Palestinian Media Watch

      Recently Canadian commentator, Barry Swicker, a media critic of long standing, delivered a three part series on the background of the Intifada, focusing on those aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that are not reported by conventional media sources. The series highlighted a new video, produced jointly by an Israeli-Arab coalition for peace. The series hopes to help the peace process by informing people of the true nature of the conflict, and taking them beyond brief clips of violence on the evening news, normally presented without context and left unexplained.

      According to Swicker, the producers of ‘Not in my Garden' are,

"Jews and Arabs working together. They call themselves Video '48. A reference to the year the State of Israel was founded and the big trouble started for the Palestinians. This is the latest of a tiny number of independent, point-of-view films which provide an alternative to mainstream journalism. Video ‘48 describes itself as "a…film group who focus on the problems of Palestinians inside Israel. This population of more than a million suffers from institutionalized discrimination in all walks of life. Video'48 aims to give image and voice to their situation...Not In My Garden focuses on a tiny village in Northern Israel named Ramia. Ramia's overshadowed by the prosperous, expanding, hi-tech Israeli city of Carmiel ... The relationship of Ramia and Carmiel is a microcosm of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While Carmiel's gleaming apartment blocks spring up, the people of Ramia are prohibited from building. They remain in crowded tin shacks as if time has stopped."

      Zwicker questions journalist coverage of ‘the peace process', a phrase which, while it encourages people to believe that halting steps are being taken towards Israeli and Palestinian peace, actually disguises the discrimination experienced by Palestinians in Israel. Media coverage of the conflict tends to focus on violent outbreaks, without explaining the background situation that is driving the violence and frustration. The coverage has been referred to by one Arab critic as ‘sanitized and prettified'.

"By diverting attention from the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem to the ‘peace process,' Israel has managed to conceal the matrix of control it has laid over the Occupied Territories – the massive expropriation of Palestinian lands for ever-expanding Israeli settlements; the construction of massive highways for control; confining Palestinians into dozens of cantons while imposing economic ‘closure;' " and, they continue, "demolishing thousands of Palestinian homes and committing other human rights violations. From the ground," they say, "an entirely different picture emerges of a ‘peace process' that really never was."

      While scenes of rock throwing and the most fanatical of extremists on both sides make for good television, rarely are people exposed to the day to day reality of life in the territories which fuels such anger...

"I added two rooms. When we built the rooms, planes flew over and filmed us. Suddenly a Demolition Order came. It's pressure that a person can't live with."

      Zwicker points out that the big questions in journalism are who, what, where, when, and why? Media reports of rock throwing and other violence answer only the first four of the five questions but conventional news reporting never delves into the reason WHY, and according to Zwicker's media criticism, this question, the most seldom asked, is probably the most important of all five. Ongoing Israeli destruction of Palestinian homes and settlements is rarely covered, with attention focusing instead on headline grabbing acts of violence between Palestinians and Israelis. It would seem that the viewer is being left to understand the conflict as one between religious fanatics, and the on the ground political and social situation faced by the Palestinians is never addressed.

      Zwicker reports on an article in Time magazine titled, "Uprising Without an Explanation". In the article it is never mentioned that Palestinian land is constantly being expropriated and that Palestinian homes are being bulldozed. Ignored is the fact that the Israeli occupation of the territories in 1967 was in violation of the Geneva conventions and has been repeatedly condemned in almost unanimous United Nations resolutions.

      Coverage is worst in North America, and often items covered in Europe, or even in European editions of certain publications, do a better job of answering the question ‘why' than their parent publications in America. He quotes the London Observer as saying Israel's settlement policy is "a system of apartheid," aimed at creating "self-administered Bantustans?" Zwicker then asks,

"Why do U.S. newspaper editorials line up overwhelmingly behind Israel? The Jewish Anti-Defamation League typically accuses the media of anti-Israel bias. Yet the League's study of 43 major U.S. papers found that most editorials "display overwhelming support and sympathy for Israel's position."

      To little context and to little background information to understand the ‘why' behind the conflict and the violence.

"Palestinian refugees and their descendants now number four million. Coverage that consistently forgets this background is not peace journalism. Peace journalism never forgets ... What is the coverage we get? More shoot 'em up footage based on the news motto "if it bleeds it leads." But realities on the ground such as the hedging in of Palestinians by a highway network with its Israeli checkpoints are less well reported. Without a fuller portrayal of the situation on the ground, including the bulldozing of Palestinian homes, we get more war journalism."

      Zwicker takes a moment to critique the prominent place given to the analysis of Cordesman (the kind of background material a person needs in order to judge the writings and position).

"Cordesman seldom criticizes the military and is strikingly indifferent to civilian casualties. He currently advocates what he himself calls "excessive force" against Palestinian civilians, including – these are his words -- "interrogation methods that border on psychological and/or physical torture." Oh, by the way, Cordesman has been a prominent military analyst for ABC News for ten years."

      Conventional media coverage does not dig deep enough into many of the issues covered, and in the case of the Intifada people are given little context into which to place the overall situation, and instead seem to think that the conflict is one between extremist religious fanatics, and that hostility between Jews and Arabs is as old as the land itself. This is not an accurate picture.

      For centuries Jews and Arabs lived in relative peace, and when Christians were persecuting the Jewish people, ironically, they could find refuge with Arab Muslims. The roots of the current conflict are not an age old hatred, as many people incorrectly assume, but are a product of our modern times, going back a little over fifty years to the mass expulsion of the Palestinian families who had lived on these lands for ages. A combination of religious fanaticism and political power plays in the oil rich Middle East during the cold war are all at the roots of the violence and anger we see everyday on our television screens. Zwicker's criticism focuses on the role of the media in reporting the roots of the conflict, their focus on images of violence (‘if it bleeds, it leads') while avoiding in depth coverage of sources of violent conflict and frustration in the area, excluding reports on land expropriations and destruction of homes, for example, which would help to place the conflict into context.

      These sorts of violations of simple human rights (and simple common sense) do not promote peace or compassionate understanding and empathy between these opposed factions, nor could a person ever expect a ‘peace process' to win the support of ordinary Palestinians, while, behind the veil, oppressive policies are being implemented by the Israeli government, going unseen and unheard by most people. Out of sight, in the media, means out of mind, and it also gives a free hand to the Israeli government to adopt policies and practices that would be the source of outrage and protest if such things were attempted against Native Americans, for example (you can imagine the outcry if Native homes were being bulldozed, and then Native children were being shot in the streets. One has to wonder how this would be reported as compared to what Zwicker calls the inadequate reporting on the situation on the ground in the occupied territories of Israel.)