John Pilger on Israel and the mediaBy John Pilger
News Statesman, 01 July 2002
If you got your news only from the television, you would have no idea of the
roots of the Middle East conflict, or that the Palestinians are victims of an
illegal military occupation. John Pilger reports
In May, the Glasgow University Media Group, distinguished for its pioneering
media analysis, published a study of the reporting of the Israeli/ Palestinian
conflict. It ought to be required reading in newsrooms and media schools. The
research showed that the public's lack of understanding of the conflict and its
origins was compounded by news reporting, especially on television.
Viewers, says the study, are rarely told that the Palestinians are victims of
an illegal military occupation. The term "occupied territories" is almost never
explained. Indeed, only 9 per cent of young people interviewed knew that the
Israelis were the occupiers and the "settlers" were Israeli.
The selective use of language is important. The study found that words such
as "murder", "atrocity", "lynching" and "savage, cold-blooded killing" were used
only to describe Israeli deaths. "The extent to which some journalism assumes
the Israeli perspective," wrote Professor Greg Philo, "can be seen if the
statements are 'reversed' and presented as Palestinian actions. [We] did not
find any [news] reports stating that 'The Palestinian attacks were in
retaliation for the murder of those resisting the illegal Israeli occupation'."
Given that the central truth of the conflict is routinely obscured, none of
this is surprising. News and current affairs programmes seldom, if ever, remind
viewers that Israel was established largely by force on 78 per cent of historic
Palestine and, since 1967, has illegally occupied and imposed various forms of
military rule on the remaining 22 per cent.
The media "coverage" has long reversed the roles of oppressor and victim.
Israelis are never called terrorists. Correspondents who break this taboo are
often intimidated with slurs of anti-Semitism - a bleak irony, as Palestinians
are Semites, too.
Having long ago recognised Israel's "right" to more than two-thirds of their
country, the Palestinian leadership has contorted itself in order to accommodate
a maze of mostly American plans designed to deny true independence and ensure
Israel's enduring power and control. Until recently, this was reported
uncritically as "the peace process". When ordinary Palestinians cried "enough!"
and rose up in the second intifada, armed mostly with slingshots, they were put
down by snipers with high-velocity weapons and with tanks and Apache gunships,
supplied by the United States.
And now, in their despair, as some are turning to suicide attacks, the
Palestinians appear on the news only as bombers and rioters, which, as the
Glasgow study points out, "is, of course, the view of the Israeli government".
The latest euphemism, "incursion", is from the vocabulary of lies coined in
Vietnam. It means assaulting human beings with tanks and planes. "Cycle of
violence" is similar. It suggests, at best, two equal sides, never that the
Palestinians are resisting violent oppression with violence. A Channel 4
Dispatches recently "balanced" the Israeli assault on the Jenin refugee camp
with a Palestinian attack on a "settlement". There was no explanation that these
are not settlements at all, but armed, illegal fortresses that are central to a
policy of imposing strategic and military control.
On 9 June, the Correspondent series on BBC Television broadcast a report
about the recent siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. This was an
exemplar of the problems identified in the Glasgow research. It was, in effect,
an Israeli occupation propaganda film put out by the BBC. It was made as a
co-production with an American channel, and the credits listed the producer as
Israel Goldvicht, who runs an Israeli production company.
That would have been fine had the film-makers made any attempt to challenge
the Israeli military with whom they had ingratiated themselves. "The Israelis
were determined not to damage the buildings," began the narrator. "The
international press were cleared from Manger Square, but we were allowed to stay
and observe the Israeli operation . . ." With this "unique access" unexplained
to the viewers, the film presented one Colonel Lior as the star good guy,
guaranteeing "medical treatment to anyone wounded", saying a cheery hello on a
mobile phone to a friend in Oxford Street and, like any colonial officer,
speaking about and on behalf of the Palestinians.
"Killers" were described by the colonel without challenge by the BBC/Israel
Goldvicht team. They were "terrorists" and "gunmen", not those resisting the
invasion of their homeland. Israel's right to "arrest" foreign peace protesters
drew no query from the BBC. Not a single Palestinian was interviewed. As the sun
set on his fine profile, the last word went to the good colonel. The issues
between the Israelis and Palestinians, he said, "were personal points of view".
Well, no. The brutal subjugation of the Palestinians is, under any
interpretation of the law, an epic injustice, a crime in which the colonel plays
a leading part. The BBC has always provided the best, most sophisticated
propaganda service in the world, because matters of justice and injustice, right
and wrong are simply usurped either by "balance" or by liberal sophistry; one is
either "pro- Israeli" or "pro-Palestinian".
Fiona Murch, the executive producer of Correspondent, told me that Israel
Goldvicht Productions would not have won the "trust" of the Israeli army had the
producer asked real journalistic questions. That was the way of "fly on the
wall": a candid admission. "It was breaking a stereotype," she said. "It was
about a good, decent man" (the colonel). She said I ought to have seen an
earlier Correspondent series, which had Palestinians in it.
I think she was trying to offer that as "balance" for The Siege of Bethlehem
- a film that might be dismissed as cheap PR, were it not for its complicity
with a regime that uses ethnic difference to deny human rights, imprisons people
without charge or trial, and murders and tortures "systematically", says
Amnesty.
Goebbels would have approved.
