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CounterPunch
September
21, 2002
Worthy and
Unworthy Victims
Munich Matters, Sabra and Shatila Don't
by
TOM GORMAN
Between August 27 and September 10, 2002, the
Los Angeles Times ran a well-written series of articles on the
anniversary of the 1972 Munich Olympics. Entitled "Munich
Olympics: Thirty Years Later," the series contained twenty
articles totaling over 18,000 words, the equivalent of almost
500 column inches, or 41 column feet of text. At least eight
articles dealt specifically with the event for which the 1972
Games are most remembered, the brutal kidnapping and murder of
eleven Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists.
On the anniversary of the attacks, September
5, a 6352-word article appeared. Titled "Black September;
Long Before The Twin Towers Fell, Dream Of Security At Games
Toppled When Arabs Murdered 11 Israelis," the article was
accompanied by a gruesome photograph of Yoseph Gutfreund, the
Israeli wrestling referee, sitting in the helicopter seat at
the airport where he was murdered by the terrorists. The image
of Gutfreund's slumped, manacled, and lifeless body is juxtaposed
with a current photo of his two daughters, each standing with
one of their daughters, the granddaughters that Gutfreund never
knew. The article described at length the sorrow experienced
by the Gutfreunds, and their struggle to carry on after their
father's ghastly murder.
To its credit the LA Times gave an account
of the Israeli reaction to the terrorist attack, however brief.
A 543-word article on September 6 described the tragedy of Mossad
agents hunting down and executing the wrong man. Ahmed Bouchiki
was gunned down on the street in Lillehammer, Norway on July
21, 1973 while waiting for a bus with his pregnant wife. The
Israeli agents had mistaken him for one of the Munich terrorists.
Given this exhaustive (and entirely proper)
coverage of the thirtieth anniversary of the terrorist crimes
in Munich in 1972, a fair-minded observer would expect the anniversary
of a terrorist crime with perhaps a hundredfold (if not more)
of the deaths at the Olympics to receive at least equal coverage.
Referred to here are not the horrific crimes of September 11,
2001; an enormous amount of (again, entirely proper) coverage
of the first anniversary of those atrocities was featured in
the Los Angeles Times. It is the twentieth anniversary of the
terrorist killings at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps that
one would think worthy of at least equal, if not significantly
greater, coverage in the LA Times. The details of these attacks
are easily available.
In a fair media culture, one would expect
to see:
- Lengthy and detailed descriptions of
the events of September 16-18, 1982, including the tacit (or
even overt) permission given by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF)
to the Christian Phalange and Haddad militia to move into the
camps.
- Statements that the Haddad militia (followers
of a defector from the Lebanese Army who was set up as a puppet
in the southern area of Lebanon occupied by Israel) was essentially
an arm of the IDF.
- Reports of IDF flares lighting the camps
on the night of the 16th, to help the militia complete its "mopping
up" of "terrorist nests," as then-Defense Minister
Ariel Sharon described their mission.
- Accounts of the brutal slaughter continuing
until the 18th, with Israeli forces watching the carnage from
a promontory that provided a clear view inside the camps.
- Interviews with the survivors of the
horrible acts of September 16-18, 1982.
- Pictures showing the slaughtered corpses
of the victims of these terrorist attacks, including photos of
the living descendants of these victims, as well as an accompanying
article talking of the emotional suffering of these descendants.
- Given that the current leader of Israel
was one of the principal actors in this pogrom, a detailed account
of the Kahan Commission investigation, wherein the Israeli government
declared then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon indirectly guilty
of war crimes for the deaths of anywhere between several hundred
to several thousand Palestinian men, women, and children.
Yes, one would expect. But what is found
when we search the Los Angeles Times for the days surrounding
the twentieth anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacres?
A deafening silence.
