliance Conference.

A cornerstone of most peer-reviewed journals is freedom from bias. No conference or article today can be promoted or published without a clear declaration of conflict of interest by its authors or promoters. No such declarations are published in The Lancet series.

A medical background is no guarantee of objectivity or lack of bias when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After all, some of the Hamas leadership such as Mahmoud al-Zahar and the late Abdel Aziz Rantisi were medical professionals, while the Marxist Dr. Mads Gilbert pumped out propaganda from Gaza during Operation Cast Lead.

Some research into the background of a number of contributors to The Lancet's articles reveals some disturbing information and calls into question the credibility of the content, particularly as most of those below are active supporters of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

(Read full critique)

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Anti-Israel Bias Infects Medical Journals

It's not just the Lancet that sees the world through Palestinianized glasses.


Barbara Kay
Pajamasmedia.com
04 February '10

As all doctors know, untreated gangrene in a single limb can spread quickly through the body and lead to death. The most effective way to halt the progress of gangrene is to cut off the corrupting limb, a necessary sacrifice for the greater good.

As with bodies, so with scientific credibility.

As Phyllis Chesler informed us in these pages on January 24, Lancet, once an impeccable source for authoritative medical research, has in recent years become more and more “Palestinianized.” In the just-published article she cites, “Association between exposure to political violence and intimate-partner violence in the occupied Palestinian territory: a cross-sectional study,” Palestinian husbands were found to be more violent towards their wives as a function of the Israeli “occupation” — “and … the violence increases significantly when the husbands are ‘directly’ as opposed to ‘indirectly’ exposed to political violence.”

Very clever. Being a Palestinian means you get to beat your wife without having to say you’re sorry, because, hey, it’s too bad about all those bruises, but the Israelis made me do it! That the statistics were gathered and the study was funded by the Palestinian Authority should have been a clue to its lack of objectivity. This is propaganda, not research.

It isn’t only Lancet, though. Editorial views in the prestigious British Medical Journal and the Journal of the Royal College of Physicians (recently renamed Clinical Medicine) have revealed a similar pattern of anti-Israel bias.

(Read full article)
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Lancet Study Blames Palestinian Wife-Beating on Israel

Big lies now pass for top-of-the-line academic, scientific work

Dr. Phyllis Chesler
pajamasmedia.com
25 January '10

It’s official. Britain’s premier medical journal Lancet has been completely Palestinianized. It no longer bears any relationship to the first-rate scientific journal it once was. Perhaps Lancet is no longer a standard-bearer but has become a follower in the global movement in which standards have plunged, biases have soared, and Big Lies now pass for top-of-the-line academic, scientific work.

The post-colonial academy is itself thoroughly colonized by the false and dangerous ideas of Edward Said (please read my dear friend Ibn Warraq’s most excellent book Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism). However, I once believed that Said’s paranoid perspective had primarily infected and indoctrinated only the social sciences, humanities, and Middle East Studies. We now see his malign influence at work in a new article, just out today, by professors who work at the Department of Medicine at Harvard University; the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health at Minnesota University’s School of Public Health; The Boston University School of Medicine; the School of Nursing at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey; and at the School of Social Work and Social Welfare at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University.

Their study is titled: “Association between exposure to political violence and intimate-partner violence in the occupied Palestinian territory: a cross-sectional study.” And yes, they have found that Palestinian husbands are more violent towards Palestinian wives as a function of the Israeli “occupation”— and that the violence increases significantly when the husbands are “directly” as opposed to “indirectly” exposed to political violence.

(Read full article)
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