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CounterPunch
October
9, 2002
Israel's Image
Problem
Fire Up the
Propaganda Mill
by LINDA HEARD
Israel is worried about its image these days.
With scenes of Israeli soldiers in full battle regalia beating
young boys at checkpoints, shooting at stone-throwing children
and bulldozing homes and orchards, the Israeli army is looking
as though it just stepped out of an old black-and white World
War II movie.
Images of bleeding and maimed civilians
in Gaza, who happened to get in the way of Israeli missiles,
isn't helping Israel's image worldwide either, even though Ariel
Sharon calls this recent carnage 'a great success'.
In an attempt to soften the brutal reality
for the gradually awakening American public, two U.S. Jewish
groups--the American Jewish Committee and Israel 21C--have paid
for an ad campaign set to air on 100 American cable television
networks.
The ads are on the theme of "we
are a democracy like you" and focus on Israel's supposed
freedom of speech, unfettered media, and respect for human rights.
One of the advertisements emphasises that Israel is America's
ally in the region, while another stresses "common values
and common visions".
If Americans had the chance--or were
determined enough--to see beyond such glaringly untruthful propaganda
and the Israel bias of their media, they would find such misrepresentation
laughable.
Such truth-seekers might begin by learning
about Mordechai Vananu, who has been languishing in an Israeli
prison for years all because he exercised his freedom of speech
and talked about Israel's nuclear weapons programme to The Sunday
Times.
Secret trial
Vananu was lured to Italy and then kidnapped
by the Mossad where he was drugged before being shipped out to
Israel. There, he was given a secret trial and sentenced to 18
years in Ashkelon Prison, he is kept in isolation. Few believe
that he will ever be allowed to go free.
Perhaps this whistle-blower has been
lucky. There is a worldwide campaign highlighting his case. Many
others on Israel's list of undesirables have been assassinated,
including several Egyptian nuclear scientists.
One of the most prominent such Israeli
assassinations was that of Dr. Yahya Meshad, a nuclear physicist
who worked for Iraq's Atomic Energy Commission. He was mysteriously
murdered in his hotel room in Paris in 1980. Mossad defector
Victor Ostrovsky confirmed that agents of his former employer
were responsible for Meshad's death.
At a time when Saddam Hussein is being
"ordered" to open up his palaces to not only UN weapons
inspectors but a posse of armed men, it is difficult to imagine
Ariel Sharon rendering his farm open house for inspections.
Israel, as we all know, boasts more weapons
of mass destruction than the entire Middle East put together,
but this doesn't bother the American government, which shares
"common visions" according to the ads. Today, Israel
is estimated to possess between 200 and 300 nuclear warheads.
Instead, the White House spokesman Ari
Fleischer has the audacity to encourage Iraqis to assassinate
their leader. Again, what would the international reaction be
if Saddam Hussein suggested that Americans should get rid of
theirs or that Palestinians should hunt down Ariel Sharon?
Alternatively, those Americans who refuse
to be indoctrinated, could fly to Israel for the purpose of speaking
to Israelis who dare to challenge their government policies such
as Uri Avnery.
That is if they are prepared to risk
being mistaken for international pro-Palestinian activists, who
are often turned back at Ben Gurion Airport, or arrested Avnery,
who in his youth was a member of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF),
is today a writer, activist for peace and the founder of the
Israeli peace organisation Gush Shalom.
The bearded and passionate Avnery would,
no doubt, tell his American guests that he has been hounded by
the Israeli government, which is threatening him with legal action
for writing letters to IDF officers, urging them to refrain from
committing crimes against humanity.
He warns members of the IDF that one
day they could find themselves in an international court being
charged with war crimes, and gives the example of former President
of Serbia Slobadan Milosovich, now on trial in The Hague.
Perhaps Avnery would show such American
visitors the letters of encouragement he has received from around
the world, including one from 36 French academics and peace activists.
Or, perhaps, the missive received from the respected American
writer and academic Naom Chomsky, who supports Avnery all the
way.
Gush Shalom is also campaigning to free
the popular former member of the Palestinian Council Marwan Barghouti
from Israeli custody, as well as protesting the crippling curfews,
which have been ongoing for around 180 days.