Indeed, a researcher has to go back to
June 27 of this year to find the most recent reference to the
attacks on Sabra and Shatila in the LA Times, and then it is
a report about a Belgian court dismissing a war crimes case against
Ariel Sharon. The court argued that since Sharon was not physically
in Belgium, he could not be prosecuted for war crimes in connection
with the Sabra and Shatila massacres. A recent Belgian law allowed
for the prosecution of any person for war crimes, regardless
of the nationality of the accused or the place of the alleged
crime. Thus, the only reference to the Sabra and Shatila massacre
in the Los Angeles Times over the last three months has been
a story describing how Ariel Sharon will escape prosecution.
Lest anyone believe the lack of coverage
in the LA Times an anomaly, there was practically no coverage
of the Sabra and Shatila massacre in any mainstream American
press. Aside from an account on the Associated Press and UPI
wires of Palestinian marking the anniversaries (rather than these
media outlets providing detailed retrospectives on the crimes),
the only mention of the anniversary in the mainstream press was
put at the end of a September 18 article in The New York Times
which first discussed the bombing of a Palestinian school by
Israeli settlers (occupiers), and then the fact that, "For
the Israelis, it was the 29th anniversary of the 1973 Middle
East war, also known as the Yom Kippur war, in which Israel came
under surprise attack from Egypt and Syria, assisted by other
Arab nations." Mention of atrocities against Palestinians,
assuming they are mentioned at all, must always be prefaced with
an allegation of Arab treachery, namely a "surprise attack"
in 1973.
Why this disparity in coverage? The answer
is all-too simple. The crimes of Palestinian terrorists committed
against Israelis will always be portrayed as more egregious than
anything of which Israel may be guilty, even if those Israeli
crimes result in a body count that is one hundred times greater.
What would be surprising is if the US
media gave anything approaching equal coverage of the 1982 massacre.
If the "propaganda model" (see Edward S. Herman and
Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent) of the media is accurate,
this disparity in coverage is wholly predictable. A reader would
not expect the US media, if it were a propaganda device of the
government and elite interests, to show a balance. An observer
should not expect the media to argue that the conduct of the
very political and corporate interests they serve (and in many
cases the media and these elite interests are one and the same),
is in any way comparable to the comparatively minor actions of
official enemies. People, whether at the individual or corporate
and state level, are always more willing to point fingers at
an agreed-upon "evildoer" than to look in the mirror.
Hypocrisy is perhaps the most devious human vice.
In an open society such as the US, the
propaganda function of the media serves a dual purpose; not only
are the atrocities committed by official allies not deemed newsworthy,
but the media is also characterized as a "free press."
Therefore, it seems illogical for someone to point out that the
media might be biased in its coverage of official allies versus
that of official enemies. The discussion of press bias in a case
such as that of Munich versus Sabra a Shatila cannot even begin
because people are indoctrinated from a very early age to believe
that the ideal of a free press espoused by their leaders, parents,
and other authority figures reflects reality.
Unfortunately for the victims and survivors
of Sabra and Shatila, there is no such reality.
(Many thanks to Ed Herman for the thesis
of this essay).
Tom Gorman
lives in Pasadena, California. He welcomes comments at tgorman222@hotmail.com
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September
20, 2002
Joan Hoff
Debating
War:
the Forgotten Tradition
Norman Madarasz
Lessons from a Cyncial Master
Jean Chretien's New York
State of Mind
Mitchel Cohen
Toxic Wastes
and
the New World Order
Peter Lee
Why Bush
Wants This War
Bruce Jackson
20 Questions
About Bush's
War Against Arabs
Krystal Kyer
Greenwashing the Marketplace
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Ron Jacobs
Cheney's
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Ilija Trojanow
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Jordy Cummings
How
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The Rape
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Richard Falk
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Ralph Nader
How Congress
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Kurt Nimmo
Bush Senior:
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September
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Rep. Cynthia
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Goodbye
to All That
Jeffrey St.
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Cancerous
Air
Born Under a Bad Sky
Ben Tripp
Smoking
Gun
of a Hatchet Job
Peggy Thomson
20 Years
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