One week of the Israeli-Palestinian war of words

Day 4

It has become clear to me that it is too difficult to report every day on the same four newspapers I set out to on day 1, simply because not all of them change every day. My two choices for Palestinian papers, especially, are slower to change and not really written by Palestinians in Palestine. I am also having trouble keeping up with the workload of reading and analysing several newspapers a day. I will take from a wider selection of newspapers while keeping my main objective in mind: aiding our critical thinking by comparing reporting bias in Israeli and Palestinian news media.

Palestinian Information Center

The Voice of Palestine (or the Voice of Hamas), the PIC “aims to promote awareness about Palestine, the Palestinians and the Palestinian issue and to balance the often distorted picture presented in the mainstream media.” It is available in eight languages.

The leader reads “Palestine resistance fighters clash with an IOF [Israeli Occupation Force] patrol”. It is an interesting change of words. If this headline had been written for Israelis, it would have read “Palestinian militants clash with an IDF [Israeli Defence Force] patrol”. They even had a name for the organisation that released the information and conducted the attack: the Palestine Eagles Brigades. Newspapers give names to people they want to make seem more human, and ignore the names of those who are less than human. (One might read, for instance, “10 foreign terrorists were killed fighting with local citizen Menso El Rey.”) “The Eagles added that its fighters managed to withdraw safety and that the attack was within the framework of retaliating to occupation crimes against the Palestinian people in the West bank and the Gaza Strip, especially the aggression on farmers.” The article is only 107 words long.

Down the right side of the website, which always attracts my attention before the left side, are the following links (with pictures): Palestine: What it’s all about; T-shirts mock Gaza killings; Farming under fire and F16’s in Gaza; Attacks on medics during Gaza war; Use of phosphorus bombs in Gaza; Al Nakba: The catastrophe of Palestine, 1948. I do not contain my curiosity and go straight to the link about the t-shirts. It led to an Al Jazeera video on Youtube you may want to watch. (You can find lots of other Al Jazeera videos on how evil Israel is from here.)

Other PIC articles are also short. There is less attempt at providing an analytical justification for why the Israeli state must be destroyed; they just get to the point. One talks of a meeting between Hamas and the Egyptian government and combines this news with a Hamas statement that the “PA [Palestinian Authority] security apparatuses’ practices against Hamas and the resistance in the West Bank” must end. It is not clear how these two issues are related.

I find three links to an item titled “Barak calls on IOF to prepare for fresh war on Gaza” all visible at the same time. One was “Most Read”, one “Most Printed” and the other was running across the top banner. Clearly, this was an article I am supposed to read. A picture of an unsmiling Ehud Barak greets us. The article does not say much beyond the headline, except that it uses words like “deeper” and “larger” than in January to describe the threatened offensive in Gaza. Remember what I said yesterday about numbers being used to evoke sympathy, anger and evidence? This article ends with the following: “The latest Israeli war on Gaza that started late December 2008 and ended in late January 2009 claimed the lives of almost 1,500 Palestinians and wounded almost 6,000 others.” This is a quarter of the words in the article.

Another feature of note on this website is the left-hand banner, part of which reads “Palestinian Memory Bank”. Apparently, every day the site reports something that happened to the Palestinians in history on that day. There are two dates, 1996 and 1974, and neither is particularly damning or interesting. But since they presumably have something to put there every day, what this section is saying is that on every day of the year, the Israelis have been assholes.

The Jerusalem Post

Apparently, the number that turned out to vote for the next president of Iran was “massive”. As I clicked on this leader, the first thing I noticed was not the body of the article but a banner: “The Iranian Threat”, a small picture of Iran and an apelike Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I wonder, if Ahmadinejad is defeated at the polls, will they replace his picture with one of Ayatollah Khamenei. In wording almost identical to something I read yesterday, the article asks if Iran will keep “hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in power or [elect] a reformist who favors greater freedoms and improved ties with the United States.” Whom would you rather elect, a hardliner or a reformist? The Post conceals its bias against Ahmadinejad like a burka made of air. I wonder if it would not be more effective to be more subtle. Anyway, says the article, it does not really matter who wins because “crucial policies are all directly controlled by the ruling clerics headed by the unelected Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.”

