"Always be ready to speak your mind and a base man will avoid you." "Opposition is True Friendship." -William Blake, Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1796
The Augean Stables and The Second Draft
This blog takes its name from the Fifth Labor of Herakles, to clean the stables of Augeas, where thousands of cattle had left so much un-cleaned dung that the whole Peloponnesus smelled of it. At Second Draft, our discovery of both Pallywood and the Al-Durah Affair have led us to realize that — at least where the Arab-Israeli conflict is concerned — our MSM represent a veritable Augean Stables of accumulated misreporting. We dedicate this weblog to exploring the many aspects of our MSM’s problem, not only those concerned with the Middle East problem, but more broadly with the many ways in which our media’s errors and our media’s extraordinary resistance to admitting their errors, have contributed and continue to contribute to the serious problems that plague our globe in this young 21st century.
For the linked version (and the place to leave comments) go to the PJMedia site. -rl
The Hidden Costs of Jew-Baiting in England
Jew-baiting has become something of a sport in England, as Brits feed the monster — radical Islam — that devours them.
July 10, 2010 - by Richard Landes
London is an amazing place, full of vitality, intensity, foreign tourists and residents, a patchwork of pluralism. Talk to the average person, and nothing seems amiss: this cab driver, having driven in London for 40 years, sees no significant change in the neighborhoods he travels through; this financier sees no signs of intimidation; this shopper, this tavern-hopper, this man on the bus, lives in an interesting and relatively normal world. A superficial walk through the [Regent’s] park gives the distinct sense of normality.
But talk to the Jews, and you get a different story. The International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists held a conference here this week. The topic: Democratic and Legal Norms in an Age of Terror. Panels discussed everything from the Goldstone Report, to the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement, to “universal jurisdiction” (lawfare against Israelis brought in foreign courts). Here, in the Khalili Lecture Theatre of the SOAS (School for Oriental and African Studies), Jewish lawyers discussed a grim reality whose only public appearance on an everyday basis is the drumbeat of calumny that a boisterous elite — NGOs, journalists, academics — rain down on Israel.
Perhaps the most startling of the sessions concerned the BDS movement. Jonathan Rynhold, from the BESA Center at Bar Ilan, and Anthony Julius, author of Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England, both presented a picture of British anti-Zionist activity whose intellectual and moral foundations were profoundly irrational, a dogmatic will to stigmatize and destroy Israel that responded to no argument about proportion (what about other places?) or reason (you make no moral demands of the Palestinians). And behind that lies a much weightier volume of negative feeling, a kind of unthinking animosity that expressed itself in its most banal form when a woman explained to Julius: “We all know why the Jews are hated: you marry among yourselves and live in ghettos like Golders Green and Vienna [sic].” In so doing, she put her finger on the most widespread subtext for hostility to Jews – “they think they’re the chosen people.”
Daniel Eilon, an English solicitor, explained to me one of the mechanisms. It isn’t real anti-Semitism. In fact, most of the stuff that comes out against Israel is intellectually hopeless — phony narratives based on fantasy “facts.” This is really just good old-fashioned Jew-baiting. It’s saying things in all righteous innocence that you know will hurt the Jews to whom you address the criticism. The problem for the Brits (and the Europeans in general), he pointed out, is that historically, there’s never been a particularly high price to pay for Jew-baiting. Now there is.
What my friend referred to with this last remark is lucidly analyzed by Robin Shepherd in his recent book, A State Beyond the Pale: Europe’s Problem with Israel. The elephant in the room, of course, is radical Islam — the people who interpret being “chosen” by Allah as a charter to dominate the world and submit everyone, willingly or not, to Islam. They’re the people no one dares bait; and they’re the folks who take full advantage of every deference to press for more. Daily aggressions from violent gangs constantly expand the territories where the Queen’s writ does not run. In tempo with the retreat of British law and enforcement, Sharia advances from internal community affairs (explicitly on the model of Jewish religious courts) towards the policing of community boundaries and claims on the state for special treatment. The British — like so many other Western nations –mainstream the extremists and marginalize the moderates. As Nick Cohen put it: “The world faces a psychotic movement and won’t admit it to themselves.” (more…)
Hopefully one of the benefits of the Flotilla Madness, in which a deeply morally compromised state (Turkey, with its record from Armenian genocide to the current Kurdish situation) got to set the international agenda with high moral dudgeon, is the number of people at last willing to look at whether the Emperor’s New Clothes are real or not.
In any epistemological crisis, as the anomalies become both abundant and painful to those who must cling to their paradigm of reality, there emerge almost comic moments, moments when the absurdity of this kind of dance of denial becomes laughable.
This happened recently in Europe - more specifically in Luxembourg. For 15 years, the French philosopher Robert Redeker has published a weekly book review for the Tageblatt, even after he ran afoul of radical Muslims who threatened his and his family’s life and drove him into hiding. And just last week, without any warning, they fired him.
This happened, not because of his “Islamophobic” remarks, but because of his choice of book to review - and to review favorably. The book? The latest study of the European descent into anti-Semitic madness in the 21st century by Pierre-André Taguieff, La nouvelle propagande antijuive. The journal not only rejected the review, but ended any association with Redeker.
But perhaps the most astonishing aspect of the story is the reason the editor gave for rejecting the review:
The readers would not understand that someone might be favorable to Israel.
In an irony that only the sane can appreciate, Taguieff had written specifically about the mentality the editor articulated. As Redeker noted in his review:
The blanket demonization of Israel is the daily bread of the media. That Israel is Evil seems to be self-evident. And yet, these opinions, that mutate into passions, are ideological constructions disseminated by a clever work of propaganda which Taguieff examines exhaustively. They recyle the old - the traditional Anti-Jewish stereotypes - in new forms.
Apparently, in reading those lines, the editor found not a description of her own mentality, but an assertion so absurd she could not allow it to be published. (Alternatively, this was just an excuse not to admit the real source of her anxiety, namely the fear that a favorable review of a book that tore the mask off of the Jihadi-Leftist hatefest might alienate the wrong people.)
Le supplément littéraire du quotidien luxembourgeois Tageblatt a refusé la critique favorable du livre de Pierre-André Taguieff, La nouvelle Propagande antijuive (PUF), mettant également un terme à une collaboration de 15 ans avec l’auteur de l’article, l’écrivain Robert Redeker menacé de mort par des islamistes.
Robert Redeker, agrégé de philosophie, écrivain et ancien chroniqueur du supplément littéraire du Tageblatt.
“J’avais ma page dans le supplément littéraire du Tageblatt depuis 15 ans, je n’ai manqué aucun numéro. C’était l’analyse d’un livre, généralement de philosophie. Pour le numéro de juin, j’avais choisi d’écrire sur le dernier livre de Taguieff. J’ai écrit un texte favorable à ce livre. C’est ce texte qui m’a valu d’être censuré. La directrice de ce supplément m’a écrit : “notre collaboration s’arrête là”.
