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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 23 - 29 November 2000 Issue No.509 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 23 - 29 November 2000 Issue No.509
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Covering the Intifada
Is coverage of the Al-Aqsa uprising in the British press shifting towards a greater understanding of the Palestinian position? Omayma Abdel-Latif talks to some key players
"The Independent has been receiving strong complaints about the articles of Robert Fisk. He might be pressured to stop writing if we do not support him," read the e-mail. It was sent from the US to thousands of Web-crawlers around the globe, urging them to send e-mails to the paper in a show of support for Fisk. The paper was bombarded with e-mails and phone calls seeking verification of the news and exercising pressure to reconsider any Fisk-free coverage of the Middle East it may have been planning.Fear not, said Fisk in a telephone interview from Beirut; his job was never in danger and he gets all the support he needs from his editors. "I spent two days answering calls on this issue and the newspaper has received almost 4,000 e-mails traced to a server in the US, but I have no idea what the source of the news was because my job was never in danger," he told the Weekly
This incident, however, unmasked a very real fear among many readers that they could lose a rare commodity: a Western journalist who reports reality without twisting the facts.
Many observers, however, believe the Al-Aqsa uprising marks a shift in the way the British media in general -- and the print media in particular -- covers the conflict. A greater understanding of the plight of the Palestinians at the hands of the Israelis seems to be emerging in news coverage and some op-ed articles. A sample of British dailies suggests that mainstream news coverage of the events in the occupied territories is no longer parroting Israeli propaganda. It is no longer a matter of "peace-loving Israelis" fighting "murderous Palestinian mobs who understand only the language of violence" -- as the story went in pre-Intifada times.
What has caused the change? The reason, in the words of one British journalist, is that "the events of the past month have liberated many British journalists who had been feeling constrained in their coverage. During the Oslo negotiations, editors in London tended to want criticism of Israel tempered, particularly over the settlements, because it was assumed that Israel was striving to come to some sort of a fair accommodation with the Palestinians. Israel, if you like, was given the benefit of the doubt," Jonathan Cook of The Guardian told the Weekly.
Suddenly, an outpouring of frustration and anger can be observed in both reporting and analysis at what are now perceived as opportunities missed repeatedly by Israel. "I think the shift in tone has been led by the writers who could not avert their eyes from such disturbing images as Mohamed Al-Dorra being killed cold-bloodedly by the Israelis. They had to tell the truth without any twisting this time," Cook added
The result, says Cook, was "a lot of sympathy" for the Palestinian people, fuelled by pictures of children being murdered deliberately. Recent events have also laid bare the real balance of power in the relationship. Israeli claims that Arafat encourages the stone-throwing do not seem plausible to many British journalists.
"Israel has painted events as organised and cynical. In Britain they have appeared spontaneous. Israel has been the victim not of Palestinian stone-throwers but of its public relations spin backfiring. It has talked to world opinion in the same tones as it speaks to domestic opinion, but [that] is not necessarily what the rest of the world would buy," in Cook's opinion.
Indeed, a number of British correspondents in Jerusalem were not ready to buy what Israel was selling them. The outcome -- as reflected in news coverage -- was unprecedented. In its Comment page of the Tuesday Review, just a week after the Intifada broke out, The Independent published a daring op-ed piece by Alexei Sayle titled "I've got what it takes to lead the PLO: Jewish good looks." Sayle wrote: "The violent creation of the state of Israel and the subsequent oppression of the Palestinian people has always struck me as being one of the great injustices of our age. After all, the poor Arabs did nothing to harm the Jewish people of Europe; if the Zionists wanted a homeland, why didn't they take a piece of Germany?
"The answer is, of course, that Arabs then and now were not considered fully human by the Zionists and their supporters in the West [...], and therefore their land could be stolen and they could be murdered without any qualms. This of course suited the western powers -- in truth, Israel is the last piece of colonialism, the last colony established by white Europe in the developing world, an aircraft carrier for the United States to protect its oil interests an a wedge to drive between the oil producers."
The atrocities committed by Israel during this Intifada have driven even the staunchest of its supporters to criticise its policies. "You cannot subjugate, demonise and dispossess another people, and treat them as second-class citizens without one day reaping the whirlwind," wrote David Goldberg, a senior rabbi at the liberal Jewish synagogue in London. He went on to say: "There now actually is a Palestinian authority in parts of Gaza and the West Bank in charge of a limited degree of its own small piece of territory. It is a start, the first glimmering of acknowledgment that the Palestinians too have a right to independence and their own state."