And if the Ayatollah were not enough reason to give up hope, the next article says “Mousavi [that’s the other guy running for president of Iran] win would not stop nuke drive”. Oh dear. Then what’s the big deal? Do Israelis really care if the Iranian government stops cracking down on bloggers?

More headlines about Netanyahu’s speech on Sunday. “Noam Shalit gives Carter a letter for son” is probably just a way of reminding everyone that Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was kidnapped in Gaza. “Israel better at security issues than US” is a funny headline about a funny subject: comparing the numbers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan to those killed in Israel and Palestine, the numbers of minorities incarcerated in the US to those incarcerated in Israel, and the better life expectancies in Israel to those in the US, Egypt and Syria. If one is digging for the point of this article, it is probably to say to the US, “you have no business telling us how to treat people, because our record is superior to yours.” In other words, we will keep building settlements in the West Bank whether you like it or not.

And then we come to a thoughtful, relatively balanced article: the op-ed. I am used to Canadian and American newspapers, where the bias is most visible in the op-eds and editorials because they come right out and state their affiliations and beliefs. The articles feel more balanced. However, this feeling may come from my having been socialised by North American news media and not Israeli or Arab. It is possible that those socialised by the kind of reading I am doing this week find the language normal and balanced; and it is the differences that enable me to see bias more clearly.

Today’s op-ed is called “Peace vs. Reality”. Allow me to represent the opening passage. “Palestinian and Israeli youth gather on a soccer field for a friendly match as part of a sports peace program. Two steps forward. IDF soldiers kill Palestinian civilians in the war in Gaza. Two steps back. Bereaved Israeli and Palestinian parents meet each other to share their pain and promote peace and reconciliation. Two steps forward. Hamas launches dozens of rockets daily on the South, killing and terrorizing civilians. Two steps back.

“However many steps forward the grassroots peace process takes, the harsh winds of reality, fanned by the political leadership on both sides, send peace spiraling backward.”

At multiple levels, attempts at peace are being made. It is not just the governments that are talking. This piece discusses an argument that broke out among Israeli and Palestinian teenagers at a meeting arranged by the Peres Center for Peace. It then describes a documentary of the uphill battle Palestinian and Israeli peace activists face. The article makes little use of numbers and instead shows the humanity, the legitimate grievances, the bad choices, and the killing on both sides of the conflict. This editorial is my favourite of anything I have read so far this week. I will stop for today in order to preserve the hope with which it was written.

One week trying to understand Israeli and Palestinian newspaper bias

Day 3

Palestine Media Center

The official mouthpiece of the general secretariat of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). The two-state solution is a big thing here. Three headlines have the words “two-state” in them. Another headline uses the word “Apartheid”, and there is an apparently separate link saying “Israeli Apartheid” next to it. I would not deny that the plight of the Palestinians is apartheid, only that it is a very strong word. If life is as bad for the Palestinians as it was for non whites under apartheid, they are in trouble.

The most interesting thing is to hear Ehud Barak himself using the word. He says that, if there is only one state, and if the Palestinians cannot vote, “it will be an apartheid regime.” Fancy the defense minister of a right wing Israeli cabinet admitting something like that. Are we actually making progress?

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak says, according to the leader, that a two-state solution is coming sooner or later. (Yet another article on foreign pressure for a two-state peace says is about Javier Solana, Foreign Minister of the European Union.) Egypt and Israel are on reasonably good terms—Egypt is one of the only two majority Muslim countries, with Jordan, that recognises Israel—so pressure for Palestinian independence is likely to come from them. The US is pushing for the two-state thing, and Egypt and Jordan are its allies, so they may feel emboldened to push too. President Mubarak also said the Palestinians must work hard to achieve unity. That might be the biggest obstacle to peace.