Sec ! Viré ! confie Robert Redeker. D’après la rédaction en chef, les lecteurs ne comprendraient pas qu’on fût favorable à Israël ! ”
Intimidation and Advocacy: The Narcissistic Payoff
There is something more sinister here even than various forms of animosity toward Jews, conscious and unconscious, or radical ideologies that have somehow lost their way. If it were only that problem, then reasoned discourse, hard evidence, and some serious self-criticism on the part of the parties involved might help, at least in some cases. One wouldn’t find so much unanimity. There is, however, something more fundamental that underlies the positions taken in the Arab-Israeli conflict, something that explains why, despite so many powerful anomalies (like Hamas using human shields and shutting out aid at the Egyptian border), “progressives” continue to cling to their self-destructive paradigms and adopt positions that so violate the very principles they claim to espouse. That more powerful factor is: “We are afraid and we cannot admit it.”
Journalists in particular, subject to pervasive threats and occasional violence in the Palestinian territories (and elsewhere in the Middle East), cannot possibly admit this to their readers and viewers for fear of losing credibility. Moreover, not inclined toward living in the constant recognition that they have succumbed to the double indignity of bending their knee to jihadi demands, and to hiding that fact from their audiences, they prefer to believe that they say what they do out of advocacy. They can thus feel noble by embracing the cause of the oppressed (who happen to be the same people who threaten them). How much braver it feels to accuse the Israelis of whining about unfair coverage than to admit one cannot report honestly on Hamas’ behavior. With the alchemy of advocacy for the “oppressed” and “wretched of the earth,” they transform this double cowardice into bravery, “speaking truth to Israeli power.”
That intimidation, however, extends beyond the journalistic front lines to the home front as well. Since the Salmon Rushdie affair in 1989, Muslims have realized that they can extend Shari’a through intimidation, that when they call for targeted killings of blasphemers of Islam, the West will back down. The twenty-first century has been a privileged terrain for such spectacles of intimidation and appeasement, among the most spectacular (and enduring) concerned the “Muhammad Cartoons.” Note that the same radical forces in Islam that responded so violently–and so openly about their agenda–to Western indiscretions, also, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, produced a stunningly long list of suicide attacks on civilians of all faiths around the world, beginning with Israel, but then becoming frequent in both the West and Muslim-majority societies.
Much of this intimidation has been internalized in the form of a politically correct narrative whose hegemony depends on the silences it imposes. It denounces any criticism that offends Muslims as gratuitous insult and provocation. The key issue, of course, is where should one draw the line between gratuitous insult and important criticism? If politeness is not saying certain things lest there be violence, civility is being able to say certain things and there won’t be violence. Is contemporary Western discourse too obsessed with being polite with Muslims? Are they too thin-skinned (especially given how violently they can dish out the criticism)? It certainly seems strange then that supporters of human rights and defenders of free speech expend far more effort silencing those who “seem” to insult Islam, than offensive Muslims who call for the death of blasphemers, who carry signs in the streets of European capitals that read: “Slay all those who insult Islam.”
Those who follow this politically-correct line so dominate the public discourse that any dissent takes one on a perilous path to marginalization–those who make even mildly critical remarks about Muslims, Arabs, or Palestinians are rapidly dismissed as proto-fascists. If they persist, they may be accused of incitement, Islamophobia, and even holocaust denial (of the genocide against the Palestinians). What is portrayed as politically correct–whether Hina Jilani’s it would be “cruel not to believe” or Erik Alterman’s it is an “inarguably racist rant” to say that “Arabs are feigning outrage”–trumps trying to determine what actually happened based on the evidence. They think they are being virtuously generous and open-minded; but in the world of cognitive warfare, the outcome is systematic renunciation all the West’s main defenses.
As a result, Americans don’t know how to protect themselves from real enemies like Major Malik Hassan, FBI Arabic translators whose loyalties lie elsewhere, or government advisors who “help” law enforcement and security deal with the Muslim community. Ironically, stigmatizing as a “right-winger” and an “Islamophobe” anyone who points out the “us-them” ideology–wala wa bara (loyalty to fellow Muslims and enmity to infidels), a mentality so prevalent among Muslims and so effectively incited by radicals–will make it harder to counteract that problem. The losers here are moderates on all sides, especially among the Muslims whom jihadists like Hamas and Jama’at-e-Islami are permitted to stigmatize as collaborators with the enemy.
Alas, Goldstone may have won his peaceful sleep at the cost of the Gazans’–and everyone else’s–nightmares, for not only does his report target Israel, it will eventually serve to target every civil polity with a powerful army attacked by this asymmetrical war waged by jihadi forces. Ironically, once these other armies become aware of the heightened standards, they go straight to Israel for advice on how to lower the civilian tolls in their military maneuvers.
The consequences of such self-delusion are massive. The Goldstone Report embodies an astonishing failure of Western culture to collect reliable intelligence, to “see” clearly enough to make sober judgments and take effective decisions. A systematic inversion sets in: al-Dura 2000, symbol of Palestinian blood libels, becomes “Israel’s images of hate”; Jenin 2002, the most exceptional example of military self-sacrifice for the sake of sparing enemy civilians in the history of human warfare, becomes “the Jenin Massacre”; Lebanon and Gaza 2006-2009, the revolting spectacle of religious fanatics victimizing their own people in a war of extermination, become symbols of freedom fighters resisting Israeli apartheid imperialism. The result, as Irwin Cotler points out, is the grotesque double moral inversion of making Israel the only country accused of genocide, even as it is the only contemporary country subject to incitement as the object of genocide.
It may make many in the West feel good to “believe” the Arab Muslim narrative of suffering at the hands of the Israeli oppressor. After all, it allows them to be generously empathic, and to wag the finger at Israel. Yet it also empowers the very forces of intolerance, violence, and reactionary goals they imagine they are opposing. It is neither honorable nor courageous; it is a capitulation that endangers the most hard-earned freedoms. Even as they congratulate themselves on bravely balancing advocacy and “objective” journalism, reporters daily betray the very charge given to them by the citizens they serve–to report accurately.
If someone had told the founders of Hamas, as they penned their genocidal “charter” of Islamic supremacy in 1988, that in 20 years time, infidels in Europe would be carrying their flags and chanting “We are Hamas,” they would have laughed in disbelief. It is not that the jihadists–violent and “non-violent”– are so smart or talented at deception; it is that their Western counterparts are so stupid. Great civilizations do not necessarily die or fall to superior powers; they can self-destruct.
Goldstone’s inexcusably unprofessional report represents a major step on the way to either the suicide of a human rights culture unique in history and a millennium in the making, or a global war that will beggar World War II for casualties. The tragedy is that this fight might be won largely non-violently by showing some courage, honesty, and judgment. Given the cost in lives that would ensue in a war with the vicious forces now empowered daily, is that too much to ask for?
Here’s Ben Wedeman in the second week of the war commenting on Israel’s response to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, by supplying Gazans with aid.
This is a particular gem of MSNM moral and intellectual confusion since his overall thrust is that Israel’s aid is a) just PR for show, b) pretty pathetic given that “ironically, their actually bombing the place,” and c) that no one’s impressed in Gaza since Israel’s to blame for the blockade in the first place. In the process of dismissing Israel’s effort, he makes an error which forces him to correct himself in mid-stream, which then leads him in another direction. The result: a revealing piece of euphemistic nonsense well worth savoring.
