Oct. 17, 2018

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 Israelwants 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

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