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The Vocabulary of
Revenge
by Nigel
Parry
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 marginalized
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, marginalized, and ruled with an iron fist.
More colloquially, 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 incumbent 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 organizations 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, summarized 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.
First paragraph:
"The Israel Defense
[1] Forces sent helicopter gun-ships 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.
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 terrorized 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.
Mr. Nigel Parry worked
at Birzeit University between 1994 and 1998. His journal from the time, A
Personal Diary of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, is available
at http://nigelparry.com/diary/
documented the post-Oslo experience of Palestinians in the Ramallah area. He is also one of the founders of ElectronicIntifada.net.
Source:
by courtesy & © 2001 Nigel Parry & Electronicintifada.net
by the same author:
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