RUTHFULLY YOURS

Former CBS Evening News Anchor Dan Rather said 60 Minutes “got to the truth” in 2004 but paid a “painful price” for the story on former President George W. Bush’s National Guard service that aired before the 2004 presidential election.

Aside from the authenticity of the memos, Rather said the “basic story” remains true today.

“One, did former President Bush when in his troubled youth, did he use his father’s influence to get into the Air National Guard as a way of avoiding Vietnam? That’s a fact. Fact two: Once he got in the Air National Guard after performing well, in some ways, very well, disappeared for a year, nobody disappeared for a year, now those are facts,” Rather said at the Washington premiere of Truth, a film based on a book written about the controversial 60 Minutes segment that aired in 2004.

“Everybody is entitled to their opinion but they aren’t entitled to their own facts. The reason this film is called Truth is we got to the truth but we paid a painful price for it,” he added.

The broadcast included documents that were not authenticated by forensic experts, which ultimately led to the dismissal of the staff that worked on the story as well as the firing of producer Mary Mapes. The fallout is referred to as the “Killian documents controversy” – after Lieutenant Colonel Killian, Bush’s superior in the National Guard, whose name appears on the documents.

On Sunday, October 11, the Los Angeles Times ran the headline “6 Palestinian Teens Die Amid Mideast Unrest.” It was, technically, true. But it left out a few key details.

Try the opening sentence, instead: “Two Palestinian teenagers were shot to death Saturday in Jerusalem, officials said, after they carried out separate stabbing attacks on an ultra-Orthodox Jew and two Israeli police officers.” Among Palestinians, stabbing Israelis is in vogue at present — as are shooting them, ramming them with vehicles, and bludgeoning them with meat cleavers, all of which have also taken place in the “unrest” of the past few weeks. Seven Israelis have been killed and dozens wounded in attacks since Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year celebration, ended on September 15. The purported reason for the renewed violence is the rumor, despite Benjamin Netanyahu’s assurances to the contrary, that the Israeli government plans to reopen the Temple Mount to Jews. But the rash of violence is better explained by a century-long virus of hatred.

Western media outlets, as this latest flare-up reminds us, suffer their own mild case of this virus, manifested in their headlines. NBC News recently published a story entitled, “Dispute Over Viral Video of Shot Ahmed Manasrah Sums Up Israel-Palestinian Conflict.” What it summarizes is nothing; what it omits — that the wounded 13-year-old Palestinian and his 15-year-old cousin were shot after stabbing and seriously wounding two Israelis — is quite a bit. At the New York Times, there was, “Israeli Police Officers Kill Two Palestinian Men.” (Guess why). On its website, CNN blared, “Palestinian Youth: ‘Now We’ll Fight,’” with the subtitle, “Israeli-Palestinian Tensions Escalate with Four Violent Attacks.” Yahoo News got in on the action with, “Israeli Police Shoot Dead Palestinian at Entrance to Jerusalem’s Walled Old City,” which is both biased and grammatically ambiguous. And while no one expects Al Jazeera to be fair and balanced on this subject, its Twitter tease for a (less egregious) article on a stabbing that killed two Israelis in early October was nothing short of extraordinary: “Palestinian Shot Dead after Fatal Stabbing in Jerusalem; 2 Israeli Victims Also Killed.”

For the second time in less than one week there was violence at the Damascus Gate on Wednesday in Jerusalem. This time, like many others recently, was captured on video or the rampaging terrorist with a weapon would surely have been described as an innocent young man, shot down in cold blood. More on this, below.

The first attack took place on Saturday, Oct. 10. A 19 year old Arab resident of Jerusalem stabbed two members of Israel’s border police. The stabber was neutralized at the scene as he continued attempting to stab other officers.

The second incident took place late afternoon on Wednesday, Oct. 14. A Palestinian Arab male, later identified as Basel Sider, 19, was observed acting suspiciously. The man was wearing a camouflage t-shirt and pants. When Israeli officers approached him, he lunged at them and broke through the Damascus Gate checkpoint line. Israeli police repeatedly shouted for him to halt. As the Arab continued running with what appeared and was later confirmed to be a knife blade in his right hand, he was shot dead by Israeli officers on the scene.