Well Israel has allowed a steady number of trucks coming with humanitarian goods uh into Gaza. This rather ironically as they’re actually bombing the place they’re sending food in as well. My understanding is 66 trucks went in today, so they do want to be at least seen as, as uh caring or providing or allowing others to provide humanitarian relief to the civilian population. Uh, but that sort of thing doesn’t necessarily go down very well, because it’s only Israel that controls the crossings, uh, into Gaza, with the exception of the one in Egypt and uh so, therefore if Israel were to cut off the supply altogether, uh, they would depend on Egypt and that’s not a good, uh, place to depend on.
I recently attended the History conference of the Athens Institute of Education and Research. Even the organizers admit it’s something of an occasion to visit Athens. I decided to praise the ancient Athenians for their notion of parrhesia (despite their brilliantly self-destructive flaws) and criticize our current pusillanimous academic scene’s dhimmi behavior vis-a-vis Arab and Islamic efforts to bully us into curtailing our freedom of speech so we can “respect” their thin skin. No one challenged me, and later, singly, a dozen people came to tell me how glad they were I had spoken up. I wonder how deep the politically-correct consensus goes, or is it as fragile as the crowd’s praise of the emperor’s new clothes? Below, my talk.
Freedom of Speech and the Thrash of Globalizing Cultures:
Lessons from Ancient Athens for the 21st Century
The so-called “Democratic West” today faces significant challenges both from other cultures, and from critics generated from within. Some of these challenges involve typical competition from rival societies, and helpful self-criticism from members of our own societies. But some represent lethal attacks, both from the outside and from within, and we seem to have exceptional difficulty telling the difference between beneficent and malevolent discourse. This talk is both about the Athenian principle of Parrhesia (“free speech”), and an illustration of it.
Let’s begin with why speech is almost universally not free. In most cultures it is allowed, expected, even required that alpha males shed blood for the sake of honor… if not another’s blood, then one’s own blood (as in seppuku). If you criticize those in power, they will make you pay; if they do not, they lose face and their power immediately begins to wane. People self-censor to avoid suffering the inevitable consequences. In such cultures, violence and intimidation pervade; indeed in tribal warrior cultures, one is not a “man” until one has killed another man. And you’re surely not a man if another demeans you publicly and you do not respond.
But the free tongue is silenced not only by political violence, but by group solidarities. Here we also find the working of a deep-rooted solidarity that insists on silence: “my side right or wrong.” Here we have community pressures in punishing violators: failure to side with “one’s own,” brings shame, and effectively excommunicates the offender. If I do not avenge my relative, I am not a man. Thus any breaking of ranks, even if done on principle, will bring accusations of cowardice not only from the opposing clan, but more devastatingly, from relatives.
And finally we silence ourselves: if one will shed blood to counter unwanted criticism, how much the more will one not reveal embarrassing things about oneself. As a principle, one might describe public self-criticism – admission of fault, sin, failure – as something people avoid whenever possible. As a French friend of mine said, “in France no one admits they were wrong; it’s a sign of weakness.” Public self-criticism is like chewing broken glass; virtually no one does it voluntarily.
The overall point I want to make here is that given these cultural and personal dimensions, the principle of “freedom of speech,” or differently put, the art of giving and receiving public criticism, is actually opposed by an extraordinary array of forces. Its accomplishment, therefore, takes far more than merely legislating free speech or a free press. If the cultural dimensions, both individual and group, are not addressed, no legislation will make a significant difference. Obviously and thankfully, we all self-censor, but the degree of self-censorship, especially in political issues, makes a key difference in the cultural “atmosphere.”
Which brings me now to one of the crucial accomplishments of Athenian society in the middle of the first millennium BCE: the extension of the right of parrhesia, to the public as a whole, or isegoria. (more…)
I have yet to fisk Frank Rich, partly because he rarely deals with an issue in which I have some expertise, partly because, like Daniel Pipes, he so thoroughly links his comments to other literature, that I have not had the time or the energy to look them all up. But Rich is a former classmate (Harvard ‘71), and I’m on a class listserv where I posted David Brooks’ criticism of the psychological school’s approach to Major Hasan’s killing spree, and several classmates answered. So when Rich weighed in on the subject, I decided to call up all his links, read the material, and respond.
The result is long and sometimes circuitous. At times, following his logic is like trying to deal with a bucking bronco: easier to watch than to ride. But in the end, I think what a close look at how Rich dealt with problem reveals, is how bereft of serious thinking even the most intelligent and apparently well-read among the self-styled “liberal left” are on the subject of Islam and its extremist manifestations, and to what lengths they will go to belittle people who try to think clearly on the matter.
Nietzsche once likened serious thinking to diving into an icy river and grasping a stone lying at the bottom. Rich won’t get his feet wet, but he mocks those of us who are soaking from head to toe.
THE dead at Fort Hood had not even been laid to rest when their massacre became yet another political battle cry for the self-proclaimed patriots of the American right.
It also became a non-battle cry for the self-proclaimed progressives of the left, who far preferred the psychologization of the event — “pre-proxy-post-traumatic stress syndrome” — to any discussion of the problem with Islam. Will Rich have the courage to address the problem? Or will he just bash the “right”?
Their verdict was unambiguous: Maj. Nidal Malikan, an American-born psychiatrist of Palestinian parentage who sent e-mail to a radical imam, was a terrorist. And he did not act alone.
“Terrorist,” I think it’s hard to argue against. Did not act alone? That’s another matter. As for “unambiguous,” does Rich mean “unanimous”? I don’t know too many people who thought he acted in concert with anyone.
Indeed, the near-unanimous verdict was that he was a loner. If there’s any support group here, it’s some of the more radical members of his mosque, like Duane. So what does Rich mean here, other than suggesting that the “self-proclaimed patriots of the right” are conspiracy theorists? (Unlike the truthers who have come up with the scenario whereby Hasan’s been framed.)
His co-conspirators included our military brass, the Defense Department, the F.B.I., the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the Joint Terrorism Task Force and, of course, the liberal media and the Obama administration. All these institutions had failed to heed the warning signs raised by Hasan’s behavior and activities because they are blinded by political correctness toward Muslims, too eager to portray criminals as sympathetic victims of social injustice, and too cowardly to call out evil when it strikes 42 innocents in cold blood.
Oh, now I get it. Rich means that the vast range of responsible figures, hands tied by a political correctness that he, among others, plays a major role in enforcing, are, in the minds of the “right,” collaborators. Is this what, “didn’t act alone,” means? I thought it meant, “had co-conspirators.” Rich takes it to mean “enablers.” Intellectual integrity is not the first word that comes to mind here.
Is this clearly sarcastic summary of the “self-proclaimed patriots of the American right” suggesting that there’s no problem here with political correctness? Does it not matter that our intelligence services can’t talk about “honor-shame” culture because some people — Rich? — think it’s racist as Edward Said so urgently insisted? Does it matter that Hasan’s multiple flags never quite tripped a switch somewhere? Does it matter that all those doctors who heard his alarming presentation were too embarrassed to say, “something’s wrong?” (more…)
In his “debate” on Thursday November 5, at Brandeis, during question and answer, Goldstone got chummy with the audience and told them an anecdote about how he felt going into Gaza:
As far as conditions in Gaza are concerned, I must say that my visit to Gaza turned out very differently from what I had anticipated. Frankly, and I make no, no, no, and I’m not ashamed to say it, I was very nervous about being a Jew going into Gaza on probe by Hamas, especially when the first reaction to my appointment by Hamas was to reject a meeting with me because I was Jew.
