As the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians spirals out of control, it is ever more disturbing how major news sources in the U.S. have managed to misinform the American public. Through either misrepresentation or outright suppression of the facts, the mainstream press has managed to keep Americans largely in the dark when it comes to certain aspects of the current crisis.
As a starting point, it is informative to turn to Thomas Friedman's latest Op-Ed piece for The New York Times. Friedman, who as a regular columnist for The Times wields considerable opinion-shaping power, argues that, "Israel needs to deliver a military blow that clearly shows terror will not pay." On the same page, William Safire allows himself to serve as a medium for Ariel Sharon, who tells Americans that Yasser Arafat, who has alternated between being under Israeli lock down and Israeli siege, refuses to reign in his terrorist network and "continues to stir incitement."
The above sentiments are fairly common within the U.S. press; surely they should strike nobody reading this as extreme or atypical of mainstream commentary on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
It behooves us to compare our own news coverage of the conflict with the reporting of other countries. Ha'aretz, the leading Israeli newspaper, recently ran a story analyzing the prospects of upcoming Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) actions in the occupied territories. It reports that, "According to Israeli security sources . the current wave of terror strikes is likely to continue, or even intensify, due to the strong desire of Palestinian organizations to take vengeance for losses." Yet the prospect of encouraging still more suicide bombings is warranted, because as a result of IDF actions, "the Palestinian terror infrastructure has taken strong blows."
The above reasoning is sound. Prior to the new intifada, suicide bombings, while they did occur, were not a daily occurrence. It is only the complete lack of hope after seven years of failure in the peace process that has led to the new wave of attacks. Yet these seemingly elementary observations remain beyond the grasp of the American press; Americans continue to be told that Arafat, in his confinement, is solely responsible for "inciting terrorism," while IDF actions have nothing to do with the matter.
Why should this discrepancy in news coverage concern us? A press that fails to fully inform its readers of the facts does not live up to its self-prescribed role as a check against the state. The same Ha'aretz article quoted above also mentions that, "Some [IDF officers] acknowledge that U.S. pressure could cause the activities to be terminated ahead of what has been planned." Yet U.S. pressure on Israel to pull out - cutting the billions that Israel receives in aid would be a good first step - remains conspicuously absent. U.S. inaction would be considerably more difficult if the American public were made aware of the actual events on the ground.
B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights watchdog group, reports that since the beginning of the second intifada, 192 Palestinian minors have been killed by the IDF. B'Tselem also reports that IDF soldiers routinely fire at ambulances and medical personnel (five were killed within a two week span). Ambulances routinely are detained at checkpoints. Recently the case of Huda Hawajas, a Palestinian mother of five, achieved some notoriety. During a sweep of Palestinian houses, shrapnel struck Hawajas when her door was blown open by the IDF. After her ambulance was held up at IDF checkpoints, she bled to death in front of her children.
Realities such as the above are not cause for concern for the likes of Thomas Friedman, who tells us that, "The world must understand that the Palestinians have not chosen suicide bombing out of 'desperation' stemming from the Israeli occupation." As for those of us sufficiently na?ve to believe that there might be an understandable (if not justifiable) impulse behind suicide bombings, Friedman quips, "a lot of other people in the world are desperate, yet they have not gone around strapping dynamite to themselves." He declines to identify who these "other people" are, perhaps because the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict do not lend themselves to as simplistic an analogy as Friedman would like to use. Seven full years after Oslo, not even 18 percent of the West Bank and Gaza were under Palestinian control. Meanwhile, Palestinian unemployment fluctuates between 20 and 60 percent, depending on whether or not Palestinian towns are being sealed off by the IDF when the survey is conducted. Since the new intifada began, over a thousand Palestinian civilians have been killed. None of this, we are told, has led to Palestinian "desperation."
Friedman is apparently comfortable with placing the blame squarely on Palestinian shoulders, arguing that, "President Clinton offered the Palestinians a peace plan that could have ended their 'desperate' occupation, and Yasser Arafat walked away." While ignoring for the moment that Clinton technically did not offer anything, opting instead to merely articulate support for Barak's proposal, a few facts are in order. The offer made to Arafat did not include control of West Bank water sources; it did not include control of the West Bank-Jordan or Gaza Strip-Egypt borders; it did not even include all of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip - only 65 percent of those territories would have been turned over to Palestinian control. But most importantly, it did not include a contiguous state - Palestinian lands would have been divided up into what would effectively have been cantons. Friedman does not apparently feel these facts are important or in any way make the offer extended to Arafat anything less than generous. Why the focus on Friedman? The sad fact is that he is not unique in any way among American commentators in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Indeed, he is squarely within the mainstream, which persists in misinforming its readers and obscuring basic facts about the Israeli occupation from the light of day.
Tragically, the paradigm presented by Friedman - that Palestinians understand only force and are bent on destruction - is the essence of bigotry. The actions of suicide bombers are not to be condoned, but if we have any hope of ending the decades old conflict in the Middle East, it is crucial that we go beyond Friedman's facile dismissal of Palestinian "desperation" and attempt to understand why so many Palestinians feel they have no recourse but suicide missions. A good starting point for change would be within the mainstream press. The true feelings of those at The New York Times are perhaps best expressed when Friedman writes that, "All [Palestinians] can agree on as a community is what they want to destroy, not what they want to build." One wonders whether The Times would print an op-ed arguing something as racist as the notion that Jews - or any ethnic group other than Palestinians - as a community can only agree on what they want to destroy.
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