[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Central Truths - John Pilger

[Morton K.Brussel]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Susan Davis <sgdavis at uiuc.edu>
> Date: July 12, 2004 3:12:45 PM CDT
> To: "Morton K. Brussel" <brussel4 at insightbb.com>
> Subject: Fwd: Central Truths - John Pilger
>
>
>
>> http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2002-06/30pilger.cfm
>>
>> ZNet    June 30, 2002
>>
>> Central Truths
>>
>> By John Pilger
>>
>> If you got your news only from the television, you would have no idea 
>> of the
>> roots of the Middle East conflict, or that the Palestinians are 
>> victims of
>> an illegal military occupation.
>>
>> In May, the Glasgow University Media Group, distinguished for its 
>> pioneering
>> media analysis, published a study of the reporting of the Israeli/
>> Palestinian conflict. It ought to be required reading in newsrooms 
>> and media
>> schools. The research showed that the public's lack of understanding 
>> of the
>> conflict and its origins was compounded by news reporting, especially 
>> on
>> television.
>>
>> Viewers, says the study, are rarely told that the Palestinians are 
>> victims
>> of an illegal military occupation. The term "occupied territories" is 
>> almost
>> never explained. Indeed, only 9 per cent of young people interviewed 
>> knew
>> that the Israelis were the occupiers and the "settlers" were Israeli. 
>> The
>> selective use of language is important.
>>
>> The study found that words such as "murder", "atrocity", "lynching" 
>> and
>> "savage, cold-blooded killing" were used only to describe Israeli 
>> deaths.
>> "The extent to which some journalism assumes the Israeli 
>> perspective," wrote
>> Professor Greg Philo, "can be seen if the statements are 'reversed' 
>> and
>> presented as Palestinian actions. [We] did not find any [news] reports
>> stating that 'The Palestinian attacks were in retaliation for the 
>> murder of
>> those resisting the illegal Israeli occupation'."
>>
>> Given that the central truth of the conflict is routinely obscured, 
>> none of
>> this is surprising. News and current affairs programmes seldom, if 
>> ever,
>> remind viewers that Israel was established largely by force on 78 per 
>> cent
>> of historic Palestine and, since 1967, has illegally occupied and 
>> imposed
>> various forms of military rule on the remaining 22 per cent.
>>
>> The media "coverage" has long reversed the roles of oppressor and 
>> victim.
>> Israelis are never called terrorists. Correspondents who break this 
>> taboo
>> are often intimidated with slurs of anti-Semitism - a bleak irony, as
>> Palestinians are Semites, too.
>>
>> Having long ago recognised Israel's "right" to more than two-thirds 
>> of their
>> country, the Palestinian leadership has contorted itself in order to
>> accommodate a maze of mostly American plans designed to deny true
>> independence and ensure Israel's enduring power and control.
>>
>> Until recently, this was reported uncritically as "the peace 
>> process". When
>> ordinary Palestinians cried "enough!" and rose up in the second 
>> intifada,
>> armed mostly with slingshots, they were put down by snipers with
>> high-velocity weapons and with tanks and Apache gunships, supplied by 
>> the
>> United States.
>>
>> And now, in their despair, as some are turning to suicide attacks, the
>> Palestinians appear on the news only as bombers and rioters, which, 
>> as the
>> Glasgow study points out, "is, of course, the view of the Israeli
>> government". The latest euphemism, "incursion", is from the 
>> vocabulary of
>> lies coined in Vietnam. It means assaulting human beings with tanks 
>> and
>> planes. "Cycle of violence" is similar. It suggests, at best, two 
>> equal
>> sides, never that the Palestinians are resisting violent oppression 
>> with
>> violence.
>>
>> A Channel 4 Dispatches recently "balanced" the Israeli assault on the 
>> Jenin
>> refugee camp with a Palestinian attack on a "settlement". There was no
>> explanation that these are not settlements at all, but armed, illegal
>> fortresses that are central to a policy of imposing strategic and 
>> military
>> control.
>>
>> On 9 June, the Correspondent series on BBC Television broadcast a 
>> report
>> about the recent siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. 
>> This was
>> an exemplar of the problems identified in the Glasgow research. It 
>> was, in
>> effect, an Israeli occupation propaganda film put out by the BBC. It 
>> was
>> made as a co-production with an American channel, and the credits 
>> listed the
>> producer as Israel Goldvicht, who runs an Israeli production company.
>>
>> That would have been fine had the film-makers made any attempt to 
>> challenge
>> the Israeli military with whom they had ingratiated themselves. "The
>> Israelis were determined not to damage the buildings," began the 
>> narrator.
>> "The international press were cleared from Manger Square, but we were
>> allowed to stay and observe the Israeli operation . . ."
>>
>> With this "unique access" unexplained to the viewers, the film 
>> presented one
>> Colonel Lior as the star good guy, guaranteeing "medical treatment to 
>> anyone
>> wounded", saying a cheery hello on a mobile phone to a friend in 
>> Oxford
>> Street and, like any colonial officer, speaking about and on behalf 
>> of the
>> Palestinians.
>>
>> "Killers" were described by the colonel without challenge by the 
>> BBC/Israel
>> Goldvicht team. They were "terrorists" and "gunmen", not those 
>> resisting the
>> invasion of their homeland. Israel's right to "arrest" foreign peace
>> protesters drew no query from the BBC. Not a single Palestinian was
>> interviewed. As the sun set on his fine profile, the last word went 
>> to the
>> good colonel. The issues between the Israelis and Palestinians, he 
>> said,
>> "were personal points of view".
>>
>> Well, no. The brutal subjugation of the Palestinians is, under any
>> interpretation of the law, an epic injustice, a crime in which the 
>> colonel
>> plays a leading part. The BBC has always provided the best, most
>> sophisticated propaganda service in the world, because matters of 
>> justice
>> and injustice, right and wrong are simply usurped either by "balance" 
>> or by
>> liberal sophistry; one is either "pro-Israeli" or "pro-Palestinian".
>>
>> Fiona Murch, the executive producer of Correspondent, told me that 
>> Israel
>> Goldvicht Productions would not have won the "trust" of the Israeli 
>> army had
>> the producer asked real journalistic questions. That was the way of 
>> "fly on
>> the wall": a candid admission.
>>
>> "It was breaking a stereotype," she said. "It was about a good, 
>> decent man"
>> (the colonel). She said I ought to have seen an earlier Correspondent
>> series, which had Palestinians in it.
>>
>> I think she was trying to offer that as "balance" for The Siege of 
>> Bethlehem
>> - a film that might be dismissed as cheap PR, were it not for its 
>> complicity
>> with a regime that uses ethnic difference to deny human rights, 
>> imprisons
>> people without charge or trial, and murders and tortures 
>> "systematically",
>> says Amnesty.
>>
>> Goebbels would have approved.
>
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