And my wife sitting here will remember that three nights before I went, I woke up in the middle of the night after a terrible nightmare, with sweat on my brow, because I had a vivid dream that I’d been kidnapped by, by Hamas, and people in Israel were rejoicing. [laughter] That was the nightmare, based on real fears.
Now Goldstone clearly didn’t tell this anecdote in order to reveal the utter intellectual bankruptcy of both his Report’s methods and and conclusions. But that’s what he did. (more…)
The following is an account written up by an Israeli journalist who feared for his life while covering the disturbances. S/he wants to remain anonymous for obvious reasons.
The following occurred on October 9, 2009, after a week of heightened tension in east Jerusalem and the Old City….
A group of reporters – myself included – had been covering a potential flashpoint in the Wadi Joz neighborhood of east Jerusalem, just opposite the Old City, on Friday morning, as hundreds of Muslim worshippers participated in a prayer session at the entrance to the neighborhood, meant to protest “Israeli aggressions” on the Temple Mount .
All ages of men from the neighborhood had come out into the street, and approached a police road block, which was meant to stop younger residents of the area from flocking to the Temple Mount for noon prayers, which were expected to be tense.
Nonetheless, tension made its way to Wadi Joz as well, as scores of police in riot gear faced the the massive gathering of worshippers, who in turn listened to a fiery speech from their imam, as he spoke through a bullhorn. (more…)
There is a direct link between over-coming the imperatives of honor-shame cultures and freedom of the press. In a culture where it is not only expected, legitimate, even required to shed someone’s blood for the sake of one’s honor, it is incumbent on people in power to shed the blood of any commoner who has the nerve to publicly criticize him (or her). In such cultures, public criticism constitutes an assault on the authority, indeed, the very person, of the one criticized. Not to respond will clearly signal weakness, impotence, or lack of will to power, and hence bring on the jackals.
As James Scott points out repeatedly in Domination and the Arts of Resistance, the vast majority of the time, protests are either private or, if public, anonymous, lest there be necessary retaliation. Scott calls them “private transcripts” which are often diametrically opposed to the deferential public transcripts these same powerful figures demand. “When the great lord passes, the wise peasant bows low and silently farts.” Silently. Not on the pages of Ha-aretz, translated into English and pumped around the world via internet.
Of course, everyone feels the desire for honor and the fear of shame (even Gates and Crowley and Obama). Even Western countries have private transcripts, and no press is free; no one can say whatever they want without repercussion. Access journalism will always play a role in pressuring journalists to report what the informant wants. The key, however, is the tripswitch to violence: how rapidly do those whose face has been blackened by public criticism take out hits on imprudent journalists? After all, no one would be stupid enough to think that he can say whatever he wants — even if it’s all true — and not have people retaliate, at least by shunning them. What kind of reporting would we have if it did not take courage to criticize people?
Well, we’d get something resembling the coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict, not only in its grotesque daily disinformation, it’s stunning expressions of entitlement to a free ride by critics, and its stunning data manipulation that ranks the free-est press in the world as “potentially free.”
I have written extensively about the remarkable, and now more than occasionally pathological, tendency of Jews and Israelis to be self-critical. I will repeat my claim: no national culture is as self-critical as Israel; no country’s own citizens are as pervasively critical in the Mainstream News Media as the Israeli press; and no country tolerates criticism from abroad more than Israel. Ha-aretz may be the New York Times of Israel in terms of its status and its (often justified) intellectual pretensions, but when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict it has writers that would only find publication in the USA on the pages of the Nation, or Counterpunch, or the Guardian. And all this occurs under wartime conditions, when even the nations most dedicated to a free press, curtail those freedoms sharply.
And yet, an NGO that ranks press freedom around the world has recently ranked Israel below the cut-off point as a “free press” and, therefore, a nation with a “partially free press.” The contrast between my “seat of the pants,” honor-shame analysis and this NGO’s carefully callibrated and allegedly rigorous methodology suggests a problem.
Adi Schwartz, now freelance journalist, formerly a senior editor at Ha-aretz, the most virulently self-critical of Israeli newspapers, noticed the bizarrity of it all.
That was odd: if anything, the Israeli press might be blamed for over-aggressiveness, lack of respect for privacy matters and tendency towards sensationalism. Maybe much more so than many other Western media, the Israeli press is robust and boisterous, and far from not being free.
So he inquired how such the Freedom House arrived at such a remarkable conclusion. What he found was an appropriately bizarre, unthinking application of the “methodology” to the anomalous Israeli case. The result, a perfect black heart, a stunning mistake that undermines the whole paradigm that could not only produce this ranking, but not sound anyone’s alarms. As Schwartz puts it as a byline:
Here’s a story about how un-professional a pro-democracy organization becomes when dealing with the State of Israel.”
As I have oftenmentionedhere, Charles Jacobs HRC predicts that if the perps in human rights violations are “people of color,” then the human rights community has nothing to say. Sri Lanka is a QED for the theory.
Michael Totten reports a conversation with Robert Kaplan about, inter alia, Sri Lanka (HT Fat Man):
MJT: So you just got back from Sri Lanka. What did you see there? What did you learn?
Kaplan: … Sri Lanka defeated, more or less completely, a 26 year-long insurgency. They killed the leader and the leader’s son. But there are no takeaway lessons for the West here. The Sri Lankan government did it by silencing the media, which meant capturing the most prominent media critic of the government and killing him painfully. And they made sure all the other journalists knew about it.
MJT: Wow.
Kaplan: There are a thousand disappearances a year in Sri Lanka separate from the war. Journalists are terrified there. The only journalism you read is pro-government. So that’s one thing they did.
The Tamil Tigers had human shields by the tens of thousands, not just by the dozens and hundreds like Al Qaeda. They put people between themselves and the government and say “you have to kill all the people to get to us.” So the government obliged them. The government killed thousands of civilians.
MJT: Tamil civilians?
Kaplan: Yes. They killed thousands of civilians in the course of winning this war. It acted in a way so brutal that there are no lessons for the West.
MJT: Would you say it was as brutal as Russia’s counterinsurgency in Chechnya?
Kaplan: Yes. It was. The U.N. is investigating whether as many as 20,000 civilians have been killed during the last few months.
* * *
MJT: Sri Lanka has been fighting this counterinsurgency for decades. Have they slowly made progress all this time and have now finally finished it off, or was there a tipping point recently where a seemingly endless conflict just ended almost suddenly?
Kaplan: The Sri Lankan government was elected in 2005 to win the war. And it has done that. Extremely brutally. It’s a government that’s very nationalist Sinhalese Buddhist. These are not the Richard Gere’s “peace and love” Buddhists. These are the real blood and soil Buddhists, where Buddhism is like any other religion when it’s threatened and it’s defending a piece of territory. It can be very brutal.
It was elected to win the war, which it interpreted from the voters as a right to silence the media and to fight without any restrictions.
MJT: It does work, though, doesn’t it?
Kaplan: It does work, yeah.
MJT: Not that we should do it, of course.
