• Gross misinformation  - Ali Abunimah
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict gets a disproportionate share of mainstream western media attention, and yet the public remains grossly misinformed.

• Israel should clean up its own house  - Hirsh Goodman
Frankly, it's not the messengers who are to blame, but those sending the message.

• In weakness there is strength  - Joshua Muravchik
The US government is closer to Israel than to the Palestinians, but US press coverage tilts in the other direction.

• Covering Palestine  - Graham Usher
Journalists currently do more justice to that people that has the power to assert its narrative, its questions, and its agenda over the other.

Gross misinformation
 Ali Abunimah

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict gets a disproportionate share of mainstream western media attention, as compared, say, with conflicts in Africa. Yet the public, particularly in the United States, remains grossly misinformed.

Jeffrey Dvorkin, ombudsman for US National Public Radio (NPR), recently claimed that his network's coverage in 2000-2001 had "a tendency to overreport the impact of the intifada on the Palestinians and underreport the effect on Israelis". In fact, the opposite was true. During a six-month period near the beginning of the intifada, NPR reported on 84 percent of Israeli civilian deaths, a study by the well-respected Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting organization found, while reporting on only 26 percent of Palestinian civilian deaths. This has been a consistent pattern across the media.

At the time, NPR's correspondent in Jerusalem, Linda Gradstein, was accepting unethical cash payments worth thousands of dollars annually from pro-Israeli organizations, a practice that was stopped only after it was revealed by an investigation colleagues and I conducted for The Electronic Intifada website. While NPR allowed Gradstein to keep reporting, it had earlier dismissed another correspondent, claiming that she did not disclose to managers that her husband had been an advisor to the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Dvorkin's revisionism comes as NPR and other media and academic organizations in the United States face intense attack from pro-Israel groups and allies in Congress who view any reporting that does not slavishly toe the Israeli line as being implacably hostile or even anti-Semitic. NPR and its affiliate stations face huge cuts in their government funding, instigated by officials with close ties to the pro-Israel lobby.

Those relying on the mainstream media could be forgiven for believing that Israelis are overwhelmingly the victims of violence, and Palestinians the main perpetrators. News organizations have to be constantly reminded that from the start of the first Palestinian uprising in December 1987, until May 15, 2005, Israelis killed a total of 4,857 Palestinians, the vast majority unarmed civilians, of whom 949 were under the age of 18, according to Israel's B'Tselem human rights group. In the same period, Palestinians killed 1,382 Israelis, of whom 928 were civilians and 131 children. Few recall that the first ever
Palestinian suicide bombing targeting civilians in Israel occurred 40 days after settler Baruch Goldstein's 1994 massacre of dozens of Palestinians in Hebron.

In general, the media have responded to Zionist pressure groups by resorting to a fake balance in which the reporter simply recites the claims of "both sides" and makes no attempt to assess independently the evidence supporting one and contradicting the other. So, territories that are occupied under international law become "disputed" and settlements built on expropriated, occupied land become "neighborhoods". The cruel reality of occupation becomes something
merely "perceived" by Palestinians.

In terms of political analysis, mainstream media commentary takes its cue from the US government agenda, almost never challenging America's unconditional support for Israel. Following the death of Yasser Arafat, there was much cliched editorializing about a "window of opportunity" for peace. Almost always ignored are any facts that do not fit in with the rosy scenario. PA Labor Minister Ghassan Khatib recently wrote that "while talking about vacating settlements with less than 2,000 housing units in Gaza, Israel has been busy constructing, this year alone, something like 6,400 housing units in illegal settlements in the West Bank." Few people are aware of this because the media follow official spin that Sharon's Gaza plan is significant while his actions in the West Bank are not.

On the Palestinian scene, the questionable election of Mahmoud Abbas--America's favored candidate--by a fraction of the Palestinian people was hailed as a great victory for democracy, while his blatantly undemocratic decision to cancel scheduled legislative elections his Fatah faction might lose to Hamas has been downplayed. And while there is much talk of Palestinian "reform", the media rarely focus on the long-standing and credible allegations of major corruption by key PA figures close to Abbas, some of whom are even hailed as "reformers".

