There needs to be an outlook analogous to intelligence gathering. Not only does there have to be a mastery of the brief, but also knowledge of the arguments of the other side. To counteract the other side's high level performance, there must be assiduous study to understand how it operates and thinks. This is not only a matter for experts but also for the public. In a democracy, there needs to be a congruity between the leadership and the outlook of the electorate. The Oslo process fractured Israel's body politic, so it is important that citizens and Government departments give a consistent message and are capable, together, of taking the offensive in the propaganda war. To do this effectively, there must be a clear grasp of how events will be construed by the Western press.
Resignation to being misunderstood and cruelly misrepresented will produce defeatism and apathy. It may even be misinterpreted as acceptance of the false accounts of events. The question therefore remains: how can the truth be broadcast effectively if there is no - or very little - monitoring of the coverage by the foreign press?
The Government Press Office's news and information section, which disseminates and translates information to foreign correspondents from a myriad of government sources, shut down for the whole of last week because its one remaining employee was on vacation. The staff was cut from six a year and a half ago, and the section has effectively been without a director for five months: Former director Moshe Fogel's resignation formally took effect the day before Rosh Hashana, when the crisis broke out, although he hadn't been at the job since early summer.ii These few have had to cope with 350 press organizations that have permanent representatives in Israel and close to 1,300 other correspondents arrived during the current warfare. The need for a serious effort to approach them is obvious. It is an essential prerequisite for understanding how others see Israel and why this may matter - even to a nation that must stand alone. Here are a few issues and examples to illustrate these points. Punishment like that meted out to Serbia, or in the form of projected EU economic sanctions, is best avoided if possible.
"Guerrillas to face new onslaught by Israelis." This is a genuine headline of no less a newspaper than The Independent,iii unaligned to any particular British political party, which many believe has gradually displaced The Times as the provider of the most objective reporting. "After bombarding Palestinian towns with missiles from tanks and combat helicopters, shooting dead a scores of civilians, [sic] and flattening apartment blocks and orchards, Israel's army says it now plans to go on the offensive - and 'take the initiative' against Tanzim gunmen." Hezbollah terrorists were called guerrillas in the British media too. The suggestion of legitimate resistance is intended. If countermeasures to terrorist attacks are viewed in this way, there is a strong argument for being far more preemptive. The interpretation would be the same!
The account continues: "The conflict is taking on the appearance of a low-level war with a strong undercurrent of sectarian killings motivated by revenge and ethnic hatred." In Britain, almost the only time the word "sectarian" is used is in the context of Northern Ireland, where it has a connotation of humanist intolerance towards those who have religious convictions. It is immediately negative and applicable to both sides equally. "With no prospect of a successful ceasefire - the Sharm el-Sheikh agreement was still-born - the signs are that the sectarian bloodletting will only increase, with tit-for-tat lynchings." Nobody was killed by Israeli lynching and the moral equivalence here seems stark. Nor are we told why the Sharm el-Sheikh ceasefire failed, though the West recognized it was not for lack of Israeli goodwill or moderation.
"But most of the killing in the past month has been by Israeli soldiers using M-16s, steel-coated rubber bullets, and high-powered sniper rifles. Btselem, an Israeli human rights organisation, said that 95 Palestinian civilians had now been killed by the Israeli security forces, plus a further 14 security men and 13 Palestinians with Israeli citizenship." The clever device of specifying the weaponry seems to make the point that it is being used in a cynical, illegitimate manner to kill Palestinians. No explanation is offered. "'Unbalanced, adventurous, dangerous, undisciplined' - and that was a former Israeli chief of defence staff talking"... about Ariel Sharon, according to The Independent editorial of October 14.iv No suspicion is voiced that the general's comment may have been colored by his party affiliation. The slighting tone reflects political partiality and prejudice.
Under the headline "Armed only with slingshots, teenagers take on the soldiers", Roger Whitaker, Jerusalem correspondent for The Independent, attacked Yedioth Aharonot for "obsessive concentration on the details at the expense of the principles" when the Israeli paper was querying the inflated injury figures Arafat used to manipulate the Arab League summit meeting.v "Yet there was no discussion of whether 100 deaths was not too many. It is taken for granted that Mr Arafat has a huge army of young Palestinians ready to die at his word, and that if they throw stones they must be shot. No commentator has stopped to ask whether it might be wiser to stop supplying him with victims." Here we have the standard canard of unprincipled Israel shooting stone throwers without a thought.