* * *
MJT: So there are no lessons at all? Nothing for the U.S., Israel, or Pakistan?
Kaplan: No.
MJT: Only moral lessons, perhaps. Yes, this works, but it would take an awful lot to get us to fight that way again.
I think there are many lessons to be learned. Kaplan’s simplistic answer is just intended to say, “we can’t do what they did.” Granted. But we still have to fight vicious enemies who turn their own civilians into human shields, and we have to find solutions.
In the meantime, we can certainly learn about the hypocrisy and viciousness of the alleged “human rights community,” especially the UN. While Israel reels from lawfare because of an operation in which hundreds of civilians were killed going after an equally vicious enemy, Sri Lankan’s celebrate in the street and the MSNM gives them something of a pass.
As for the UNHRC, they fulfill Jacobs’ expectations spectacularly.
China, Cuba, Egypt and 26 others on the 47-member council voted in favor of a resolution that described the conflict as a “domestic” matter that did not warrant outside interference. The council also supported the Sri Lankan government’s decision to provide aid groups only with “access as may be appropriate” to refugee camps.
Twelve mostly European countries opposed the resolution after failing to get support for a resolution that criticized both sides.
Yogi Berra was famous for his revealing bloopers. Someone once said to him, “Yogi, did you know that the Lord Mayor of Dublin is Jewish?” “Only in America…” he responded without missing a beat.
Now, with a variant on the theme, Stephen King (not the famous author, I think), has a piece in the Irish Times (i.e., from the land whose capital is the Dublin of Yogi Berra fame) that explores why, with seventy conflicts worldwide, almost all of which have higher casualty counts, is the Arab-Israeli conflict the obsession of the Western MSM.
By Stephen King
Irish Examiner Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Yes, there is public feeling about the Palestinians and their rotten deal. I’ve never heard Chechnya being discussed on the DART, whereas I have heard Israel being trashed on buses as well as at smart dinner parties. Besides, who’s ever heard of a “Sri Lanka out of Tamil Eelam” march through Cork or calls for a boycott of Russia?
I OWE Micheál Martin an apology of sorts. I admit that when I read media reports of his discussions with Ban Ki-moon in New York at the weekend my eyes rolled up to the heavens.
The country’s most senior representative to the rest of the world has a rare opportunity to raise Ireland’s issues with the UN secretary-general and what’s his top priority? Yes, you guessed it – Gaza.
It’s not that Gaza isn’t an important issue facing the world. It is. What Gaza is not, though, is an issue where Europe, let alone Ireland, can wield much positive influence. Gaza will only be sorted when the Arab states, the US and Israel – probably in that order – decide it should be sorted.
Probably not in that order. It’ll get sorted out when the rest of the world tells the Palestinians that they need to get their act together, shed the maniacs of Hamas, stop poisoning their youth with blood libels, and get on with their lives. This one is not for the outside to decide.
But I was wrong. I had swallowed the media line. Yes, Micheál Martin and Ban Ki-moon did talk about Gaza, but it was just one subject among others.
In fact, when you look at the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) press release, the first item of discussion listed was one where Ireland has a very direct interest, namely Chad.
So what caused my blood pressure to rise? Was Gaza the topic the DFA’s spindoctors were pushing? Possibly. Was the position on Gaza the most objectively newsworthy? Again, possibly: the Pope is in the region and Ireland tends to be at one end of the European spectrum of opinion on anything to do with Israel.
The third possibility, and the one that seems to me most likely, is that the media has a fixation on Israel (and its supposed crimes) which is, for want of a better word, disproportionate. That’s why the line about Gaza led several media reports of Minister Martin’s meeting.
“For want of a better word”?! It’s magnificently apt. Just as the media criticizes Israel for disproportionate use of force, the media stands guilty of disproportionate use of both coverage and criticism. If the media used the same standards of sensitivity that they apply to Israel on any of the 70 other conflicts, their (moral) equipment would blow its fuses.
If I were Jewish, I would be told I’m paranoid for thinking the world and its media are out to get me. After all, the fact that Israel is the world’s one and only Jewish state – amidst a vast ocean of Muslim states – inevitably makes many Jewish people think it’s them, and not Israel as such, which is in the media’s sights. But I’m not Jewish. Besides, just because people are paranoid doesn’t mean others aren’t out to get them.
Esther Schapira, whose groundbreaking work on al Durah represented the earliest reconsideration outside Israel, and whose material I used extensively (with her generous permission) in my own documentaries, has now come out with a new study. Given how much (she has subsequently admitted), intimidation played a role in her modest conclusions last time (”the Israelis didn’t do it,” but nothing on what did happen), this claim of staging is an important stage in the al Durah critique.
A couple of years ago, Debbie Schlussel has compared Hamas vs. Fatah to Predator vs. Alien. Now we see each side competing for the worst record in treatment of the media. Here’s a complaint by a West-Bank Palestinian journalist who, if I read correctly between the lines, is pro-Hamas, indignant at his treatment by the PA. But if I’m correct, he only got detained — without coffee — for a couple of days. No knee-capping, no showing up at the hospital dying from torture. The article appears at a site called Menasset [Platforms], dedicated to uncensored, professional journalism in the Arab world. To be fair to them, they do not hesitate to report on Hamas mistreatment of the media.
One day after being interviewed on Beirut-based Al-Quds TV, journalist Khalid Amayreh found himself in a Palestinian Authority detention center. He was jailed for two days and scolded for “sowing discontent” and “distorting the PA image.” The veteran Palestinian reporter tells MENASSAT that the situation for human rights and civil liberties in the West Bank is likely at its worst since the PA was established in 1993.
Note the classic honor-based concerns of the PA: “distorting the PA image” is honor-shame speak for public criticism, which is taken as blackening the PA’s public face. That, apparently, is a perfectly legitimate reason to intimidate a journalist. Again the classic difference between honor and integrity: for the former, appearance is all that counts.
BEIRUT, January 29, 2009 (MENASSAT) — Veteran Palestinian journalist Khalid Amayreh has never been shy to criticize the de facto government in the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority.
But Amareyh’s arrest on January 18 for “stirring discontent,” after criticizing the PA’s suppression of Gaza protests in the West Bank in an interview with Beirut-based Al Quds TV, has put all PA-critical journalists on notice: tow the party line or risk jail.
Some 15 journalists have been arrested by PA security forces over the last three months for similar offenses. Most had been highly critical of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party, rival to Hamas which was voted to power during 2006 parliamentary elections.
Amayreh, who was been jailed four times by the PA since taking up journalism in the late 1990s, said he was invited “for coffee” by the Palestinian Security Forces (PSF) on January 18.
After arriving at the police station, he was charged with “defamation” and transfered to PA police headquarters until his release on January 20.
Journalist Khalid Amayreh (right) commenting on his release from a Palestinian Authority jail 2 days after the PA invited him in for a “cup of coffee.”
In an article in Islamonline, Amayreh recounted his arrest as a 55-hour “nightmarish experience.”
Amayreh said he was not physically or verbally abused during six-hours of interrogation, but his family was denied access to him during his detention.
“I was held for two days in a small, semi-dark, rancid-smelling room with two other inmates, one a political prisoner and the other a common law prisoner,” he wrote.
