July 19, 2006
Nazareth
hit the international headlines for the first time in this vicious war
being waged by Israel mostly on Lebanese civilians. Reporter Matthew
Price, corseted in a blue flak jacket in Haifa, told BBC viewers that
for the first time Hizbullah had targeted Nazareth late on Sunday.
"Nazareth is a mostly Christian town", he added, managing to cram into
a single sentence of a few words two factual mistakes and a disturbing
hint of incitement.
Whatever
the precision of its rockets (and Nazareth’s residents are certainly
worried enough about that), Hizbullah struck not at Nazareth but at a
site some distance from Nazareth -- a site of strategic significance to
Israel, though I cannot say more than that as we are now officially
under martial law in the country’s north.
Matthew
Price was also wrong about Nazareth being a "mostly Christian town".
During the 1948 war in which Israel’s army ethnically cleansed much of
the surrounding area of Palestinians, Muslim villagers fled to Nazareth
in search of sanctuary. Today, two-thirds of the city’s 75,000
inhabitants are Muslim -- or at least they are by the religious
classification system imposed on all citizens by the Israeli
authorities.
Which brings us to the nasty element of incitement from our BBC reporter.
Several
Israeli armaments factories and storage depots have been built close by
Arab communities in the north of Israel, possibly in the hope that by
locating them there Arab regimes will be deterred from attacking
Israel’s enormous armory. In other words, the inhabitants of several of
Israel’s Arab towns and villages have been turned into collective human
shields -- protection for Israel’s war machine.
Before
the strike close to Nazareth late on Sunday night, several Arab
villages in the north had been hit by Hizbullah rockets trying to reach
these factories. No one at the BBC saw the need to mention these
attacks nor the fact that "mostly Muslim" villages had been hit. So why
did the strike against Nazareth -- and its mistaken Christian status --
became part of the story for the BBC?
Because
Israel wants to portray Hizbullah, and its leader Sheikh Hassan
Nasrallah, as a crazed Islamic militia, as fanatical Muslims who hate
Jews and Christians with equal vehemence. This is all part of Israel’s
claim that it is fighting George Bush’s "war on terror". Predictably,
the BBC obliged by regurgitating this piece of racist nonsense.
If anybody still doubts that Israel is shaping the news agenda of broadcasters like the BBC, here was as good as the proof.
* * *
According
to the jingoistic Jerusalem Post, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office
and the army are delirious at their success in dictating the headlines
and tone of foreign news broadcasts.
Ehud
Olmert’s media adviser, Assif Shariv, told the Post that the
international media were interviewing Israeli spokespeople four times
as much as spokespeople for the Palestinians and Lebanese. Another
government adviser, Gideon Meir, boasted: "We have never had it so
good. The hasbara [propaganda] effort is a well-oiled machine."
Which
may explain why we know so little about what is happening in Lebanon
and Gaza -- and why we know so little about what is happening inside
Israel too.
To
remind you, I, like other residents of northern Israel, am under
martial law. As are the foreign journalists -- and in addition they are
required to submit their copy to the military censor. So all I can tell
you, without breaking the law, is that you are not hearing the entire
picture of what has been happening here in the Galilee.
Certainly,
a piece of news that I doubt you will hear from the foreign media,
although bravely the liberal Hebrew media has been drawing attention to
the matter, is that the "only democracy in the Middle East" has all but
silenced al-Jazeera from reporting inside Israel.
The reason is clear: until recently al-Jazeera had been running rings around the local and foreign press.
Al-Jazeera
is the Arab world’s most serious and popular news gatherer, and
essential viewing for anyone who wants to get a realistic idea of the
news from both sides of the border. When I heard the missile strike
close by Nazareth on Sunday night, al-Jazeera told me what had happened
a full half hour before the Israeli media, and a day before my
colleague Matthew Price.
How
do they do it? Because most of their staff in Israel are Israeli
citizens, as well as being Palestinian Arabs. Their journalists belong
to the forgotten fifth of the Israeli population whose citizenship is
Israeli but whose nationality is Palestinian.
So
not only do al-Jazeera’s reporters know the northern patch of Israel
like home ground (because it is home ground) but they are also not
cravenly waiting for the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office and army’s
spokesman to tell them what is going on.
Watching
al-Jazeera has been a revelation: it has dedicated a substantial
portion of its coverage to events inside Israel as well as in Lebanon,
in stark contrast to Israeli broadcasters who rarely use any of the
footage from Lebanon.
