Jews Move to Ban Israel Coverage on TV

Source: The Palm-Beach Post | May 14, 2001

Jewish Group Petitioning to Ban TV from Filming Israeli Clashes

“The problem of TV coverage is that the TV camera does not record history, it makes history.”

                      • – Rabbi Leon Fink

By KEN PELLIS, Palm- Beach Post Staff Writer

DELRAY BEACH — A group of Palm Beach County Jews has begun a petition campaign urging the Israeli government to ban U.S. television camera crews from filming violent clashes between Israeli soldiers and Arabs.

The petitions contend that network television coverage of recent Palestinian uprisings has been biased against Israel.

The group, formed last week and called the Committee for Equal TV Coverage in the Middle East, began distributing petitions Wednesday in Delray Beach, said Rabbi Leon B. Fink of the Boynton Beach Jewish Center Beth Kodesh.

Fink said the petition would be presented to Rahamim Timor, the Israeli consul general to Florida, after the goal of 5,000 signatures is reached.

“The problem of TV coverage is that` the TV camera does not record history, it makes history,” Fink said. “Whenever mobs see a TV camera they start acting for it.

Fink also said that U.S. television “presents a view of soldiers hitting defenseless women and children” while omitting Arab violence prompting-such action. “The picture that we see is always the second hit.”

The committee plans to distribute the petitions in largely Jewish neighborhoods in Palm Beach County north of Boca Raton. Fink said the group would also use shopping plazas if merchants give permission.

Fink said the committee has about 18 members, most of them officials from: Fink’s, synagogue and from Temple Emeth in Delray Beach but hopes to draw on a larger pool of volunteers.

Fink and David J. Leon, a retired canter and president of Temple Emeth, are cochairmen of the group. About a dozen people attended the committee’s first general meeting Thursday at Temple Emeth.

Fink planned to take his proposal before the Palm Beach County Board of Rabbis on Tuesday.

The rabbi said most people he had approached with the idea reacted favorably, though a few opposed it on freedom-of-the press grounds.

Mark Freedman, executive director of the American Jewish Congress’ southeast regional office in Miami, said that recent coverage of strife in Israel generally suffers from “a lack of historical context.”

But Freedman opposed press restrictions of the sort advocated by the Palm Beach County group. “I think that restricting American access to news, whether it’s good or bad news, would establish a very dangerous precedent” that would have serious consequences, he said.