A Polish translation of this post is available here.

While writing a talk for the EUSA, I had trouble finding the URL for Riccardo Cristiano’s letter to Yassir Arafat about the Ramallah Lynch. This critical document sheds a harsh light on the nature of journalistic work in the Middle East. So, for easier reference in the future, I post below the version available (with much effort) at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website, with additional comments of my own throughout.

The Government Press Office today (Wednesday), 18.10.2000, has decided to temporarily suspend the press card of Riccardo Cristiano, the representative of Italian state television (RAI), in the wake of his letter to the Palestinian Authority which was published in the Monday (16.10.2000) edition of Al Hayat al Jedida. Mr. Cristiano has also been summoned to the GPO where he will be requested to explain his letter.

In the aforementioned letter, Mr. Cristiano declared that he had acted according to the PA’s working rules for journalists. His letter implies that he will never again [would never -rl] film events which are liable to cast a negative light on the PA, such as the recent lynching of IDF reservists in Ramallah.

Mr. Cristiano also wrote that his competitors in the Italian media are responsible for broadcasting the pictures of the lynching and thereby accused other foreign journalists working in the territories.

The State of Israel, as a democratic society, welcomes the foreign journalists working here and invests considerable effort in both assuring freedom of the press and assisting journalists in their work. All that we ask from foreign journalists is that they abide by the rules of press ethics as is accepted in democratic societies.

Background

On October 12, 2000, two non-combatant Israeli reserve soldiers were lynched and brutally murdered by a Palestinian mob in Ramallah. Both were drivers, one aged 38 and the father of three, the other a 33 year-old newly-wed.

Aziz Salha showing his bloody hands to the crowd outside.

Since this lynching, the official Palestinian broadcasting stations have made every effort to hide the horrible pictures which were shown around the world.

Actually, even as they tried to hide these images from the world, they have exalted them among their own people.

Kindergarten graduation ceremony, PA school.

Moreover, the day after the lynching, PA-appointed Sheikh Halabaya gave a blood-curdling sermon calling for genocide against the Jews and their friends the world over, broadcast on PA TV (and therefore captured by Palestinian Media Watch).

According to reporters’ evidence on the scene, not only did the Palestinian police not protect the two men slaughtered while in their custody in the Ramallah police station, but they also tried to prevent foreign journalists in the area around the building from filming the incident.

Here’s a brief description of the violence against Mark Seager, a pro-Palestinian photographer, published in the Sunday Telegraph of October 15, 2000:

I thought he was a soldier because I could see the remains of khaki trousers and boots. My God, I thought, they’ve killed this guy. He was dead, he must have been dead, but they were still beating him, madly, kicking his head. They were like animals.

They were just a few feet in front of me and I could see everything. Instinctively, I reached for my camera. I was composing the picture when I was punched in the face by a Palestinian. Another Palestinian pointed right at me shouting “no picture, no picture!”, while another guy hit me in the face and said “give me your film!”.

I tried to get the film out but they were all grabbing me and one guy just pulled the camera off me and smashed it to the floor. I knew I had lost the chance to take the photograph that would have made me famous and I had lost my favourite lens that I’d used all over the world, but I didn’t care. I was scared for my life.

At the same time, the guy that looked like a soldier was being beaten and the crowd was getting angrier and angrier, shouting “Allah akbar” – God is great. They were dragging the dead man around the street like a cat toying with a mouse. It was the most horrible thing that I have ever seen and I have reported from Congo, Kosovo, many bad places. In Kosovo, I saw Serbs beating an Albanian but it wasn’t like this. There was such hatred, such unbelievable hatred and anger distorting their faces.

The worst thing was that I realised the anger that they were directing at me was the same as that which they’d had toward the soldier before dragging him from the police station and killing him. Somehow I escaped and ran and ran not knowing where I was going. I never saw the other guy they killed, the one they threw out of the window.

In a subsequent email correspondance with Seager, he told me that right after the publication of this piece, a friend called him to tell him he was no longer safe in the Palestinian territories. According to reports, this was pervasive. Every journalist and film crew there was expected to hand over any film they might have taken.

Despite the attempts to distance reports, an Italian television crew managed to film several scenes [and smuggle them out -rl].

The following is an ad published in the Al Hayat Al Jadidah newspaper, considered the main newspaper of the Palestinian Authority. The ad, probably paid for, is evidence of the double standard which has come to characterize much of the reporting of the recent violence in the territories.

Note that the brutal lynching is described merely as “the events”.