Reporting the actions to which Israel was responding would not only be fair but would also demonstrate the restraint under which Israeli attempts to contain the Palestinian violence were operating. From the start of the ongoing daily unrest on September 29, 2000, until October 31, 2000, there were over 3,200 attacks recorded by the IDF, including 600 shooting attacks. (This is important because Western reporting and camera footage is of stone throwing versus Israeli soldiers with guns). At least 400 firebombs were thrown and 26 explosive devices were detonated against Israel's security forces.vi
The following was published in a major US newspaper, but never saw the light in Britain: "The truth about the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli deaths is that Israelis have been actively seeking to limit fatal casualties in this conflict while, unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the Palestinian side... those in the Arab world who encourage this violent strategy should be held accountable for the appalling and unnecessary loss of life over the past four weeks."vii
The reality of corruption seldom hits the headlines. Demanding "much greater accountability and openness from the Palestinians" is not much punishment when British aid earmarked for poor Palestinians is "used by the European Union to finance luxury flats - with Italian granite-fitted designer kitchens - for rich supporters of Yasser Arafat." Given that "More than œ1.2 billion has been given by all international donors to the Palestinians in the past five years," [1994-1998] and that "The Palestinian Authority's own auditors have already embarrassed Arafat with an inquiry which showed that nearly 40% of his administration's budget was misused or stolen through 'kickbacks'," while "The EU auditors warn the same corruption could apply to money in its projects and demanded 'extreme vigilance',"viii it would only be fair for the Western press to give informed context and background when referring to such matters. As much as 50% of what is given to the PA is taken by Arafat and 15% is spent on the acquisition of illegal weapons.ix
The Palestinian poverty and frustration the cameras like to pick out is usually blamed by Western reporters on economically damaging closures of "the West Bank and Gaza Strip" (or "the occupied territories"). An occasional reference to the role of PA corruption in causing this poverty and frustration would not come in amiss. Besides, Arafat - not Israel - sets off the terrorism and riots making the closures necessary for security reasons.
The leading role of intellectuals in inciting the Palestinian violence is largely ignored. "UN agencies appeal for aid to alleviate Israeli blockade", The Guardian reported under the headline "Gaza running out of money for food". It stressed that "this is the fuel" for the violence, "the ring of steel" tightened to exclude fuel and commodities except food and medicine.x
This media role in the education of the public is crucially important. Just as the Israeli electronic media have been accused of managing and making news rather than simply reporting, observing and interpreting it,xi so in Britain Professor Richard Rose's comment more than a decade ago, is plainly no longer true: "The press do not create public opinion; they tend to reinforce the predispositions of their audience."xii This can be demonstrated by a poll published by The Daily Telegraph.xiii It commences by pointing out: "Israel's tough military response to Arab unrest in the West Bank and Gaza has clearly inflicted considerable damage on Israel's standing in this country...." Gallup asked respondents whether they thought Israel's reaction to the Arab protests had been too heavy-handed. More than half - 54 per cent - said they thought it had been. Only a third as many - 18 per cent - thought it had not. Most of the remainder - 23 per cent - admitted that they had no view one way or the other. 24% trusted Barak more than Arafat but 13% trusted Arafat more! 14 per cent said that their sympathy lay with Israel. Virtually the same proportion - 16 per cent - supported the Palestinians. The great majority - 64 per cent - replied either "don't know" (26 per cent) or "neither" (38 per cent). All this goes to show that governments and media abroad need to have much more information from the Israeli side authoritatively presented to them.
"The propaganda war has put Israel unfairly in the dock. But the main cause of failure is Arafat's duplicity and intransigence in dealing with a prime minister ready to take huge risks for a permanent settlement. Whatever the rest of the EU decides, Britain should now rally behind Israel in its hour of need."xiv Israel needs to present arguments against those perpetually putting her in the dock.
Notes
i Stephen Karetzky in Stephen Karetzky and Norman Frankel (editors), The Medias' Coverage of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Shapolsky Books, 1989, p. xiv.
ii Catherine Cohen and Tamar Hausman, "Foreign press ired by Government Media Center cuts", Ha'aretz, December 8, 2000.
iii Phil Reeves, "Guerrillas to face new onslaught by Israelis." Defence Minister sends in crack army units to combat Tanzim gunmen, while damning report attacks 'shoot-to-kill' tactics", The Independent, October 31, 2000.
iv Comment in the Weekend Review, p.3.
v The Independent, October 23, 2000, p. 11.
vi Israel Wire, October 31, 2000.
vii David Ivry, "Israel's Restraint", Washington Post, October 27, 2000, p. A35.
viii Stephen Grey, "British Aid Used to House Arafat Elite", The Sunday Times, November 29, 1998.
ix Rachel Ehrenfeld, Arafat, the World's "Blind Spot", Ariel Center for Policy Research, Policy Paper Number 17, 1997, p. 7.
x Suzanne Goldenberg, reporting from Gaza, November 24, 2000, p. 167.
xi Yisrael Medad and Eli Pollak, Israel's Electronic Broadcasting: Reporting or Managing the News?, Ariel Center for Policy Research, Policy Paper Number 50, 1998.
xii Richard Rose, Politics in England Change and Persistence, 5th edition, Macmillan, 1989, p. 205.
xiii Professor Anthony King, "'Too tough' Israel loses support in Britain", October 28, 2000, p. 21.
xiv Conclusion of the lead editorial, The Daily Telegraph, October 15, 2000.
