Media Distortions of Middle East Conflict

ZNet Commentary
Cut Through The Lies In Palestine April 02, 2002
By Justin Podur 

It's possible that there are more distortions and lies printed about
Israel and Palestine than there are about any other conflict.  The
first example: For something like thirty years, most Arabs, including
Palestinians, have accepted these principles, stated by Chomsky as his
own basic assumptions in 'Fateful Triangle':

'The first of these is the principle that Israeli Jews and Palestinian
Arabs are human beings with human rights, equal rights; more
specifically, they have essentially equal rights within the territory
of the former Palestine.  Each group has a valid right to national
self-determination in this territory.  Furthermore, I will assume that
the State of Israel within its pre-June 1967 borders had, and retains,
whatever one regards as the valid rights of any state within the
existing international system.'

The fundamental argument of the Zionists is that they must occupy the
West Bank and Gaza, because the Palestinians do not accept this
principle.  They argue that because the Palestinians do not simply
want them to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza, but instead want
the State of Israel to cease to exist, Israel must continue to occupy
the West Bank and Gaza.  This is obviously absurd.  Struggling for
survival is different from struggling to maintain a military
occupation.  Today it is the Palestinians who are doing the former and
Israel that is doing the latter.

A second example of distortion is of exactly what is going on in
Palestine.  Oh, the suicide bombings and the deaths of civilians are
clear enough on the one side, and even the Israeli state terrorism is
sometimes presented (in a sanitized form, of course, with careful use
of the passive voice, words like 'retaliation').  What is invisible,
as in every conflict in the world, is the people.

And it's not just the Palestinians who are being massacred who are
invisible, including those who are brave or hopeless enough to face
fully-armed soldiers with rocks (as in earlier in the intifada) or
tanks and helicopters with guns (like today).  Now it's also the Jews
who are resisting the occupation.  It's the 387 Israeli soldiers, so
far, who have refused to serve in the occupied territories, saying:

"We, who sensed how the commands issued to us in the Territories,
destroy all the values we had absorbed while growing up in this
country.

We, who understand now that the price of Occupation is the loss of
IDF's human character and the corruption of the entire Israeli
society.

We, who know that the Territories are not Israel, and that all
settlements are bound to be evacuated in the end.

We hereby declare that we shall not continue to fight this War of the
Settlements.

We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders in order to
dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people.

We hereby declare that we shall continue serving in the Israel Defense
Forces in any mission that serves Israel's defense. 

The missions of occupation and oppression do not serve this purpose -
and we shall take no part in them." (http://www.couragetorefuse.org/)

It's the activists from the Center for Rapprochement between Peoples
who are, at the time of this writing, "still in Bethlehem now, they
are staying in the refugees' camps in Bethlehem area trying to provide
a grassroots international protection for the Palestinians in a time
when the Official International Protection for the Palestinian People
is absent and even Blessed by the United States' Administration."
(http://www.rapprochement.org)

Jewish activists like Neta Golan who, writing from inside the
Palestinian Presidential Compound, wrote that: "State terrorism and
terrorism are two sides of the same coin of occupation. One cannot
exist without the other and neither would exist without their
foundation, which is occupation."  Internationals like Jose Saramago
who visited and condemned the occupation and Jose Bove who is being
deported for participating in the solidarity movement.  The Israeli
military is now shooting these nonviolent activists with live bullets.
You don't shoot nonviolent peace activists because you're afraid of
suicide bombers.  You shoot them because you are afraid of peace.

Indeed, the best tactic that Sharon and the warmongers have is making
sure these people stay invisible, and the best weapon they have for
doing so is the War on Terror.  The War on Terror doctrine, coming
from Washington itself, says that the retail terror of suicide bombers
must be responded to by state terror and mass reprisal against the
innocent.  It says that anyone who is against state terror and mass
reprisal against the innocent must be a terrorist themselves, and
therefore these peace activists are terrorists who are fair game.

There is a reason for these distortions.  It's not only that there is
a systematic program of state terror going on.  Western media can
ignore state terror, and routinely do so for other places.  For
Israel, though, they go to great lengths to make sure not that North
Americans don't know what's going on, but that North Americans get the
wrong idea about what is going on.  Why?  Because North Americans can
make a difference here, and a decisive one.

Israel cannot maintain the occupation without US support.  US support
cannot be maintained if there is a strong movement in solidarity with
Palestine that will not believe the lies and that will support a more
just solution to the conflict.

There are more just solutions.  A two-state solution has an
independent, viable Palestinian state without settlements or
checkpoints and full contiguity and control over local resources in
the West Bank and Gaza, and an independent, viable Israeli state in
Israel proper.  A binational Palestine in which Jews and Arabs share
full and equal citizenship rights is another option that gets farther
away with each massacre.  In either case, the military occupation has
to go.  So do the checkpoints.  So do the settlements.  And the right
of return, which is a right and not a fantasy, should be guaranteed
too.  (http://www.zmag.org/content/Mideast/hanafi_right-of-return.cfm)

The issue is the occupation, and the way to end the occupation is by
protecting the Palestinians, their movements, and the Jewish and
international activists who are accompanying them; supporting the
growing numbers of soldiers who are refusing to serve in the
territories; and pressuring US and Israeli authorities to end the
occupation and the murders that are being committed for that
occupation.  That's the task for activists.  To cut through the lies
and to make these things happen.

Solidarity activists are putting out updates constantly, including
contact information for various authorities.  If you want to respond
to these urgent actions, go to:

http://jerusalem.indymedia.org/
http://www.zmag.org/meastwatch/updates_from_palestine.htm

Pressure the authorities, go to demonstrations, and most importantly,
talk to people.