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The Palestinian Side Must Be Told
With inline commentary by Stefan Sharkansky
The following is Scheer’s own quote lifted from below. The reader might want to ask herself if anything else that Scheer writes here is consistent with this statement. “It is my view that the prime historical responsibility for the failure to make peace in the Mideast lies with the refusal of the Arab nations to accept the justifiable existence of the Jewish state.” At least he gets that part right. Is there media
bias against Israel? Not necessarily, but there are a number of opinionated yet incompetent columnists who habitually misinform the public about the Middle East. The claim, hotly
expressed in thousands of angry e-mails and subscription cancellations, that
the U.S. media are anti-Israel is so absurd as to suggest hysteria. Are
American Jews in such deep denial about the brutality of Israel's recent
actions that they would damn those who report the truth? Certainly the
American media are far more sympathetic to Israel than publishers and
journalists in the rest of the world. This is particularly true in Western
Europe, perhaps reflecting the widespread public sympathy there for the
Palestinians, as measured in recent polls. Did anybody take a poll in Poland in 1938? The Europeans, by and large, have seldom cared about Jews. The few decades of the post-war era might have seen some post-Holocaust guilt. There’s not much historical precedent to suggest that Europeans will continue to be sympathetic to Jews. Not that sympathy
for Israelis, bloodied repeatedly by a merciless bombing campaign targeting
civilians, is not equally warranted. It is my view that the prime historical
responsibility for the failure to make peace in the Mideast lies with the
refusal of the Arab nations to accept the justifiable existence of the Jewish
state. Thank you. You might want to quit while you’re ahead. However, the
traditional absence of acknowledgement in U.S. news reporting of the ongoing
victimization of the Palestinians, powerless from the beginning of their
displacement half a century ago, is callously immoral. You have a valid point. The “prime historical responsibility,” as you might say, for the victimization belongs with those who fail to accept the justified existence of Israel and refuse to help Palestinians to deal constructively with that reality. Hence we have Palestinians festering in “refugee camps” for 54 years, being told to hang on, they will be allowed kick the Zionists out of Israel “real soon now”. Moreover, no group
is so safely denigrated in the mass media of this country, particularly in
film, as "the Arabs," who became the enemy of choice in post-Cold War
movie-making in such films as "True Lies." And no group is as
underrepresented in the media work force; there are more than 3 million Arab
Americans, yet it is exceedingly rare to find one working as a newspaper
reporter or TV news personality. The American
Society of Newspaper Editors doesn't even include Arabs or Muslims in its
annual monitoring of groups underrepresented in the nation's newsrooms. Surely,
if there were even a sprinkling of people in the news biz who were hearing from
relatives in Ramallah or Jenin, it would influence the way events are
interpreted. I doubt that ethnic profiling is a good solution to any situation. But how do you go about counting Arabs and Muslims? You seem unaware that there is enormous diversity and conflict within the Arab and Muslim worlds. And only the Palestinians, a small minority among Arabs, are even likely to have relatives in Palestine. Do we ensure balance between Sunni and Shiite Muslims? Do we lay-off the extra Yemeni when we finally find an Egyptian Copt? Do Berbers, Kurds and Assyrians score as many points as Alawites? Jews are not
underrepresented in the U.S. media ranks,and it is a testament to their
professionalism that their coverage is balanced. Odd, though, that other Jews
deem their work prejudiced against Israel and at times even anti-Semitic; the
convenient denigration is that a Jewish journalist who dares disagree with the
more hawkish actions of Israel must be consumed with self-hate. Perhaps it’s a testament to the discernment and lack of prejudice among readers who criticize journalism on its own merits without regard to the ethnicity of the journalist. Full disclosure: I
am Jewish and I daily converse with Jewish friends and acquaintances whose
relatives, including their children, are living through the hell that suicide
bombers have brought to the heart of Israel's civic life. Meanwhile, I have not
a single acquaintance who is personally connected with anyone on the Palestinian
side of events. Your second- and third- hand connections to the conflict give you unassailable credibility as an expert. But I’m not sure why you think that there is a fundamental problem with the U.S. media just because you’ve been too lazy to develop a greater variety of sources. Why don’t you just try harder to get to know more Palestinians? In particular, why don’t you get to know some Palestinian families who celebrate their suicide-bomber children and try to understand their perspective? (Hint: Be sure to tell them that you’re Jewish) I would hazard to
guess that most Jewish editors and reporters living in the United States are in
a similar situation. Shouldn't that make us less likely to be deeply affected
by the traumas visited upon Palestinian civilians by Israeli tanks and
helicopters because they have not been recounted by our own friends and family? It is to the
immense credit of U.S. journalists of whatever background that they stand
broadly accused of being sympathetic to the Palestinians--not because the
charge rings true, but because it indicates they have somewhat succeeded in
humanizing the face of an otherwise alien people. To humanize a people does not
mean to apologize for the behavior of murderous individuals, movements or institutions
representing the dark revenge fantasies of a people's consciousness, of course.
But to blindly endorse the outrage of one side while ignoring the pain of the
other does both a disservice. It would have been
irresponsible for the media, Jewish or not, to fail to report the depressing
accounts of United Nations and other observers that the Israeli onslaught was
aimed at destroying all signs of civic life as well as the stated purpose of
rooting out terror. Sadly, much of Palestinian “civic life” is in support of the terrorist infrastructure. The educational system is designed to indoctrinate children to deny the legitimacy of Israel and to hate Israelis and other Jews. see http://www.edume.org/reports/7/toc.htm And frankly, if the Palestinians would otherwise devote so much of their efforts to violence, it is a legitimate defensive strategy to force them to rebuild their infrastructure so they have something to do instead of committing murder. Or to treat
Palestinian civilian deaths as a necessary evil made legitimate because they
are caused by U.S.-supplied tanks and choppers rather than by suicide bombers.
There was a time when the Zionist pioneers did not have tanks and helicopters
and also placed bombs to get rid of the British occupiers. There is a difference between an anti-colonial movement targeting foreign military occupiers in an occupied land, and murdering civilians in their home towns. As far as I know, the Zionist pioneers were not shooting at old ladies in Birmingham supermarkets to drive the British out of England. If the Palestinians had limited their violent attacks to, say, military facilities in the occupied territories only, the entire conflict might have been framed differently, and probably would have ended decades ago. But remember the quote from the top? “It is my view that the prime historical responsibility for the failure to make peace in the Mideast lies with the refusal of the Arab nations to accept the justifiable existence of the Jewish state.” Sadly, the dominant thread of Palestinian opinion seems to view 89-year-old ladies at a Passover seder in Netanya as a colonial occupation force. In that context, Israel’s only choice for now is to actively defend itself again, and again, and again. I sure hope this changes. The truths on both
sides of this war are unfathomably ugly; the media have performed a great
service in alerting the world to them. Now, it is up to all of us to demand
that the powers of the world intervene to halt the tragic carnage and push both
sides toward negotiations for a lasting peace. Do we need to remind ourselves where the “prime historical responsibility” for this war lies? One analogy to Scheer’s Pollyanic platitudes and goofy prescriptions is that if the American media in the 1930s had only hired more German reporters and then forced Hitler back to the negotiating table we could have had a lasting peace without World War II. Try again. Copyright © 2002 Robert
Scheer commentary by Stefan Sharkansky Return to Stefan's Mid-East Page |