CONTENTS

Introduction
Sellers' Market
Will to Believe
Rules of Thumb

"The truth is out there "
Use & misuse of words
False information signals more false information
Technical whiz-bang
Understand the Context
Lies, More Lies, Damn Lies and Newspapers
Beware of Generalizations
Theology and scripture
Misleading Statistics
Smoke in your eyes
What is Missing?
Myth versus fact versus narrative
The past was not like the present; the future will be different

Fallacy Recognition in the Middle East

Fallacies and Arguments
Cause and Effect
Slippery Slope
Gambler's Fallacy
Ad Hominem
Authority
Beliefs
Appeal to Novelty
Appeal to Emotion
Appeal to Tradition
False Dilemma or Black and White Thinking
Special Pleading
The Spotlight Fallacy
Who is to Say?

Fallacy Handbook

The spotlight fallacy causes one to assume that reality is like the exceptional cases highlighted in the news. You would not think that all people in your home town are murderers just because the police caught a murderer in your town. An event, a  novel or documentary film can also put issues in the spotlight and suddenly makes you particularly aware of one or another aspect of them. "Newsworthy events" always put the spotlight on unrepresentative facets of societies and places. After all, it is only newsworthy if it is exceptional. There are no headlines that say "Today billions of  people didn't get killed by a terror attack."

The spotlight fallacy is common in perceptions of the Middle East. Israel is not a war zone like Vietnam or Iraq, where everyone is under constant fire, and neither is Palestine, though that is the impression created by the media. Palestinian Arabs are not all poor or all terrorists, and Israeli Jews are not all orthodox settlers who live in Hebron and come from Brooklyn New York. Muslims are not all religious fanatics who want to blow themselves up.