Los Angeles Times: Making It Up As They Go

The LA Times likes to Call 'em as they see them. The problem is they "see them" as if they have taken a few hits of what we used to call in college, "window pane (LSD). If you are a regular reader of CAMERA as I am, you will realize that the Los Angeles Times proves Mideast lies in truth's clothing on a regular basis. Below are some of the Times lies that appeared during the past 12 months:

JUNE 6, 2007	At LA Times, 'Chronology' Redefined
MAY 7, 2007	Azmi Bishara's Apologia in the Los Angeles Times
NOVEMBER 27, 2006	False Claim by Abbas Goes Unchallenged
OCTOBER 25, 2006	Makdisi Op-Ed in LA Times Replete with False Charges Against Israel
AUGUST 11, 2006	Los Angeles Times Corrects: Nahariya Not a Settlement
AUGUST 2, 2006	LA Times Op-Ed by Adam Shatz Gets International Law Wrong
JULY 26, 2006	Makdisi's Revisionist History on Hezbollah Rockets
JULY 20, 2006	Siegman Fabrications Result in LA Times Correction

Arlene Peck is an internationally syndicated columnist and television talk show hostess. Journalism is both her vocation and her advocation. She is very upset at the LA Times' loss of professionalism. As she writes in today's Arutz Sheva.

The Last Straw at the Los Angeles Times

(IsraelNN.com) For years, I've been a working member of the press. There was a time when I looked with pride at my life's accomplishments. Of course, those were the days when such men as Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Morrow were the role models. In recent years, I've become increasingly alarmed with the trend that I've seen among those who consider themselves 'reporters,' as well as those talking heads on the television's nightly news programs. We listen to dumbed-down, usually attractive, post-puberty 'experts' who can only speak in sound bites before they're interrupted by their co-anchor in the box. They talk about the Middle-East, but I'll bet if you put a map in front of them and asked them where that is, they wouldn't have a clue.

The CEOs of these companies wonder why their newspapers are going out of business. It's simple: it's the same as with the airlines. Lack of service.

When the newspapers began to invent the news instead of reporting the news, the public had nowhere to go but to the call in to talk radio stations, where there was, at least, a chance of hearing the truth.

The worst so-called "journalism," I believe, is practiced by the Los Angeles Times. For years, I've held on to my subscription only because I am a columnist and felt that reading the morning paper was the only way to keep up with what was happening in the world, so that I might give my opinion on it; which is what a columnist does.

A recent edition of the Los Angeles Times was the last straw. That Sunday's front page was covered with a picture of Jerusalem entitled, "The Struggle for Jerusalem." I'm surprised that they didn't use their resident anti -Semite, Tracy Wilkerson, to write the biased column against the Jewish state; nevertheless, it was pretty awful.

I'm not surprised when I see that the sympathetic slant of their series is for "the plight of the poor Palestinians." After all, that's what they do best. Everything, in my opinion, that they write has always been against Israel. For example, the Times reporter writes that Arab families are being "cut off for good from their city of birth" because of the "barrier," which Israel "insists" is aimed at keeping out suicide bombers. The concept that suicide bombers are homicidal mass murderers is foreign to the Times.

Their dumbing-down the issue is working. Israel was forced to build a fence to keep out the murderers that constantly came into Israeli cities to bomb their schools, pizza restaurants, buses and neighborhood markets at will. Prior to the barricade, we were reading in that same biased paper about how many Jews were being killed on an almost daily basis. Of course, why should I be surprised? This is the same paper that doesn't write about how the open borders with Mexico have turned California into Mexifornia and our cities into places resembling Third World countries. This same paper was also writing multi-page series about how the poor illegal immigrant families are being separated and forced to live in poverty. I wish our government had the foresight that Israel is now showing before our country got so out of hand.

Meanwhile, the LA Times reporters sat in their safe comfortable office, sipped lattes, and wrote about Jews and Arabs living bitterly apart. They wrote about how, "Their schism is one of the key obstacles to peace," and how the Palestinians have been "hemmed in by Israeli rule over their East Jerusalem neighborhoods."

Well gol-ly, this pampered bunch of so-called journalists write that "the status of JerusalemCamp David talks of 2000." I wonder how they might feel if any of the wonderful illegal aliens who have come across our border from Mexico were to build a shack without permits next door to their Starbucks. Would they write a column about how unfairly Gonzalez and his eight children were being treated when forced to tear it down? Actually, with the leftist, anti-Semitic and anti-Israel attitude that I've learned to expect from this bunch, they would probably write the same treasonous trash. remains one of the biggest obstacles to a comprehensive peace agreement," and the issue was "a major stumbling block at the

In addition to relating to poor Kamil Saou and his five children, they elaborated on how "scores of Israeli police officers converged on a bluff in East Jerusalem, surrounded his modest home and escorted a bulldozer to the door." They went on to lament that since Kamil had neglected to get a permit, "that gave the government the legal right to demolish the home." As well it should! Try that in Beverly Hills and see how fast the bulldozers come.

I wonder if, while the Los Angeles Times was publishing this four-day, three-page spread, they noticed that virtually every other page in their paper was filled with the violence and terror caused by Islamic terrorists elsewhere. Or is it just the "question" of Jerusalem that is causing the problems from Iraq to Dakar? The Islamist culture doesn't give a damn about living in peace, side-by-side, as the uninformed columnists write. I wonder if, in the effort to be fair and balanced, the LA Times reporters have spoken to non-Muslims from areas now controlled by the same Islamic fundamentalists who want to control Jerusalem.

I'm sure that they don't remember, but I'd like to remind the Times reporters that the town of Bethlehem was once about 86% Christian. That was until pressure from front page stories and an incompetent State Department caused that city to be turned over to Arab control. Since then, the city has become a wasteland of roaming terrorists who have brutalized, murdered and mutilated the Christians who had been living there for generations. They've done such a good job that Bethlehem's Christian population is now less than 5%. The LA reporters might want to pay more attention to the promise that once the Muslims are finished with the Saturday people, they will implement their plans for the Sunday people.

Call me silly. Call me a tad old-fashioned, but I take offense that this beacon of understanding, the Los Angeles Times, writes to the masses, "In the absence of peace, Israel and the Palestinians jostle for advantage, reshaping the holy city and further diminishing changes for an agreement." I do want to tell them, though, that the Jews maintaining control of the Jewish State, for which the deed was given to them 3,500 years ago, is not the reason for discord. It's because we are dealing with a barbaric mind-set intent on killing all who are not them.

The Times doesn't get it. None of the liberal press seems to get it. But giving these savages a hug or more land isn't going to bring peace. They understand death and destruction, and they want a martyr's death. I'm all for giving it to them.