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March
28, 2001
The Vocabulary
of Revenge
By Nigel Parry
http://nigelparry.com
Sitting here in St.
Paul, Minnesota, scanning the international wire service reports
breaking like a speedboat oil slick on the shores of a nature
reserve, I wonder if it is finally the time to admit that the
craft of journalism is dead, buried under the thick sludge of
a media system whose own worst enemy is its 'efficiency'.
As journalists
rush to name the events unfolding in front of them of which they
often have only limited understanding, scrabbling to get the
mandatory quotes and statistics, many are also trying to reconcile
what they believed they would be doing as they gazed out of lecture
hall windows into a future beyond journalism school, with their
current reality of being chained by deadlines to a chair, in
front of a computer, in a room, far from the events on which
they are supposed to be reporting.
A BBC World
Service Radio producer, stationed in Jerusalem during the current
Intifada, told me that the sheer number of deadlines for programmes
that electronic media journalists (radio, TV, Internet) are expected
to meet usually preclude investigation, usually preclude travelling
to the scene, and usually preclude any serious thought about
the matter at hand. In a world demanding instant news, journalists
have become slaves to a machine.
Today's attack
by Israel on Palestinian targets in my former West Bank home,
Ramallah (as well as in Gaza), offered a classic example of this
victory of form over content.
Israel's line,
as it sends combat helicopters to blast away at "precise"
(the Israeli occupation army's spokesman's term) or "carefully
selected" targets (Israeli prime minister Sharon's term),
is that all of this is "retaliation" for the recent
suicide attacks against Israeli civilians by Palestinian militant
groups.
Reuters reported
that the Israeli spokesman stated: "There was a strike on
one target in Ramallah and on a number of targets in Gaza. These
were very precise strikes chosen for their involvement in terror
activity."
What were these
"precise" and "carefully selected" targets?
According to
reports, they were buildings and small armoured vehicles belonging
to Yasser Arafat's presidential guard, Force 17 ("Kuwaat
Sabatash" in Arabic).
Was it merely
my imagination that the responsibility for these bomb attacks
was claimed by Islamic groups? What has Arafat's presidential
security force got to do with anything?
Everything.
For quite some time now, Israel has attempted to paint Arafat
as the instigator of the current uprising and bomb attacks.
Blaming the
Intifada on Arafat as opposed to the Palestinian people as a
whole and blaming Arafat for the bombings as opposed to the handful
of Palestinians that carry them out, draws attention away from
the fact that the Palestinian people as a whole are rising up
in reaction to Israel's 33-year old military occupation and its
associated repression.
This, of course,
has carried on unabated despite seven years of 'peace' accords
and negotiations, leaving the Palestinians haggling over less
than a quarter of their historic land.
With Arafat
presented as the sole player and the 3 million Palestinians as
mere robotic followers of his orders, both the Palestinians and
their suffering are thus marginalised and rendered invisible.
As Israeli
claims of Arafat's omnipotence are usually made with reference
to Israel's 'willingness' to return to the 'peace process', a
secondary effect of this line is the reinforcing of the myth
that Israel has made one reasonable attempt after another at
reaching a historical compromise, rather than having carried
on business as usual.
Scapegoating
Arafat is a very clever and effective strategy that plays into
Western perceptions of Arabs and Arafat's own, media-challenged
image, and this strategy seems to tiptoe unnoticed past the piles
of paper, demanding editors, and ringing telephones that plague
foreign correspondents 'on the ground'.
As I've both
said and written before, Oslo brought a reality far worse than
that experienced before to the front doors of Joe and Jane Palestinian
and -- if anything -- I remain surprised that it took the Palestinian
people as long as it did to rise up to claim the media spotlight
back from the ineffectual and corrupt Arafat, and take their
destiny into their own hands, however imperfectly.
Like the stones
Palestinians throw, each a piece of rock formed by several millennia
of geological pressure, so too have there been decades of pressure
to shape each hand that throws its stone at an Israeli occupation
soldier.
Each hand and
stone combined is a jewel sparkling under the light of an over-riding
and unarguable dynamic of human life that dictates that no people
will accept being exploited, marginalised, and ruled with an
iron fist.
More coloquially,
each stone is a "fuck you" to Israel for a lifetime
wasted negotiating checkpoints, for days spent sucked into submission
by a swamp filled with layer upon layer of bureaucratic slime,
and for being daily rendered powerless by a racist occupation
army that is always ready to kill you if you protest against
its bulldozers, relentlessly taking what is yours.
Just each stone?
How about each
bomb, for that matter, or is there no link between decades of
oppression, and terrorism directed at the oppressors?
There are some
things that we are not allowed to even think, never mind say
or write, even if the bald, naked, and ugly lie is standing right
in front of us asking to be named.
This is one
of them.
Although Israel
may point at a bombing perpetrated by less than a handful of
people to justify its national army rocketing targets in a city
full of people, may God help anyone who attempts to trace the
link back in the opposite direction.
Rather, we
are only allowed to condemn in this strange semantic prison that
has been constructed for the safe discussion of terrorism but,
while we are here, let us talk about this 'retaliation' about
which we have been given temporary speaking rights:
retaliation
\Re*tal`i*a"tion\, n.
The act of
retaliating, or of returning like for like; retribution;
now, specifically, the return of evil for evil; e.g., an eye
for an
eye, a tooth for a tooth.
-- Source:
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA,
Inc. --
AN EYE FOR
AN EYE, A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH
"An eye
for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."