For the past two days, I have seen talk about Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech on Sunday. The Palestine Media Center (PMC) says “Netanyahu will adopt ‘two-state’ language on Sunday speech.” Seems a little vague. They might as well have said “Netanyahu will give all the Palestinians a job and a pension”. Any politician can speak in terms that sound good. Only action can make peace.

According to the PMC, Netanyahu will be asking for a lot in return for Palestinian independence. The Palestinians must recongise Israel and “[h]e will ask [not demand?] Arab states to normalize relations with Israel during negotiations, rather than after Israel withdraws from occupied Arab land”. I do not feel the bitterness from the PMC that one feels in other media from Palestine. Of course, they are just as prone to bias as any other medium; but you let your guard down when you hear relatively conciliatory tones like these.

As the PMC points out, Palestinian independence is only one condition of peace negotiations. “It is unclear”, it says, “whether Netanyahu will accept the other condition, which is US President Barack Obama’s demand for a total halt to all construction in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem.” In fact, the PMC has a set of links entitled “Permanent Status Issues”, and they are Jerusalem, Settlements, Refugees, Water, Borders, Summary of Palestinian Positions. Each is like an encyclopedia entry on Palestinian grievances for each issue, along with a long list of links regarding the issue you are reading about.

For instance, on the subject of Jerusalem, while the Israeli papers talk of the long history the city has had as capital of a (future) state of Israel, this section says the opposite. “For centuries, Jerusalem has been the geographical, political, administrative and spiritual center of Palestine.” It begins the Israeli story at the 1967 war, several thousand years after the Jews do, and says that since then, the Israeli state has taken over and expanded East Jerusalem in “a classic example of ethnic gerrymandering.” The PMC continues, talking about the illegality of Israel’s occupation of Jerusalem according to “a long line” of UN Security Council resolutions; discrimination against Arabs; Jewish settlement; and forced evictions and demolitions. “The Palestinian Position” (or that of the PLO, anyway), is, basically, follow Resolution 242 (here and here—apparently the PLO did not initially accept 242), and make Jerusalem a free city. They make some good points.

Haaretz

Like yesterday, the Holocaust museum gunman tops the list. I am interested that some senile American racist shooting up the Holocaust museum is so important to Jews (or the ones writing this newspaper, anyway) that they put it right at the top. The article was very long (more than 1100 words) and read as a mixture of a report of the shooting and the biography of a white supremacist.

“Rightists to Peres: Not your place to call for Palestinian state”. A picture of Israeli President Shimon Peres shows him looking deeply pensive in his chair. The president is largely a figurehead, so he does not have much power. For this reason, two right wing Israeli parties, one of which is in the governing coalition, spoke out against Peres discussing the two-state matter with Javier Solana. One of the parties, the National Union, said the president should cancel such meetings in future. Though the prime minister is likely to give some form of endorsement to the Road Map to Peace and the two-state solution in his speech on Sunday, it is likely that the parties that objected to Peres’ meeting with Solana feel it puts undue pressure on him. A link to this article from a couple of weeks ago says that President Peres criticised a right wing politician’s suggestion that Jordan should be the base of the Palestinian state. It was a fatuous suggestion, but was Mr Peres within his bounds to say so? And why is there so much stress on the right and left? The ideological divisions in Israeli society may be particularly wide; or perhaps Haaretz is keen to exploit them.

Another major story in today’s paper is that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released documents saying that Iran began its plan to enrich uranium in 1987 under the moderate Mir Hossein Mousavi. If a moderate could start a nuclear weapons programme, this implies, the Iranian state must be evil through and through. That said, buying centrifuges does not mean you are trying to make a bomb. The article does not mention that. And it repeats the fact that the centrifuges were bought on the black market.