While the media have major shortcomings, there are some dedicated and fair journalists. And paradoxically, the PA, which seems to believe international opinion will come to its rescue, has failed to counter Israeli propaganda with a credible communications strategy, largely abandoning the task to ad hoc efforts by Palestinian individuals and private groups. All this points to the vital importance of developing strong, independent Palestinian media tied neither to the PA nor to international donors. The donors' agenda, after all, is to focus on internal Palestinian "reform" and endless, sterile diplomacy in order to avoid the necessary confrontation with Israel without which there can be no progress toward peace.- Published 30/6/2005 (c) bitterlemons-international.org


Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of "One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse".

Israel considers itself a victim of the world media. Those who live here and many Jews in the Diaspora are convinced that as far as the international media are concerned, Israel can simply do no right. The trend started with the 1982 war in Lebanon, escalated during the first intifada, and came to a crescendo in the last bloody four-year conflict with the Palestinians.

So outraged are many Jews abroad by the perceived imbalance that they have contributed tens of millions of dollars to organizations that try and correct it. Some of these are of the "watchdog" nature, ensuring that reporting out of Israel and the occupied territories remains balanced. Others try to help foreign journalists in Israel find positive stories, or provide professional help to Israel's foreign ministry to improve the way its spokespersons appear on television.

If the truth be told, it is hard for an occupier to get a fair break in the media. By definition, occupation is ugly. It means curfews and roadblocks, house demolitions and pitting tanks against children with stones. And yes, while terror is terrible as well, unlike occupation it is sporadic, not permanent, and is seen as a response to occupation, not aggression in the name of aggression.

Given Israel's poor base line in the media war and the ever growing importance of media in foreign policy, one might have assumed that Israel would recognize this strategic challenge and deal with it with the same efficiency it applies to other challenges to the country at the strategic level. This, however, has not happened: frankly, if Israel's image is under attack it is not the messengers who are to blame, but those sending the message. Israel's public policy is in a shambles.

In 2002 the State Comptroller undertook a thorough look at the country's information services. His report was highly critical. It cited lack of cooperation, indeed rivalry, among those responsible for Israel's information services, with consequences deeply damaging to Israel's image abroad. The report came in the wake of the April 2002 Israeli retaliatory attack in the Jenin refugee camp following the Passover suicide bombing at the Park Hotel in Netanya in which some 30 people died. For several days the entire world believed that Israel had committed a massacre in Jenin; after the dust had settled it emerged that there was no massacre at all. Some 30 Palestinians, most of them armed, had been killed in fighting in which Israel had sustained heavy losses as well. Why had the entire world believed otherwise? Even an official Israeli spokesman had put the death toll at "hundreds".

A workshop on Israel's media performance during the operation, organized by the Bronfman Program on Media Strategy at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, sought to determine why this had happened. It emerged that there were no lines of communication between the IDF Spokesman's Office and the Israel Foreign Ministry. While the world believed massacre, Colonel Fuad Halhal, of the Israel Defense Force's civilian assistance program in the territories, was handing out blankets, getting a new generator into the Jenin general hospital, and coordinating ambulance routes with Palestinian doctors and UN teams--all of this in Jenin, in real time, and all of it carefully documented on video. The Foreign Ministry was totally unaware of either the footage or of Halhal's actions. Instead of being able to present Israel humanely, Israel's spokespersons could only mumble platitudes while the world believed massacre.

The same happened when in early 2002 Israel intercepted the Karine-A, the ship carrying Iranian arms to the Gaza Strip. The interception of the vessel was a major coup and could have worked well for Israel's image. The Foreign Ministry, however, only heard about it from the news. The military thought it so important that the interception be kept secret that it shared the information with no one. Had a team from the Foreign Ministry, the IDF Spokesman's Office, the Israel Government Press Office, and the Prime Minister's Office been assembled in advance and sworn to secrecy while they planned a coordinated strategic media response, the end result could have been very different.

The examples are endless. During the first hours after Israel's assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas leader was portrayed by the international media as a crippled cleric killed by the Israelis on the way home from morning prayer. Again, the army had considered his assassination so secret that it could not tell colleagues at the Foreign Ministry whose job it was to explain these things to the world. Again, a coordinated body could have put together a file that would have explained that the decision to kill Yassin came the day after the crippled cleric had sent two suicide bombers into Ashdod port to explode themselves amidst chemicals and other incendiary materials in order to create a "strategic" explosion, and that he had ordered attacks on Israelis that had left hundreds dead over the years. With news of the attack the background file would have been released and Israel's image would not have suffered the brutal attacks it did at the time.