A Palestinian boy at Karni crossing near Gaza, 19 November
(photo: AFP)
The shift has moved to reporters on the ground, too. Reporting on the "Day of Rage" on 7 October, Phil Reeves, The Independent's correspondent in Jerusalem, wrote: "In the past week, Israeli snipers highly trained and with accurate equipment have shot dead children. Israeli helicopter gun ships have fired rockets into apartment buildings. True, their well-fortified bunkers have come under attack by Palestinians firing thousands of rounds from Kalishnikovs and hurling Molotov cocktails. But the ratio of the dead reflects the imbalance -- 70 Palestinians to three Israelis.
"Absurdly, much of this has been done in the name of defending tiny pockets of territory and Jewish settlements on occupied land that Ehud Barak knows should not be there, and would have handed back in a peace agreement."
As the violence against Palestinians soared to unprecedented levels during the first month, Fisk begged Western readers to "understand the injustice of the Middle East."
"This is a story about lies, bias, hatred and death. It is about our inability -- after more than half a century -- to understand the injustice of the Middle East. It's about a part of the world where it seems quite natural, after repeatedly watching on television the funeral of 11-year-old Sami Abu Jezar -- who dies two days after being shot through the forehead by Israeli soldiers -- for a crowd to kick two Israeli plainclothes agents to death.
"It is about a nation that claims 'purity of arms' but fires missiles at civilian apartment blocks and then claims it is 'restoring order'. I suppose it is the same old story. The Israelis only want peace. The unruly, riotous, murderous Palestinians -- totally to blame for 95 of their own deaths -- understand only violence," Fisk wrote.
But it is not quite the same old story. The events in the occupied territories have raised issues the British media had seen fit to avoid until now. One such issue is Israel's appalling human rights record. Reeves again criticises Israel's defiant refusal to heed Amnesty International's call to cooperate with the UN commission of inquiry under Mary Robinson. "This seems doomed to fall on deaf ears. Israel has brushed off criticism by human-rights organisations about the daily killing of rioters, who have been more heavily targeted than the armed Palestinians who are attacking. There is remarkably little internal debate about the slow massacre committed by its security forces. Ms Robinson's commission has already accused Israel of 'widespread, systematic and gross violation of human rights'. This week she saw the evidence for herself," Reeves wrote.
It was only a day earlier, on 11 November, that Reeves captured a mood of discontent with Western governments' reluctance to deter Israel. "The Israeli army showed no sign of abandoning its policy of killing young Arabs -- including many children -- on a daily basis, a slaughter that has been made all the more possible by the lack of any concrete measures to deter it by Western governments. As the killings no longer make international headlines, the pressure on the outside world to force Israel to stop is easing off," Reeves wrote in a story titled "Another 14-year-old joins ranks of 'martyrs' after riot."
It was also the kinds of stories being reported that represented a departure from the more usual depiction of Israelis suffering the wrath of Palestinian terrorists, not the reverse. Now, stories about the plight of Palestinian children and families have found their way into newspapers. Israel's claims that Palestinian mothers send their children onto the front lines to gain Western sympathy did not gain much credence among many Western reporters. The Sunday Times published the story of Marwa, "the dark-haired, delicate little girl" (even such characterisations of Palestinians were rare until now) from Beit Sahour who is terrorised by the Israeli gunmen. The article, titled "Israeli Arabs vow to turn to Tel Aviv," by Marie Colvin, was accompanied by a picture of young Marwa standing in her bedroom and pointing at the bullet that hit her window. Quotes such as "Now I hide under my bed. My little brother cannot talk but he sweats a lot," and "Father, we don't want to die" brought the reality of Palestinian suffering home to a readership unaccustomed to this side of the story -- simply because Israeli children and Israeli settlers have so often been portrayed as victims of Arab terrorism..
Colvin herself admits that she cannot buy Israeli claims. "None of the gunmen lives here and the Israelis admit they know that. But they appear to be firing indiscriminately into this residential neighbourhood, perhaps looking for a lucky strike. It is a miscalculation. The lack of regard for civilian lives has fired up even these middle-class citizens. At night last week, Beit Sahour was deserted. The few cars on the streets drove at speed for safety. Children slept in the basements," she wrote.
This is not to say that the anti-Arab line was absent from the coverage. The Daily Telegraph took it upon itself to uphold "objectivity" -- as defined by Israel -- with articles accusing the Palestinians of "choosing the path of violence" and claims that "Palestinian belligerence" was undermining the prospect of statehood ("Arafat's road to nowhere," 24 October).