The IAEA reported that the nuclear facility in Natanz was spinning 5000 centrifuges, up by 1000 from February, and has 2000 more ready to start enriching. I do not know how many that is. It is just a number. Do Israelis know how many bombs could be made with 7000 centrifuges? (According to the New York Times, it is enough to make one or two nuclear weapons a year.) I have noticed that numbers are a good way to win an argument. Since they can be manipulated, like all facts, numbers of bad things are always bigger on their side than ours, even if we do not know what the numbers denote. The article ended on the subject of the upcoming Iranian election in which Ahmadinejad and his opponent, Mousavi (the one who started enriching uranium) will be competing and left few wondering whom the newspaper was supporting. The public were reflecting “on whether they want to keep hard-line President Ahmadinejad in power or replace him with a reformist more open to closer ties with the West.”

Finally, Palestinian police found a 15-year-old boy hanged for allegedly collaborating with Israelis. His father, uncle and cousin confessed. Tragic and senseless, of course; but like the story about the little Zionist town in yesterday’s Palestinian Chronicle, we seem to be picking at small things about our enemies to exploit for propaganda’s sake. See how messed up they are? the journalist is saying.

The Alternative Information Center

To mix things up today, we are going to look at the Alternative Information Center, a joint effort between Israeli and Palestinian activists. The AIC calls itself internationally oriented, progressive (I like those words, even if I don’t know what they mean) organisation engaged in “dissemination of information, political advocacy, grassroots activism and critical analysis of the Palestinian and Israeli societies as well as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.” It strives for equality, freedom and rejection of separationist ideology. Perhaps not all news from the Middle East is anti- or pro- something. Or perhaps it is. Let us see what we can learn from this website.

The first thing that catches my eye is a video about a weekly protest of the separation barrier in a Palestinian village near Bethlehem. The speaker, a Palestinian, makes it clear he considers it apartheid, and says this wall is pushing the suffering of his people. Not all the protestors were Palestinians, however. An Israeli citizen had joined the demonstration, expressing his support for the tearing down of the wall. They are brave people, face to face with a dozen or more soldiers.

The podcast of a press conference by the parents of an American activist who was injured by the Israeli military. Jail time for those who deny the existence of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, or who commemorate the Naqba (the 1948 Palestinian exodus). Criticism of Netanyahu for his inaction on Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Photos of the Israeli attack on the UN mission in Gaza in January. A UN report on an Israeli order for more Palestinian housing demolitions. Another on checkpoints. A “new wave of unopposed attacks” by Jewish settlers on Arabs. If this truly is unbiased or evenhanded news, the Israelis have a huge amount to answer for.

But it is not. There are Israeli Jews on the editing team but that does not make it balanced. A neutral, equal parts Israeli and Palestinian perspective of reporting would not use words like “occupation”, because it is one-sided word. It would also show the perspectives of moderate Israelis, Jewish settlers and perhaps someone who had been injured by a Palestinian rocket attack. The AIC had none of those. While its points may be valid, even a cursory glance at the website evinces that its claims to critical analysis are unconvincing.

Tomorrow we will examine different newspapers, including the news from Hamas’s point of view.

One week of Israeli-Palestine conflict news from the source

Day 2

The Jerusalem Post

Today’s headline reads “Security cabinet directs IDF [Israeli Defence Forces] to respond to any Gaza aggression.” That doesn’t sound good. Next to it is a photo of guys in a quarry wearing ski masks jumping through a hoop of fire with the caption “PRC [don’t know] terrorists train in the central Gaza Strip.” The US wants Israel to ease the blockade of Gaza and the Israeli security cabinet is trying to figure out how to allow more goods to be traded without endangering Israelis.

The Gaza Strip is treated like a kind of rat’s nest: don’t let any of them out or they could bite you. Keep them stuffed in there and if any tries to bite you from inside, throw the poison down. According to the Post, a terrorist attack near the Karni crossing was foiled earlier this week. And the matter of the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit could lead to a prisoner swap. Interesting that they refer to an Israeli prisoner by name but do not hint at the name of any Palestinians. Perhaps the Palestinians do not have names.