“And I never even got my cup of coffee.”
And he’s alive to quip.
Given what he’s claimed about Israeli abuse — claims with large problems of supporting evidence — this should be a piece of cake. (more…)
GAZA - “Get away! Get away from here! Do you want the Israelis to kill everyone? Do you want our children to die under the bombs? take your missiles and weapons away,” the inhabitants of the Gaza strip yelled at the Hamas militants and their allies in Islamic Jihad. The more courageous were organized and blocked the entrances to their courtyards and locked the doors to their buildings, barricading quickly and furiously the stairs to the highest rooftops.
But for all of that the guerrillas didn’t listen to anyone. “Traitors, collaborators with Israel, spies of Fatah, cowards! The soldiers of the holy war will punish you. And in any case you will all die, like us. Fighting the Zionist Jews we are all destined for paradise. Do you not wish to die with us?” This is what they yelled furiously as they broke down doors and windows, hiding themselves on high floors, gardens, using ambulances and barricading themselves near the hospitals, schools and buildings of the UN.
In extreme cases the [Hamas militants] shot those who sought to block them from their streets and houses to save their own families, or they beat them savagely. “The Hamas Militants looked for good places to provoke the Israelis. They were usually youths, 16 or 17 years old, armed with submachine guns. They couldn’t do anything against a tank or jet. They knew they were much weaker. But they wanted the [Israelis] to shoot at the [the civilians’] houses so they could accuse them of more war crimes” asserted Abu Issa, 42, resident of the Tel Awa neighborhood.
“Practically all of the tallest buildings in Gaza that were hit by Israeli bombs, like the Dogmoush, Andalous, Jawarah, Siussi, and many others, had rocket launching pads on their roofs, or were observation decks for the Hamas. They had also put them near the big UN warehouse, which went up in flames. The same goes for the villages in the valley along the border who were more devastated by the mad fury and punishment of the Zionist,” echoes his cousin Um Abdallah, 48. They use family nicknames, but they provide important circumstantial details. It was difficult to get these testimonials. In general, fear of Hamas prevails and the ideological alimentary taboos reign in this century of wars with the “Zionist enemy.”
Those who recount a different version than the story imposed by the “Muhamawa” (the resistance) is automatically an “Amil,” a collaborator and is risking his life. However, the recent fratricidal collision between Hamas and Olp helps. If Israel or Egypt had allowed foreign journalists to enter immediately it would have been easier. These Locals are often threatened by Hamas.
“This is not a new fact, in the Middle East, Arab societies are missing the cultural traditions of human rights. It happened during Arafat’s regime that the press started being persecuted and censured. With Hamas it is even worse,” said Eyad Sarraj, a noted psychiatrist in Gaza City.
I had a conversation with a remarkable Palestinian advocate of human rights several years ago when I tried to show him the material I had on Pallywood. As we discussed the problem, and his helplessness to even address it, it became clear to me that the single most insidious enemy of the Palestinians is the European loathing of an independent Jewish nation. What seemed to Palestinians like a gift — Europeans’ hostility to Israel — has ended up strengthening the worst aspects of Palestinian culture, its irredentism, its preference for suffering Palestinians, its thirst for hatred.
And this is nowhere more evident than when Palestinians try and go sober, try and kick their addiction to hatred, try to turn from gnawing on old wounds to growing new life. Then they run into their most fearful demon, the sympathetic hater in the West: the old fashioned European anti-semite at last released from his post-Holocaust prison of politically incorrect, the radical, the revolutionary, the morally superior/envious progressive, both Christian and post-Christian, even Jewish. For these people, like those Arab leaders who have treated them so abominably for so long, the moral and symbolic value of the Palestinians lies in their suffering, not in their recovery. The forces that have driven on the astounding, unprecedented, otherwise inexplicable 60-year refugee status for Arabs who fled Israel in 1948, will not be cheated of their most precious possession: a people victim of the Jews. Indeed, I would argue, the media footprint of Jewish misdeeds — true and invented — are the very image of this corrosive need.
For those progressives with enough remaining integrity to look at the current madness over Israel and wonder what’s wrong, I invite them to the following meditation. The behavior of Hamas described below in Belmont Club’s discussion, the deeds of that very same Hamas whose flags German’s successfully petitioned their courts for permission to wave at their anti-war demonstrations, is the karmic product of sixty years of proxy hatreds, now reaching new temperatures. Under a terrifying assault by neighbors driven mad by their own leaders’ mad policies, the Gazans find themselves literally crucified by a reign of terror.
Up to a hundred Palestinians in Gaza who have defied house arrest orders have been tortured in children’s hospitals and schools converted into interrogation centers. People have been shot in the legs or had their hands broken. The campaign has been described as a “new massacre”. One victim had his eyes put out. No one was safe from the torturers, not even those attending funerals. When is will the UN act to put a stop to this horror? Won’t President Obama intervene to stop these barbaric acts? Aren’t international human rights monitors going to put a stop to this? When will War Crimes charges be preferred against the perpetrators?
Never.
Why? Because Hamas is in charge of the torture and their victims are simply Fatah members. If it were Israel who had done these things, well then … But since it’s Hamas, the same Hamas for whom thousands have been marching in ’solidarity’, it’s a non-story. The Jersualem Post cites reports from Fatah members describing the events.
Of course, that’s Khaled abu Toameh, who, without going to Gaza, tells us more than all the brave Ben Wedemans in their flak jackets or Taghreed el-Khodarys, with their anti-Israel talking points. And yet, many journalists dismiss Toameh because he works for the Jerusalem Post. “He’s not fully reliable, you know,” they say “with a sad wink and a nudge.”
The argument is not without its ironies. After all, imagine an Israeli reporter, reporting dirt on Israel to the readers of Al Jazeera. One can hardly imagine our MSM journalists dismissing his or her information. Come to think of it… that’s more or less the function of Gideon Levy and Amira Hass in the internet, English Ha-Aretz. When’s the last time a journalist airily dismissed their testimony? (more…)
Israeli media reports that Hamas took over the first floor of the building that the BBC offices in Gaza last night and fired rockets from there, trapping the journalists above. Despite the fact that their reporters have now escaped the building, the BBC has so far not said anything about this.
When I was interviewed on the BBC last week, I commented on the pervasive intimidation of the MSM in Gaza, which is one of the reasons that there were none there when the hostilities broke out. I pointed out that the last journalist resident in Gaza, Alan Johnston, now the editor in chief, only survived because he was so openly pro-Palestinian, and even he got kidnapped and brutalized.
“I’ll cut that out to spare you a law suit, my interviewer said. You’re impugning the integrity of a journalist, and without his credibility he can’t practice his profession.” I was at once struck by the combination of concern for reputation and shamelessness involved in such a “favor” to me.
But here’s the BBC, used as human shields by Hamas, and they won’t let the public know.
Now on the other hand, the Foreign Press has decided to boycott the visual material released by the Army Spokesperson’s Unit (Dover Tzahal) because they object to not being allowed to go into Gaza and — get this — to the Israelis shelling buildings that hold press offices in Gaza. (I kid you not.)