Still, a letter to the editor blamed the Telegraph for using such language to describe the Palestinians and blame them for their own deaths at the hands of a powerful and ruthless military occupier. The reader, Ali Abunimah, suggested that "The Daily Telegraph's language in describing the conflict has the familiar ring of the Yugoslav state news agency in the days when Kosovo Albanians shared the same fate."
Fisk, a veteran Middle East correspondent, accuses some journalists of "not making any effort to verify facts" and concurs that "the easiest thing is to use clichés." The recent events, however, have brought some journalists to question the terminology used and even wonder precisely what language is appropriate in describing Israeli atrocities. In an attempt to avert any bias in favour of one side, some Western reporters are even questioning terms that have long been accepted as part of the conflict's lexicon.
"Whoever invented the word peace process? Whoever said it was a process anyway?" Fisk demands. Brian Whitaker, Middle East editor of The Guardian, carries this argument a bit further. "One problem that writers have to grapple with in this kind of conflict is the way both sides attempt to impose their own terminology on the debate and journalists who make the mistake of using it risk being caught up, as it were, in the verbal crossfire. The Israelis, for example, regularly call the occupied West Bank 'Judea and Samaria' (to emphasise their claim to it), and sometimes this creeps into newspaper stories, particularly where direct quotes from Israeli officials are used."
The Guardian, according to Whitaker, has succeeded in being impartial. "If anything, I would say it has risked appearing overly sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinian people and their disadvantages in the confrontation with the IDF, but there has been less sympathy in covering Arafat himself," he told the Weekly. The Jewish lobby in Britain has even accused The Guardian of anti-Semitism "because we ran a book review of Norman Finklestein's The Holocaust Industry during the events."
So are the consensus-breakers lone voices in the wilderness? One way to measure the public's response is to look at letters to the editor. The coverage seems to have created a new awareness of the balance of power and the real victim's identity. One letter to The Independent read: "After the deeply regrettable killing of two Israeli soldiers in Ramallah, an Israeli foreign office spokesman said that in response to the Palestinian stone throwing attacks Israel 'had used the utmost restraint'. Utmost restraint? The shooting dead by Israel soldiers of almost 100 Palestinians in two weeks? The statement was just one of the uncountable number of duplicitous statements issued by Israel and before it the Zionist movement, over the last 100 years. Israel is a country born of deceit and dishonour -- not least by British governments -- and continued with deceit and the dispossession and persecution of the Palestinians for the past half century. Every double-deal by Israel is accompanied by a statement that it is the Palestinians who are at fault," wrote John Tippler from Spalding, Lincolnshire.
Another reader, Dr Francisco Rodriguez-Manas from London, wrote: "I think we might as well stop parroting Israeli propaganda and be blunt when it comes to apportioning blame. When President Clinton attributed the failure of the Camp David talks last July to Palestinian intransigence on the future status of East Jerusalem, he deliberately omitted the fact that UN Resolution 242 enjoins Israel to abandon Arab lands occupied in 1967. That includes East Jerusalem; Israeli claims to the Arab quarter of the town are, therefore, insubstantial."
Rodriguez-Manas continued: "I am getting increasingly fed up with the pro-Israel bias prevailing in the Western media. When will they acknowledge that Palestinians have already given up too many of their otherwise legitimate demands? Has Israel offered some compromise to ease the plight of the several million Palestinians refugees scattered throughout neighbouring countries? Has Israel given any signs that it intends to improve the status of the one million Israeli Arabs, still treated as second-class citizens in their 'own' country? Has Israel budged a bit on the future of the Jewish settlement in Palestinian areas? Is anyone still naive enough to believe that they will ever be dismantled?"
Asked in a telephone interview by the Weekly about how the British press, in its coverage of the recent events in Palestine, differed from its counterpart on the other side of the Atlantic, the distinguished American intellectual Noam Chomsky said: "I follow the US press closely of course, but the British media only sporadically, and usually people I read for my own interest, like Fisk. So I cannot really offer a well-researched comparison. My impression is that as in the past, the British press remains much less rigid on this issue (and many issues) than its US counterpart, with a wide spectrum permitted expression, unlike here."
Illustrating this difference, Chomsky added: "I've had personal meetings with editors of one of the most liberal quality dailies in the country, bringing to their attention simple uncontroversial factual matters that have (literally) not been reported in the US; for example, the military helicopter deal of October 3 and the dispatch of Apache attack helicopters a few weeks earlier. And many other things like that. They nod politely, but make it very clear, by silence, that they will simply not report such facts -- which have been reported in England. And that is just one example of many."
Related strories:
Warped perspective 16 - 22 November 2000
See Intifada in focus 26 Oct. - 1 Nov. 2000
Intifada special 19 - 25 October 2000
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