Yes, the media is critical of Israel and yes, often the country gets treated unfairly. But that is no reason why Israel should not clean up its own house as well.- Published 30/6/2005 (c) bitterlemons-international.org


Hirsh Goodman directs the Charles and Andrea Bronfman Program on Media Strategy at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv University. His latest book is Let Me Create a Paradise God Said to Himself (Public Affairs, NYC and HarperCollins, Canada).

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, wrote the Economist's Max Rodenbeck in 2002, is "an epic struggle of the weak against the strong". This template, in which the Palestinians play David to Israel's Goliath, has shaped much of the western coverage of the area. News organizations, at least American ones, proclaim codes of conduct requiring balance and objectivity, but reporters also like to feel that it is their calling to afflict the mighty and redress the grievances of the helpless. In the contest between big and little, they have trouble suppressing their natural sympathy for the latter.

Even though the United States government is closer to Israel than to the Palestinians, US press coverage more often tilts in the other direction. Perhaps this will sound surprising to those who live where the news media tend to mirror government positions, but for American journalists to stand at odds with their government is their most comfortable posture.

The American news organization that has most clearly exhibited its sympathies in the current intifada has been ABC. On the second day of the intifada--September 29, 2000--ABC correspondent Gillian Findlay delivered a report from the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif that invoked the motif of strong versus weak: "Israeli police and soldiers rarely come here. This is the second day in a row they have flexed their muscles here, and Palestinians are furious." Findlay's expression suggested a gratuitous show of strength. But the Israeli action was not unprovoked. Worshipers in Al-Aqsa Mosque that Friday afternoon had heard Sheikh Hayan al-Idrisi warn that the Jews were plotting to replace the mosque with a temple; he had exhorted them to "eradicate the Jews from Palestine". Pouring forth from the services, some had rioted, besieging a lightly-manned Israeli police post and hurling stones and bottles down on Jewish worshipers at the Wailing Wall below. Israeli security forces stormed up the mount to disperse them.

Other US networks had shown the rioters assaulting the Jewish worshipers as well as the Israeli response. ABC showed only the response, giving a misleading visual image that matched Findlay's misleading words. Neither ABC nor any other network mentioned al-Idrisi's incendiary sermon which was, however, reported days later in the newspapers. Probably, word of the sermon was delayed in reaching American reporters. One of the inherent weaknesses of television news is that it will rarely report such after-the-fact information that completes an earlier story.

CNN was the other American network that exhibited a marked bias in favor of the Palestinians. Other news outlets, however, even while striving for objectivity, sometimes fell prey to the sharp disparity in the news environments between the two sides.

Like other democracies, Israel's free press relishes exposing misdeeds by its own country's leaders. Naturally, some of these stories get picked up by the foreign news media. The Palestinian press, however, at least under the rule of Yasser Arafat, had no freedom to report any misdoings by the Palestinian Authority. This made it less likely that foreigners would learn of Palestinian foibles. Also, threats of violence were used to discourage reporting of episodes embarrassing to the Palestinian position such as the celebrations that broke out in response to the attacks on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 or the lynching of two lost Israeli reservists in Ramallah in October 2000. When Italian news footage brought this episode to light, a correspondent for RAI hastened to write a terrified letter to the PA assuring it that it was not RAI but another Italian group that had had the temerity to defy PA censorship.

And, too, the PA's intimidation tactics and its top-down structure made it possible to engage in a certain amount of news management. During the early months of the intifada almost every US news organization carried a story with the theme "Arafat cannot stop this". The claim could only be tested if in fact Arafat were trying to stop it, which the media had no way of knowing. But reporters apparently heard this refrain so often from Palestinian "sources" that they accepted it. Probably the frequent repetitions reflected a deliberately promulgated party line.

When the Israelis intercepted the Karine-A in January 2002, categorical denials of PA involvement came not only from Arafat but also from Yasser Abed Rabbo, Nabil Shaath, Ziad Abu Zayyad, Nabil Abu Rudeinah, and Ahmed Qurei, all of whom were contradicted when the ship's captain told interviewers that he was on a mission for the PA. Similarly, repeated Palestinian claims that Israel had carried out a "massacre" in Jenin in April 2002 won global credence until a UN investigation showed them to be baseless.