Similarly,
al-Jazeera faithfully translated Ehud Olmert’s speech word for word
into Arabic, and then included a lengthy analysis from a local
correspondent for its viewers. Israeli broadcasters, on the other hand,
repeatedly mistranslated the televised words of Hizbullah leader Sheikh
Hassan Nasrallah into Hebrew and English, removing context and his
calls for negotiation.
Similar
misrepresentations of Nasrallah’s position in the foreign media
presumably reflected their over-reliance on the Israeli broadcasters.
But
al-Jazeera’s coverage inside Israel -- the Arab world’s best chance of
being exposed to the Israeli point of view -- is being effectively shut
down. In the past two days, its editor has been arrested on two
occasions and another senior journalists taken in for questioning.
According to its reporters, they cannot move from their office without
being followed by the Israeli security services.
Why
are they receiving this treatment? Because, according to Israel’s only
serious newspaper, Haaretz, the country’s Hebrew media have been
inciting against them. In particular Reshet Bet radio station, one of
several wings of the Israeli media loyal to the government, has been
telling lies that al-Jazeera is revealing classified information,
namely the location of rocket strikes.
Is
the claim true? According to Haaretz again: "Other TV networks,
including Israeli news services, made similar reports without suffering
from police intervention."
Freedom
of the press rarely means much when governments go to war. The local
media usually consider it their patriotic duty not only to strip of
vital context the information they offer their viewers but they often
falsify the record too. Much of Israel’s media are clearly doing both
jobs with some accomplishment.
But
the fact that some in the Israeli media see it as part of their job to
silence journalists not as craven as themselves is the real eye-opener.
Maybe they realise al-Jazeera just makes them look like propagandists.
* * *
Nabila
Espanioly, the director of a charitable organization in Nazareth
promoting women and children’s interests, makes a point worth
remembering as the foreign and Israeli media huddle in the shelters of
Haifa and Nahariya interviewing terrified "Israelis".
In
fact, they are talking not to Israelis but to Israeli Jews. The fifth
of the Israeli population who are not Jewish but Arab are rarely to be
found hiding in public shelters because the authorities neglected to
build any in their towns and villages.
In
other words, although the Israeli army has sited several important
weapons factories and military intelligence posts close to Arab
communities in the north, the Israeli government has not offered the
Arab residents any protection should there be fall-out -- quite
literally in the case of the Katyusha rockets -- as a result.
This
is another tiny facet of the discrimination endured for decades by the
country’s Arab population that so rarely surfaces in media coverage of
Israel.
Similarly
oblivious to the ironies, the Israeli and foreign media have been
running heart-warming stories about how "Israelis" are opening their
homes and hearths to their compatriots fleeing the north. Again for
"Israelis" substitute "Israeli Jews".
No
one I know here in Nazareth believes they would find much of a welcome
in Tel Aviv or Beersheva should they go looking for one. Which leaves
them with nowhere to run should they need to.
The
only Arab communities out of the line of Hizbullah fire are those in
the southern Negev belonging to the Bedouin. But that is not much
comfort. Most of the Negev’s 150,000 Bedouin have been forced to live
in squalid tents and metal shacks by an Israeli government that
bulldozes anything more permanent. The authorities also deprive many of
the Bedouin communities of water and all public services. So sweating
it out with the Katyushas may be the better option.
* * *
A
final footnote -- one to ponder in the quieter moments after the worst
of the suffering is over. Those Israeli Jews fleeing for their lives as
they head south to the quiet -- so far at least -- of Tel Aviv and
beyond offer a small echo of events nearly six decades ago when 750,000
Palestinians were forced to leave their homes by the Israeli army.
Israeli
Jews have always taken the view -- and happily tell any outsiders as
much -- that the "Arabs" lost the right to their homes in the war of
1948 because they "fled" (in fact many were forcibly expelled, but let
that drop for the moment).
The
Israeli government has adopted much the same view, even refusing to
allow the 250,000 of its own Arab citizens who are classified as
internal refugees -- their ancestors fled the fighting in 1948 but have
citizenship because they stayed inside what is today Israel -- to
return to their original homes and land.
So
how exactly should we regard those Israeli Jews now fleeing from
Nahariya and Haifa? Should they lose their homes, their land and their
bank accounts just as the Palestinians did in 1948?
Jonathan
Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His book,
"Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State",
is published by Pluto Press. His website is www.jkcook.net