Covering the war

By Awatef Abdel-Rahman

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For three weeks, wall-to-wall reporting on Gaza became the norm. Israel had chosen its time carefully, striking when the UN was at its weakest and the Arab League nearly comatose. Its aggression demonstrated beyond doubt the inability of Arab governments to speak in one voice, regardless of how crucial the situation is.

The war was covered by everyone, the pro-Israeli media as well as the pro-resistance. Arab satellite stations spared no effort to bring the magnitude of the tragedy home, but I found that there was a shortage of experience on the part of the military commentators who could tell us the significance of the battles on the ground.

The official media didn't play down the suffering of the Palestinians, but it failed to explain why Arab governments were doing so little to stand up to Israel. Not that we didn't know the reason, for what else do you expect when so many Arab countries have either signed agreements with Israel or are hosting US bases on their land?

As usual, the opposition press took the opportunity to clobber the officialdom and prove that it is politically emasculated.

The Israeli and pro-Israeli media used the same tools the Americans used in Iraq. All the time, the focus was on how serious Palestinian rockets were, although I know of no cases a Palestinian rocket even caused one fatality in Israel. Helicopters dropped leaflets on the Palestinians, telling them to leave their homes to be safe, or spreading rumours to cause general panic, all well-known psychological warfare tactics.

So while Israel was frantically shelling schools and hospitals and dropping phosphorous bombs on unarmed civilians, it kept trying to divert world opinion by talking about the damage caused by Hamas rockets.

Western media was generally pro-Israel, either because it didn't have enough correspondents on site, or because of political bias. Despite that, Western public opinion was decidedly against Israeli crimes, and almost every day there was a major protest in one Western capital or another.

This week's Soapbox speaker is professor of journalism at Cairo University.