Special Clarification by the Italian Representative of RAI, the Official Italian Television Station

My dear friends in Palestine. We congratulate you and think that it is our duty to put you in the picture of what happened on October 12 in Ramallah. One of the private Italian television stations which competes with us filmed the events; that station filmed the events. Afterwards Israeli Television broadcast the pictures, as taken from one of the Italian stations, and thus the public impression was created as if we took these pictures.

We emphasize to all of you that the events did not happen this way, because we always respect the journalistic procedures with the Palestinian Authority for work in Palestine and we are credible in our precise work.

We thank you for your trust, and you can be sure that this is not our way of acting. We would not do such a thing.

Please accept our dear blessings.

Signed,
Ricardo Christiano
Representative of RAI in the Palestinian Authority

Let’s take that again with commentary. Basically this is a letter meant to avoid any retaliation by the Palestinians for having violated the “journalistic procedures for work in the Palestinian territory.” It’s not us, it’s the other Italians,” Cristiano tells Arafat.

Indeed, the journalists and the entire bureau responsible for the “leak” spent the night in the Italian embassy in Tel Aviv and left in secrecy before they could be attacked. In defense of Cristiano, it should be mentioned that he had just gotten out of the hospital, where he was treated for the beating he got from Israeli Arabs during the riots a week earlier (riots in response to the Al Durah footage), in which he almost lost vision in one of his eyes.

What follows is the letter (in bold) and extensive commentary with subsequent examples to illustrate its revelations.

Special Clarification by the Italian Representative of RAI, the Official Italian Television Station

My dear friends in Palestine. We congratulate you and think that it is our duty to put you in the picture of what happened on October 12 in Ramallah.

The sycophantic language here (later picked up again – “dear blessings”) is more appropriate to a medieval royal court than a free press.

One of the private Italian television stations which competes with us filmed the events; that station filmed the events. Afterwards Israeli Television broadcast the pictures, as taken from one of the Italian stations, and thus the public impression was created as if we took these pictures.

We emphasize to all of you that the events did not happen this way, because we always respect the journalistic procedures with the Palestinian Authority for work in Palestine and we are credible in our precise work.

This reference to the “journalistic procedures” is the single most revealing part of the letter. Matti Friedman has since described the basic issue as they play out at AP where he worked: journalists must adhere to the Israeli Goliath aggressor/Palestinian David victim frame. Stories must illustrate this by emphasizing anything negative about Israel, anything positive about Palestinians; avoiding anything positive about Israel, anything negative about Palestinians. Thus, completely undocumented stories about Israeli T-Shirts dissing Palestinians get multiple stories, while documented stories about students at a Palestinian university looking a lot like Nazis receive no coverage.

The extensive media compliance with these demands has made mainstream news media coverage of the conflict between Israel and her neighbors deeply misinforming – not just exaggerating or downplaying, but literally inverting the reality on the ground. And since it serves the war-aims of the Jihadis who have sworn to destroy Israel – PA, Hamas, Hizbullah – it has actually made it very difficult for Israel to defend itself, but greatly strengthened the forces of Jihad, especially in Europe where this lethal journalism dominates the public sphere.

As for the comment “we are credible in our precise work,” it rings so bizarrely that it’s hard to know what Cristiano meant by it. But it does sound a lot like the kind of oxymoronic claims of editors who at once admit that they self-censor in order to assure the safety of their reporters in dangerous zones, even as they insist on their editorial integrity. When a Canadian newspaper changed a Reuters report, using “terrorist” instead of “militant,” Reuters requested that they take away their by-line. This in turn caused a minor controversy and a NYT journalist reported that David Schlesinger, Reuters’ global managing editor noted:

Changes like those made at CanWest could lead to ‘confusion’ about what Reuters is reporting and possibly endanger its reporters in volatile areas or situations. “My goal is to protect our reporters and protect our editorial integrity,” he [Schlesinger] said.

And yet, the real situation is that Schlesinger is sacrificing editorial integrity to protect his reporters.

We thank you for your trust, and you can be sure that this is not our way of acting. We would not do such a thing.

This bizarre sentence reveals what one might call a public secret, namely that journalists are extensively, one might even say reflexively, compliant with Palestinian media protocols. The past is littered with dead or kidnapped and/or beaten journalists (including Cristiano in Jaffa and Seager in Ramallah). Everyone knows that the welcome in the Palestinian territories is conditional. But no one will admit it openly, and only the imminent fear of retaliation that Cristiano felt inspired this most revealing letter. In the immediate aftermath of the lynching, a journalist called Enderlin and had the following exchange:

– Alors Charles, c’est vrai que les journalistes étrangers en Palestine ont la trouille ? [So, Charles, is it true that foreign journalists in Palestine are afraid?]