“[D]efense officials continue opposing bringing concrete and steel into the Gaza Strip, arguing that it would be used not only to reconstruct buildings, but also to construct arms smuggling tunnels and rebuild Hamas’ rocket building capacity.” So do not expect a lot of reconstruction in the material sense. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak maintains there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. We cannot know from this article if he is right because it does not mention food. But the security cabinet, Ehud Barak and Binyamin Netanyahu all reaffirmed their commitment to the security of both the Israelis and the Palestinians.

A video of “Arafat’s ex-manager” reads “Israel and America killed Yasser Arafat”. Another video shows US Mideast envoy George Mitchell shaking hands with Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. Related articles are titled “Some Islamic extremists respond positively to Obama’s speech,” “Hillary Clinton’s troubling transformation on Israel” and the one I read yesterday, “Why Obama is wrong on Israel and the Shoah.” It is possible that the Jerusalem Post is trying to systematically take apart the Barack administration’s stance on Israel and Palestine in order to legitimise Netanyahu’s government’s dissent from it.

One article quotes Ehud Barak at length on Arab-Israeli matters such as Barack’s speech in Cairo, the two-state solution and Iran’s nuclear development. It is rare that one sees a Canadian or American newspaper with such full quotes of their leaders. It is perhaps an effort not to take Mr Barak out of context. The same article shows a photo of him shaking hands playfully with a group of smiling seventh graders.

Today’s Must-Reads includes “Taking a stand on Iran”, about Canadian legislation called the Iran Accountability Act, holding Iran and apparently everywhere else accountable for genocide. The article says that, while all signatories to the 1948 Convention of the Prevention of Genocide have a responsibility to stop genocide when it happens, “they have largely ignored…the world’s greatest threat [Iran].” Apparently, Iran is the most likely country in the world to commit genocide.

One Op Ed piece recognises, for the first time as I have read this week, the ideological divisions within Israeli discourse regarding human rights and security concerns. The rest of the articles tend to leave the impression of consensus, and the consensus is of taking a hard line on the enemy. This one, by senior fellows at the Israel Democracy Institute, a think tank, says that the US could learn something about counterterrorism from Israel, and that the ideological differences between Dick Cheney’s “no middle ground” on terror attitude and President Barack’s constitutional approach parallels the debate in Israel today. Thank you, gentlemen, for showing there are both soft and hard views in Israel on security and not simply varying degrees of hawk.

The Palestine Chronicle

“Lebanon’s Election Results and the Age of Resistance”: An election observer named Franklin Lamb, who saw it all, describes at length first the peaceful prayer that took place after the election in Lebanon on Monday, and then the peaceful elections. From his description, they sound very much like elections I have worked for in Canada, except with soldiers. The losing coalition is described as “disappointed but civil”. Mr Lamb quotes a member of Michel Aoun (leader of the losing coalition)’s senior political bureau, two members of Hezbollah and no one from the winning group.

On an angrier note, Mr Lamb proceeds to say that the Barack administration is disappointed their side did not perform better in the election, that they violated Lebanese voting laws by campaigning for their favourites and felt contempt for Lebanon’s voters. With regard to the weapons of “the resistance” (Hezbollah), which was such a big issue in this election, Israel insists on decommissioning them, but political will in Lebanon to do anything about it is weak. In other words, don’t expect Hezbollah to give up its arms.

At the end of the article, Mr Lamb puts somewhat confusing rallying calls for the National Lebanese Resistance to “defend a Zionist-terrorised Lebanon, staking their lives on their basic belief in God and the independence and sovereignty for their country and the Liberation of Palestine…. As this era of Resistance to Zionism spreads around the World and intensifies here and abroad, every hour that Lebanon resists brings the region closer to justice and real peace.”

The Chronicle featured two interesting commentaries on the US government: “Obama Spoke to Muslims for Oil, not Humanity” and “Obama’s Outreach to Muslims: Same Old Policies”. They might as well have been the same article. One writer suggests Barack’s campaign slogan should have been “Continuity We Can Believe In”. Without a lot of analysis, he says Barack was using “soft power” (influence through carrots rather than sticks) and peripherally examines his choice of Egypt to give his speech as likely to be popular with Americans. He also disagrees with Barack’s statement that the image of the US as a self-interested empire is a stereotype. The writer finds it “difficult for those with knowledge of American foreign policy history to believe.”