The FPA rejects and condemns the IDF policy of controlling the news coverage of the events in Gaza. by preventing the entry of foreign journalists into Gaza and bombing buildings housing offices of international media - contrary to IDF assurances that these media buildings would be safe - the IDF is severely violating basic principles of respect for press freedom.
As a result of these unconscionable breaches, the FPA calls on all its members not to broadcast or print stills and videos the IDF provides as a substitute to independent reporting - until such time the IDF issues a formal apology for the attacks on the media buildings and offers assurances that no such event will occur in the future.
It’s hard to find a finer illustration of the sad truth that the media will behave in craven fashion towards those who will hurt them if the journalists displease them, and in arrogant fashion towards those who won’t retaliate. Despite the many and vociferous denunciations of the Israelis in their statements during the current conflict, not one discusses misbehavior by Hamas.
And the righteous indignation of the letter further illustrates my belief that, unable to admit to either their public or themselves that they are intimidated, they hid behind a pseudo-ideology that permits them to wax morally eloquent. Alas for the state of journalism. Alas for the MSM’s Western public! Alas that Israel won’t denounce these hypocrites.
The CNN footage from the Gaza Hospital is still hotly contested. Follow the multiple postings at LGF and an update at Powerline. Here below, I deal with CNN’s defense of the footage in detail because it so resembles the kinds of arguments that Charles Enderlin made about his own monumental gaffe with Talal abu Rahmeh and his “Al Durah” story.
You wouldn’t know it from the title, but there’s only one “journalist” whose opinion is cited in the article (unless Mashharawi the cameraman under suspicion is also considered a journalist).
(CNN) — There’s no truth to accusations by bloggers that a Palestinian camera crew staged a video showing the death of the videographer’s brother after an Israeli rocket attack, said the team’s employer.
In the video, camerman Ashraf Mashharawi is seen holding his brother.
“It’s absolute nonsense,” Paul Martin, co-owner of World News and Features, said of accusations leveled by bloggers at videographer Ashraf Mashharawi.
“He’s a man of enormous integrity and would never get involved with any sort of manipulation of images, let alone when the person dying is his own brother,” Martin said. “I know the whole family. I know them very well. … [Mashharawi] is upset and angry that anyone would think of him having done anything like this. … This is ridiculous. He’s independent.”
I don’t know much about Paul Martin, but it’s clear he spends lots of time in Gaza, and manages to have considerable access to Hamas “militants” whose narrative he seems to feel the world needs to understand. In any case this remark is nothing short of breathtaking. Mashharawi’s about as “independent” as Diana Buttu. The idea that a cameraman working in Gaza is not a militant for the Palestinian cause (perhaps not Hamas, but even that’s unlikely in the last years), is close to preposterous. No genuine independent could survive there for any period of time.
But the rhetoric is crucial here. Just like Charles Enderlin defending Talal, the ploy here is to present Palestinian cameramen as living up to the highest Western standards of journalism. And of course, this is only for public consumption. As Charles told me off the record when I pointed out that Talal’s rushes were full of staged scenes, “Oh sure, they do this all the time.” But on the record, “Talal is a top journalist.”
As for the “I know the whole family…” that’s just what Charles told me that Talal would never lie to him because their families had shared meals together. The credulity of these Western journalists who think that because they’ve sat down with their Palestinian colleagues and broken bread that means that their newfound friends would break ranks with their people’s struggle, is somewhat breathtaking.
Raafat Hamdouna, administrative director at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, said Friday that “Mahmoud Khalil Mashharawi, a 12-year-old, was brought to the hospital, and he was breathing, but he was hit in the head and all over his body by shrapnel. He died later in the hospital. He was treated by the Norwegian team. When he was brought in, he was breathing. The team did their best to save him. I am not really sure if they even tried to rush him to the surgery room, because he was badly hurt.”
Mashharawi’s video footage originally appeared on British television’s Channel 4 and later on CNN. It showed futile attempts by doctors to resuscitate Mashharawi’s 12-year-old brother, Mahmoud, after he and his 14-year-old cousin, Ahmed, had been wounded in what the family said was a rocket attack from a remote-controlled drone Sunday.
Ahmed also was taken to the hospital, but he had been fatally struck in the head and chest by shrapnel and had lost a foot, Hamdouna said. Hamdouna said the hospital records reported Ahmed’s age as 16, not 14, as the family said.
At the time of the attack, the family said, the two boys were playing on the rooftop of the family’s three-story house. The video showed a blood-splattered area where an explosion had taken place and where shrapnel had pierced the roof.
Mashharawi has regularly worked with World News and Features since 2004, Martin said. His multimedia company serves television, radio and newspapers.
Martin said accusations that Mashharawi owns a company that hosts Hamas Web sites were falsely based on Mashharawi having worked at a company that created the PS suffix to allow anyone of any political persuasion to create Palestinian Web sites.
The video footage appeared on CNN television networks and on CNN.com for 24 hours before CNN removed the material in the belief that it had no further right to use it. CNN, standing by the video, has since reposted it. Some bloggers had cited its removal as evidence that CNN did not stand by its reporting.
Responding to accusations that the resuscitation efforts of Mashharawi’s brother appeared inauthentic, Martin said that, based on his years of reporting from Gaza, doctors often go through such efforts even with little hope that a patient can be saved.
This is rich. Note that CNN did not consult a doctor on this one, but Martin’s experience in Gaza. I’ve consulted a doctor and a number of people with experience in CPR have commented both at my article at PJMedia and at LGF. But here it’s Martin’s long experience in Gaza that comes into play. There are two ways to explain this remark, neither of them working in the way Martin would like.
1) Doctors in Gaza are so incompetent that what appears to Western experts as a joke, really is their best effort. The incompetence is doubled by Martin’s qualifying remark: as commenters have noted, if the patient is dying, the CPR should be more vigorous.
2) Doctors “often go through such efforts even with little hope that a patient can be saved” as long as the cameras are rolling. Maybe Martin wasn’t paying attention to that detail.
In the video of the incident, the boy appears lifeless when brought to into the hospital.
In a brief conversation with CNN, Mashharawi said that doctors tried everything they could to save his brother and that he rejected suggestions that any of his work was inauthentic.
Before bloggers made their accusations, Mashharawi told CNN, “I believed at that moment if I didn’t record that nobody will believe what’s happened to my brother. Because it is unbelievable. Until now, I can’t believe what’s happened.”
It’s not clear what’s “unbelievable. That a child would be hit by rockets in a war zone and die in a hospital is hardly unbelievable. That one needed to film it for the sake of “proof” strikes me as pretty unconvincing. That he filmed it to arouse anger against Israel with the pathos of the scene, strikes me as more likely; and as I argued in the Gaza Beach tragedy documentary I made, this is “exploiting grief.”
To get a sense of the difference in cultures here, no Israeli cameraman would film the death of a family member (or anyone else) and then give it to Western media to show the world the plight of the Israelis. None.
What’s most appalling about this article — but will eventually, I suspect, redound to CNN’s discredit — is that they ran this article based on the denial of two already committed sources. CNN made no effort to corroborate any of this. It’s just “he said, she said.”
What we need is the rushes that Ahraf Mashharawi shot that day, that we see in edited form. Like the rushes of Talal, we’ll be able to judge better what was going on that day if we could see them. And unlike Talal’s rushes, let’s see them uncensored. I suspect we won’t, because when it comes to the clash between Palestinian journalism, channeled through advocacy journalists, the clash between narrative and evidence is so great, they cannot afford to let us see.