This is closer
to the truth. Revenge, an enraged 10-year-old boy with a fleet
of combat helicopters at his disposal, has developed a media
strategy with its own strange vocabulary, and we are being taught
to speak his language.
Israel walks
a dangerous path when it starts talking about "retaliation"
because the word itself actively makes a claim that we must examine,
in light of what has been done by each side, to each side.
This is an
equation that the Palestinians have been trying to bring to the
world for the second half of the last century and an equation
we've been very good at ignoring.
It's hard to
imagine a 'proportional response' to the Palestinian experience
of the last 50 years, which is what the word 'retaliation' plainly
infers.
What would
be a 'proportional response' to the Israeli ethnic cleansing
of Palestine that resulted in the dispossession and exile of
nearly one million Palestinians and the 33 subsequent years of
force, might, beatings, and yet more dispossession, for those
that stuck it out on the ground?
In trying to
answer this question, it is clear that the Intifada is the very
least Palestinians can do, and it is incumbant for us to remember
that the uprising has the legitimacy of international law behind
it.
Back to these
harried journalists 'on the ground', 'besieged' by deadlines,
'under attack' from impatient editors, and 'occupied' with trying
to get their jobs done.
According to
the Israeli Ha'aretz newspaper, 350 foreign media organisations
have permanent representatives based in the country. Following
the outbreak of the Second Intifada, Ha'aretz noted the arrival
of another 1,300 and that by the middle of December 2000, 400
of these were still present. 750 windows on the conflict, plugged
by satellite and Internet into our television sets, radios, and
newspapers.
Dr. Joel Cohen,
a lecturer in communications at the Academic-Technological Institute
of Holon and a research fellow at Bar Ilan University, undertook
a study into these foreign correspondents, summarised by Ha'aretz
on 6 November 2000. The article stated:
"The data
that the foreign correspondents supplied about themselves are
quite surprising in view of the Israeli claim of a clear pro-Palestinian
bias among the press. The vast majority of the correspondents
report from Israel about news from the Palestinian Authority
as well, and about the conflict in general. A fairly large proportion
among them are Jewish, most have lived in Israel for many years
(almost 10 years is the average), and some are married to Israeli
women. Some are veteran Israeli journalists who report from Israel
to the foreign media on a permanent basis."
Perhaps the
most important aspect of this demographic that we trust to provide
us with information on which we can lobby our government to make
sane policy decisions is that all but a literal handful of the
foreign and Israeli correspondents -- who write for the English-language
news agencies and wire services -- live in Israeli-controlled
parts of the country.
News is often
produced with only irregular exposure to Palestinian society,
without visiting Palestinian areas and, in the worst cases, Palestinians
are not even consulted for any reaction to events before publication.
All last week, during Sharon's visit to the US, the Associated
Press neglected to seek any Palestinian opinion for its reports
on the visit.
Is it any wonder
that when I log on to CNN's website, to see how today's story
is being covered, that it is both headlined and leads with the
'retaliation' concept?
The headline:
"Israeli
attacks kill 1 in Arafat's bodyguard unit: Targets selected in
Ramallah and Gaza in **retaliation** for bombings"
Web-posted
at 2:31pm EST.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/meast/03/28/israel.attacks.03/index.html
First paragraph:
"The Israel
Defense[1] Forces sent helicopter gunships and tanks to hit targets
associated with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat Wednesday, **responding**
to a series of deadly attacks against Israelis."
[1] This, in
itself, is a rather ironic and unqualified description of an
occupying army.
Although CNN
is correctly reporting what Israel has said about the attacks,
this is not presented in quotations as it should be but instead
in a factual statement and headline, both of which frame the
rest of the article.
As for the
rest of the article, half is comprised of reportage of the bombings
for which Israel is 'retaliating' for, the inclusion of which
in this quantity serves to buttress the weak Israeli justification,
and although Palestinian sources are given space to comment,
**no investigative questioning of this linkage takes place at
any level in the article.**
The next CNN
update is headlined, "Israeli Cabinet minister says attack
'defensive'".
Web-posted
at 4:45pm EST.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/meast/03/28/israel.attacks.04/index.html
The rest of
this second article follows a similar pattern to the last, with
over half the article dedicated to the bombings in Jerusalem,
again helpfully linking the events, dumbing it down for the masses.
Journalists
may be tempted to claim that this inclusion is offered "for
background" to the Israeli statements. Don't believe a word
of it. It is important to note that neither report makes any
mention of the Israeli military occupation.
CNN quoted
Raanan Gissin, a senior aide to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon, who said: "The purpose was to hit the terrorists
and those who sent them. I think that mission was accomplished."
A Reuters'
wire service report mentions that one of its cameraman saw the
bodies of a man and woman in a Ramallah hospital following the
raids by combat helicopters, and reported that, "A Palestinian
Red Crescent official said the dead were a member of Palestinian
President Yasser Arafat's elite forces and a Palestinian civilian."
Six Palestinians were reported wounded in both areas. And let
us not forget the population of two Palestinian cities, once
again terrorised by missiles raining down from the air.
Mr. Gissin
and the Israeli government that he represents, who seek "the
terrorists and those who sent the terrorists" should note
that the mirror of retaliation reflects more than half a century
further back than the last bombing, and that it reflects both
ways.
For us, if
there are indeed new words for us to learn in this vocabulary
of revenge, let us be sure that we learn the whole language.
CP
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