– Dis plutôt qu’ils sont terrorisés. Mais bon, je ne t’ai rien dit… [Say rather that they’re terrorized. But well, I didn’t say a thing.]

Indeed, the public secret is so obvious that when Alan Johnston, the last reporter to continue living in Gaza after Hamas took over, got kidnapped, people openly expressed amazement: “Why’d they kidnap him? He’s on our side.” As Nablus TV noted:

The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate has issued a call to release Johnston as soon as possible, saying Johnston must not be hurt as he is famous for his opinions which are supportive of the Palestinians.

The head of the BBC’s Middle East Bureau, Simon Wilson ingratiatingly acknowledged Johnston’s status:

It is clear to us that in Gaza, Alan is regarded as a Gaza journalist foremost and a foreign journalist second.

In other words, they all seem to be saying, if you are openly pro-Palestinian, that should, in principle, shield you from Palestinian brutality. And yet, the public stance is exactly the opposite. Steven Erlanger, NYT correspondent during the Lebanon War where fauxtography and intimidation were rife, responded to a question about whether he felt intimidated in the following fashion (a paraphrase):

There’s no real double standard. I’m not intimidated and I don’t think there’s serious intimidation of journalists by Israel’s enemies. In fact, if they were to try intimidating me, it would backfire.

Brave words from someone with an extensive record of compliance.

Indeed the NYT followed up the Ramallah incident with one of the most astonishing examples of compliance with Palestinian media protocols: two weeks later, William Orme wrote a piece on the question of whether the violence of the Intifada (of which Ramallah was only the most grotesque example), was fed by Palestinian media incitement. From the perspective of the PA, who argued that, as much as they wanted to stop the violence, they could not control the rage of their people at Israel’s behavior, this had to be answered negatively. And Orme complied fully with their desires. After a long piece of he-said-she-said, in which the Israeli spokesman said yes they did, and the Palestinian one said, no they didn’t.

”Every word the Israelis hear on the Voice of Palestine they think is incitement,” Mr. Milhem said. ”But what they are hearing is Palestinians demanding our rights.”

Orme gave only one concrete case of incitement, a quotation from Sheikh Halabaya’s genocidal sermon cited above:

Israelis cite as one egregious example a televised sermon that defended the killing of the two soldiers. ”Whether Likud or Labor, Jews are Jews,” proclaimed Sheik Ahmad Abu Halabaya in a live broadcast from a Gaza City mosque the day after the killings.

That’s it. No, “kill the Jews, have no mercy, kill them wherever you find them, kill their friends, etc.” One could forgive the uninformed reader for thinking that if that’s what the Israelis call incitement, then they’re making a mountain out of a molehill. Instead, the decades-long near-total silence from the NYT on the virulent incitement to hatred continues to keep their readers from understanding something that at least some of us think lies at the heart of the conflict.

Back to Cristiano’s letter:

Please accept our dear blessings.

More sycophancy. Imagine a self-respecting journalist addressing an Israeli authority in such terms. On the contrary, as Matti Friedman notes:

In these circles, in my experience, a distaste for Israel has come to be something between an acceptable prejudice and a prerequisite for entry… a belief that to some extent the Jews of Israel are a symbol of the world’s ills [or as the Nazis put it, “unsere Unglück –rl], particularly those connected to nationalism, militarism, colonialism, and racism—an idea quickly becoming one of the central elements of the “progressive” Western zeitgeist, spreading from the European left to American college campuses and intellectuals, including journalists. In this social group, this sentiment is translated into editorial decisions made by individual reporters and editors covering Israel, and this, in turn, gives such thinking the means of mass self-replication.

One of the reasons for this contempt derives from the sad reality that a journalist who tells lies about Israel suffers no more than whining from critics online. (The GPO very rarely disciplines journalists, as it did here Cristiano as a result of this letter.) On the other hand, telling the truth about Palestinians can provoke serious retaliation (as here in the case of the Ramallah lynching).

The history of Mideast coverage is filled with examples of this disparity of “respect,” but none so eloquent as the exchange between Martin Himmel and Tim Benson, head of the Britain’s Political Cartoon Society, which awarded the following grotesquature on Ariel Sharon.

Himmel asked him why there were no cartoons making fun of Arafat. “Maybe, Jews don’t issue fatwas.” Note how Benson then explains his remark without the slightest trace of awareness that it reflects cowardice.

Given how pervasively Jihadis intimidate the media today, it behooves anyone who cares about the quality of the information they get from journalists, to pay attention to this material.