The movement is also pushing to get CNN
back into Israeli homes. So much for the new propaganda advertisements'
claims of 'an unfettered media'!
If Americans with enquiring minds can
get past the military checkpoints on the West Bank and evade
the curfews, they could see Palestinian children sleeping in
Internet cafes, desperate for education, currently being denied
them.
Early this month Unicef condemned the
IDF for preventing 170,000 Palestinian children from attending
school in breach of the Geneva Conventions and the Rights of
the Child.
Effect on children
Those same Americans could visit homes
where the cupboards and the refrigerators are bare because their
occupants haven't been allowed to go to their places of work
for months. Those who truly want to know could talk to psychologists
about the harm, which Israeli bombs, tanks and bulldozers are
doing to the minds of Palestinian children.
Then again, all they have to do is look
at the fear mirrored in those children's eyes, children who close
their lids every night wondering whether they will wake up amid
rubble or lose their parents to a stray bullet--or a bullet in
the back.
If they can get near enough to the compound
of President Yasser Arafat, where he still sits in his battered
shell of an office, they might wonder why this elder statesman,
while being labeled irrelevant by both the Bush administration
and the Likudists, is at the same time being held personally
responsible for every attack on Israelis.
If Ariel Sharon had his way, however,
Arafat would be far away by now as the Israeli daily Maariv reported.
At the request of Sharon and his defence minister Benjamin Eliezer
Israeli troops recently carried out a practice run for the deportation
of Arafat, using helicopters.
Arafat might well be waking up in an
undisclosed country by now if Washington had not opposed Arafat's
exile 'until further notice or until the American operation in
Iraq is completed, whichever comes first'.
Why is it essential for Americans, in
particular, to dig for some semblance of truth? The sad and irrefutable
fact is that without U.S. aid, written-off loans and American-manufactured
weapons, Israel would not be allowed to carry on its merry way.
Without the moral backing of America,
Israel would be held accountable; would have to comply with the
almost 70 UN resolutions it has thus far chosen to ignore and
would, itself, be obliged to open its doors to international
weapons inspectors.
The dollars of every working American
are going directly to finance Israeli aggression to the tune
of some $4.5 billion each year, while American companies, such
as the tobacco giant Philip Morris, the coffee house chain Starbucks,
and numerous others donate a proportion of their profits to the
Israeli government.
The real surprise is that the American
people seem not to mind, even in these belt-tightening times
when unemployment is up, stock markets are erratic and poverty
is on the increase.
At the same time American politicians
are being financed by Jewish lobbies such as AIPAC or intimidated
if they refuse to toe the line. As The Cleveland Jewish News
reported on October 2, "It's anyone's guess which party
will hold the majority in Congress come November, but one thing
is for sure: several leading anti-Israel voices will no longer
be heard in the Capitol's halls".
An official from AIPAC (American Israel
Public Affairs Committee) commented: "That is a reflection
of the strong support Israel enjoys throughout the country now."
Legislators Earl Hilliard and Cynthia
McKinney, discovered to their cost that criticising Israeli policies
wasn't the way to gain votes when their opponents received not
only Jewish votes but financial support from American Jewry.
Question Congress
Americans should ask just why Congress
bends over backwards trying to please Israel and the five million
plus Jewish voters in the U.S. They might also ponder upon just
why Congress has just voted to designate Jerusalem as the capital
of Israel at the very moment when tensions are running higher
than ever in Palestine.
Such a resolution has done little except
to inflame the understandable anger and frustration, which most
Palestinians understandably feel.
If the American President George W. Bush
succeeds in leading the U.S. into a bloody war with Iraq, then
Americans might just discover to their horror that their government
has more in common with Sharon and his crew than they might ever
have <imagined.Who> knows!
It may soon be the turn of the U.S. to
produce its own ads portraying that it, too, is a democratic
country with free speech, a free press and an excellent human
rights record. It is up to the Americans themselves to ensure
that in such an eventuality we won't all be incredulous at those
too.
Linda S. Heard
is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She can be reached
at: She can be reached at: freenewsreport@yahoo.com
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