I may be wrong. This may be genuine footage. I am open to being convinced so. But let us see the evidence.
Ethan Bronner has an article on the media warfront in which he cites — without any trace of irony or supressed guffaw, the following comment:
Foreign reporters deny that their work in Gaza has been subject to Hamas censorship or control. Unable to send foreign reporters into Gaza, the international news media have relied on Palestinian journalists based there for coverage.
I’ve written quite a bit on intimidation of the media in the Arab Israeli conflict, particularly in relationship to Bronner’s predecessor, Steven Erlanger (who, I’ve heard, had the courage to go to the Egyptian border and tried unsuccessfully to get into Gaza), but also Alan Johnston, the avidly pro-Palestinian BBC journalist who nonetheless got himself kidnapped for annoying somebody in Gaza.
This is a very bad joke.
Indeed, I’ve thought long and hard about this one, and I would say, briefly, the following.
Palestinian intimidation of Western journalists is pervasive.
Reporters can’t tell their audiences because it would undermine their credibility (hence the whopper above).
Reporters can’t admit their cowardice to themselves (hence Bronner’s lack of even a trace of irony).
They console themselves by saying that they are doing it not from intimidation but either for money, or, better yet, for ideological reasons: they’re siding with the underdog; they’re leveling the playing field; they’re supporting a freedom movement.
If anyone else has a good explanation for why so many reporters continue to support an underdog who behaves as repugnantly as the Palestinians, I’m all ears.
To begin with, I would like to point out that I am writing this article at the risk of being arrested for “incitement” and “tarnishing” the Palestinian Authority (PA) image.
However, the cause of press freedom in Occupied Palestine is too important to be compromised by fears for one’s safety.
Sounds like a brave man. And he may be. But his opening sentence is packed with ludicrous notions: a) there is a cause of press freedom in “Occupied Palestine”; b) it’s only for “incitement” and “tarnishing” the PA image that he runs risks (try criticizing Hamas and see who shows up at your door); and c) it’s “Occupied Palestine” that’s the problem. On the contrary, the closest thing to press freedom Palestinians ever experienced was under Israeli “occupation.” It’s when the place was handed over first to Arafat, and then in Gaza to Hamas, that press freedoms — and freedom of speech — vanished.
As one Palestinian in “occupied Jerusalem” put it: “At least here I can speak my mind freely without being dumped in prison…” Another, from an area that rioted in 2000 against Israel, but balked ferociously at being “transferred” to Arafat’s Palestine in a land-exchange deal, said: “Here you can say whatever you like and do whatever you want — so long as you don’t touch the security of Israel. Over there, if you talk about Arafat, they can arrest you and beat you up.”
Pipes quotes Palestinians about “Freedom of Expression”:
‘Adnan Khatib, owner and editor of Al-Umma, a Jerusalem weekly whose printing plant was burned down by PA police in 1995, bemoaned the troubles he’d had since the Palestinian Authority’s heavy-handed leaders got power over him: “The measures they are taking against the Palestinian media, including the arrest of journalists and the closure of newspapers, are much worse than those taken by the Israelis against the Palestinian press.” In an ironic turn of events, Na‘im Salama, a lawyer living in Gaza, was arrested by the PA on charges he slandered it by writing that Palestinians should adopt Israeli standards of democracy. Specifically, he referred to charges of fraud and breach of trust against then-prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Salama noted how the system in Israel allowed police to investigate a sitting prime minister and wondered when the same might apply to the PA chieftain. For this audacity, he spent time in jail. Hanan Ashrawi, an obsessive anti-Israel critic, acknowledged (reluctantly) that the Jewish state has something to teach the nascent Palestinian polity: “freedom would have to be mentioned although it has only been implemented in a selective way, for example, the freedom of speech.” ‘Iyad as-Sarraj, a prominent psychiatrist and director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, confesses that “during the Israeli occupation, I was 100 times freer [than under the Palestinian Authority].”
So, granted, the PA are thugs and don’t allow freedom of expression, but alas for our intrepid journalist trying to stand up for freedom of the press in “occupied Palestine,” the only time there was anything like “freedom of the press” was when the Israelis really did occupy the land.
Hence, journalists and free-minded citizens must not allow themselves to be intimidated by a police-state apparatus that views itself as God’s vicegerent on earth.
In recent weeks and months, the American-backed and Israeli-favored regime in Ramallah has been systematically violating the human rights and civil liberties of the Palestinian people in ways unseen since the start of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967.
There are a tiny number of Arab and Muslim intellectuals who have expressed admiration for Israel. What does this admiration mean? Do we take its numerical percentage as a sign of its significance? Say a hundred pro-Israel Muslims out of 1.4 billion Muslims, so less than .00001% of the total, i.e., less than a fraction of a statistical error?
Or do we take it as the tip of an iceberg of an opinion that cannot express itself in an honor-shame culture where honor has been defined in terms of hating Israel, and therefore every expression of pro-Israel sentiment represents something far more significant, something that, just in order to exist, must fight heavy cross-winds. In other words, it’s the easiest thing to be pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel in the Muslim world; it takes great courage and intellectual integrity to fight that consensus. Just as we should weight Israeli self-criticism differently from Palestinian demonization in our efforts to assess the information we get from the Middle East, so should we weigh pro- and anti-Israel sentiments in the Muslim world.
The case of Salah Choudhury, the Bengladeshi journalist who is now fighting for his life against charges of sedition, treason, blasphemy and espionage, raises yet another dimension. In addition to the peer-pressure of an honor-shame culture — so strong it can drive mothers to kill their daughters — there is also the matter of violent intimidation, whether state-sponsored (as in Choudhury’s case) or supported by a fatwa that operates at the grass-roots level. Just as Islam considers that apostates deserve death, so does this religion exercise enormous threats of and execution of violence against those it considers guilty of betraying the cause.
When one considers the joint threat of social and economic ostracism on the one hand and threat of violence on the other, even the slightest expression of support or admiration for Israel in the Muslim world needs to be factored at, say, 100,000,000 times the significance of an anti-Israel sentiment that is so easy and so (seemingly) cost-free for Muslims to express.
In honor of Choudhury’s struggle — I urge everyone to sign the petition on his behalf — I post here the reflections of another courageous Muslim, exiled Iraqi writer Najem Wali, who followed her intellectual instincts and went to visit Israel.
Exiled Iraqi writer Najem Wali travelled to Israel to uncover some uncomfortable truths about the Arab leaders
When a child is born in Israel or to us in the Arab world, the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict is flowing in its umbilical cord. Since the declaration of the state of Israel on May 14 1948, Israel has been the official enemy number one for the Arab states.
But even as a child I found the rhetoric didn’t add up. How could this somehow “all-powerful” country so successfully “let the Arab nations sink into lethargy”, as the official speeches would have us believe? And why, at the same time, were they so confident that the “small state of Zionist gangs” would inevitably “disappear from the map”? I never found a convincing answer. Nor did I ever make the connection between the “Jew question” and the “Palestine question”, between the victims of the Holocaust and the victims of Israel’s foundation.