The pro-Palestinian slant of some US news organizations is surpassed by many European ones whose antipathy to Israel has in some cases grown so intense that it has metastasized into outright anti-Semitism, leading for example to a recent French judicial finding against Le Monde. In Europe, the David versus Goliath image melds with residual Marxist categories and is reinforced by a hostility toward Jews that is rare in America. European reportage exhibits a partisanship and a coarseness that would not pass muster in the US. But on both sides of the Atlantic, for the Palestinian cause in the media weakness is a source of strength.-Published 30/6/2005 (c) bitterlemons-international.org


Joshua Muravchik is the author of "The Next Founders: Voices of Democracy in the Middle East".

The Palestinians' is one of the longest anti-colonial revolts of recent times. Of its various phases, the al-Aqsa intifada is among the bloodiest. Since September 2000, the Israeli army and settlers have killed 3,000 Palestinians, including 500 children. Rarely has the price of a people's struggle for self-determination been so great; rarely has it been so misrepresented in the face of what is an illegal, belligerent, and foreign occupation.

This is not an editorial you will see in mainstream western media. It is the Palestinian "narrative" of the intifada. There is also the Israeli narrative. This says the intifada resulted from Yasser Arafat's decision to take up arms against the Jewish state in September 2000 after refusing a Palestinian state in Gaza and most of the West Bank; that 1,000 Israelis have been killed as a result of that decision, 400 of them from suicide bombings inside Israel; that these indiscriminate killings prove the conflict is not about occupied land but about Israel's existence as a Jewish state.

As journalists we have to air this Israeli narrative; it is held by the greater part of Israeli Jews. I think we do air it.

The question is why we so rarely air the Palestinians' narrative--that theirs is a national liberation struggle against a fairly classic form of settler colonialism. After all, it is a view held not only by the Arabs, but also by many in Europe, and the greater part of what used to be called the Third World.

How is it that in covering the Israeli narrative, we "cover" the Palestinian one--in the sense of "concealing" it? The answer, I think, has to do with the questions we ask or, rather, what the dominant news agendas of our time want us to ask.

Take that meta-narrative of our age: "the war on terrorism". I have yet to meet any serious journalist, diplomat or analyst who believes you can explain the current clutch of Israeli policies in the occupied territories as a "war on terrorism", if only because so many of those policies--settlement expansion, land confiscation, assassination, the deliberate concentration of Palestinians into smaller areas of their land--long preceded 9/11, often by five decades or more.

Everyone (off the record, of course) knows that the "war on terrorism" paradigm, when applied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is an ideological construct. It is "disinformation", or what used to be called state propaganda. Yet we are under increasing pressure--from the dominant news agendas of our media, certain of our publics and sometimes our editors--to frame or at least refer to this paradigm in our reporting. Nowhere is this pressure clearer than when we try to report a phenomenon that has become the signature of the latest intifada: suicide bombings.

I've often been asked to write about suicide bombers or their families in terms of their individual psyche, their vision of paradise, their sexual hang-ups, the Koranic license given to "martyrdom", as if this will expose some fanatical, Islamic "essence" behind the phenomenon. Why, am I asked, do the majority of Palestinians support suicide attacks against innocent Israeli civilians?

I am rarely asked: why did the majority of Palestinians not support them until the outbreak of the intifada? Why did it take until 1994 before the suicide bomber was an accepted part of the arsenal of the Palestinian struggle, even among the Islamists? Why, until the early 1990s, did Hamas and Islamic Jihad rule that suicide bombings were forbidden theologically?

I am not asked these questions for one simple reason: because in posing the questions in this way I would have to address the phenomenon historically rather than ideologically, to assert another narrative than that governed by the dominant news agenda. For that is what dominant news agendas do: they privilege certain questions over others. That is why they are agendas of power.

But as journalists we have to ask those other questions. This is because the Palestine-Israel conflict is not simply a struggle over land. It is a struggle over narratives: what for Israeli Jews in 1948 was a war of independence was for the Palestinians al-Nakba--the great catastrophe of their nation. What for Palestinians is the legal right of any refugee to return to their homes is for Israeli Jews the mortal threat of the extinction of a Jewish state.

Both narratives are "true" in the sense that both are deeply held by the two peoples to the conflict. And both must be aired if we are to give validity to our reporting, if the conflict is to make sense to our readers, if, in the end, we are to do justice to both peoples. The imbalance is that we currently do more justice to that people that has the power to assert its narrative, its questions, and its agenda over the other.- Published 30/6/2005 (c) bitterlemons-international.org


Graham Usher is a journalist and author in Israel and the occupied territories.