As with yesterday’s Palestine Times (and all newspapers, really), there are some perfunctories attacks on the paper’s enemies. One is about a town of 170 Jewish families in Israel. The town has begun requiring its citizens to take an oath of loyalty to “Zionism, Jewish heritage and settlement of the land”. The article called this “a thinly veiled attempt to block Arab applicants from gaining admission.” Really? It is veiled? I would call it an unveiled attempt to keep Arabs out. It was a move by the town council to put “Zionist values and Jewish heritage…at the heart of [the town’s] way of life. We don’t see this as racism in any way.” While I believe towns should have this right, it is clearly racist and highly reminiscent of the town of Herouxville, Quebec, that did something similar a few years ago. Nonetheless, does blasting a small town’s prejudiced choices really advance the Palestinian people’s cause?

I just realised that the Palestinian Chronicle is written largely by non-Muslims. The names of the contributors are most Anglo-Saxon or German (Jewish?)-sounding. Makes sense: get non-Muslims on your side to show that others agree with you, and even that the world is on your side. Its tagline reads “global voices for a better world”. Considering the nature of the articles, on the sinister US, terrorist Israel, and the plight of the Palestinians, it seems ironic to use a “better world” tagline and photo of olives, friendship and art to represent your cause. The paper is more about how they are making the world worse than how we can make the world better.

Haaretz

Being a newspaper more for English-speaking Jews around the world than Israelis alone, the leader of today’s Haaretz was that an 89-year-old (89!) white supremacist opened fire at a Holocaust museum in the United States. (When I return to the Jerusalem Post, its first article has been updated to the same news.) The second article was the same as the first of the Jerusalem Post, “Cabinet to IDF: Repond to any attack from Gaza”. This is clearly a big issue in Israel and it scares me to think of that “any” aggression from Palestinians in Gaza could mean a repeat of the war at the beginning of this year.

“US envoy: Obama won’t yield on settlement freeze”. This article says that Netanyahu has rejected the US demand, though it is an obligation under the Road Map to Peace. It also makes the first mention I have seen so far that George Mitchell, Barack’s Middle East envoy, was a a senator and the broker of the Good Friday peace agreement in Northern Ireland. This is the first article mentioning anyone from the US administration that makes an American seem human.

This item references Prime Minister Netanyahu as saying “Israel is acting to advance peace and security with the Palestinians and the Arab world,” and yet gave no details. Is this short statement meant to appease Israelis? To me at least, the lack of any details on this seemingly noteworthy act is suspicious. But perhaps I am in the minority, and Israelis reading it will nod their heads in understanding. The article gives more voice to Mr Mitchell and has him state clearly, “Let me be clear. These are not disagreements among adversaries. The United States and Israel are and will remain close allies and friends.” That’s pretty clear.

Writing on Ehud Barak’s speech to the Council for Peace and Security, comprising IDF, Shin Bet and Mossad veterans, one journalist says it was filled with the “staples: a little peace, an open hand extended to our neighbors, an existential threat or two.” He got a short interview with Mr Barak and protrays him as somewhat pessimistic. On one hand, his government is committed to the Road Map and the two-state solution; on the other, says Barak, “[t]he Road Map should be changed now that Hamas is in power.”

The Defense section had more words from Defense Minister Barak’s speech, tainted with the fear that American weapons to Lebanon’s army would end up in Hezbollah’s hands; and yet another on Barak and his comments foreshadowing more wars like Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in January. I don’t like labeling people I do not know personally, but it could be fair to call Barak a hawk.

A lot more of the headlines are related to Jewish West Bank settlements, though some are about Jewish comedy, a Tel Aviv gay pride parade and Liberian warlord Charles Taylor’s conversion to Judaism. And most interesting to me, both Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post have side bars about Jews marrying non-Jews. Scandalous!