Truth, as Winston Churchill notoriously said, must be protected by "a
bodyguard of lies". But Churchill, who once described pre-1948 Palestine as a
"hell-disaster", could never have known the deception, dishonesty and sheer
fantasy of today's propaganda in the Middle East. Is the conflict here a "war
against terror" or a struggle against Zionism?
Anyone who does not know the cost of trying to answer that question has only
to refer to a document recently published by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, which asks the question: "Is anti-Zionism different from
anti-Semitism?"
Here's part of the answer: "Just as anti-Semitism denies Jews their rights as
individuals in society, anti-Zionism attacks the Jewish people as a nation
... It is no coincidence that the recent censure of Israel in international
forums and the media has been accompanied by a sharp increase in anti-Semitic
incidents." The message is simple: to criticise Israel risks the charge of
racism; better, therefore, to keep to the safe line that Israel is fighting a
"war against terror" rather than reoccupying the land of a subject people.
As usual, the Israelis are initially winning the propaganda war. The evil
campaign of Palestinian suicide bombers and the eloquence of at least some of
Israel's spokesmen easily crush the efforts of a colonised and occupied
people whose corrupt leader, Yasser Arafat, appoints his own cronies as press
officers, men who are often uneducated and incomprehensible in English.
Marwan Kanafani, Mr Arafat's man in Gaza, speaks good English but comes
across as a used-car salesman. His man at the UN rants and raves like a
Nasserite. Mustafa Barghouti – who may or may not be on Israel's latest
"wanted list" – announced yesterday that the Israeli reoccupation of
Palestinian cities was "the worst crime of the 21st century". Ruthless and
brutal the Israeli invasions have been, but at least one event in the United
States in the autumn of last year suggests his remarks are ridiculous.
The Israelis produce spokesmen who seem calculated to appeal to an American
audience. Ranaan Gissin and Dore Gold come across as tough, uncompromising
figures in the US. In Europe, however, they look respectively like a New York
taxi driver and an undertaker. Mr Gissin's performance on the BBC earlier
this year – trying to reassure the world that Ariel Sharon had "paid the
price" for being personally responsible for the 1982 Sabra and Chatila
massacre – was positively creepy.
Far better was the public performance of Uri Dromi, Yitzhak Rabin's former
spokesman and a one-time Israeli Air Force C-130 pilot, who used to come
across as a thoughtful, intelligent and sometimes troubled man who believed
in the State of Israel but acknowledged its flaws.
The "nice-cop/bad-cop" routine of Mr Sharon and Shimon Peres also serves its
purpose in the outside world. If Mr Sharon appears suspect – not least
because of his ghastly role in Sabra and Chatila – the Labour Party's Mr
Peres, holder (with Arafat, let us quickly forget) of the Nobel Peace Prize,
gives the present very extreme Israel government a humane face.
Mr Peres appears to present the friendly, humanistic, honourable Israeli
government which the world wants to believe in. Journalists who ask Mr Peres
soft questions – which means just about all of them – have to forget that it
was he who launched Israel's "Grapes of Wrath" operation, which led to the
1996 massacre of 108 Lebanese civilians at a UN camp in Qana.
The government in which Mr Peres serves is, after all, the same government
that is building illegal colonies on Arab land for Jews, and Jews only, at a
greater speed than ever; destroying the physical symbols of the Oslo
agreement; and re-occupying the West Bank. If Mr Peres was opposed to these
ruthless policies, he could leave the Sharon government. But he chooses not
to do so.
In the present conflict, the Israeli Army's use of the "closed military
area", which bans journalists from any district where Israeli soldiers are
misbehaving or killing the innocent, has dissuaded many reporters from
entering the newly-occupied Palestinian cities.
Thus Israel can boast of its army's highly professional and moral soldiering,
supposedly risking the lives of its men to protect the innocent, while
castigating journalists who do break the military rules for their eyewitness
reporting of the lack of discipline of Israeli troops and their reckless
killings. Rotting bodies in the streets of Bethlehem and Ramallah are
portrayed as Palestinian propaganda – providing few journalists see the
bodies with their own eyes.
Thus the false news of a Catholic priest killed in Bethlehem on Tuesday was
condemned by an Israeli spokesman as a Palestinian lie – even though the
inaccurate story was originally put out by a Catholic church agency and then
broadcast on Israeli as well as Palestinian radio.
In his latest bunker-prison, Yasser Arafat rages against journalists who ask
about suicide bombers – as if it is somehow indecent to mention the massacre
of Israelis and the role of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a satellite of Mr
Arafat's own Fatah movement.
Far more culpable is the Israeli press, usually so courageous in denouncing
Israel's role in atrocities, but which has largely left its readers ignorant
of Palestinian suffering. In Tuesday's edition of Ha'aretz, Aviv Lavie
remarked that Israeli journalists "cease collecting facts and asking
questions, and instead turn to beating the war drums – yesterday, Ma'ariv 's
editor, Amnon Danker, ran a front-page article devoted to smashing, killing,
trampling and destroying – it's time to say goodbye, at least in the
meanwhile, to a free press".
On the same day, The Jerusalem Post ran a haunting full page of
passport-sized snapshots of the more than 60 Israeli men, women and children
killed by Palestinian suicide bombers over the previous month. It was a page
of memory and pain. But the paper has no plans to run a similar page of
photographs of the innocent Palestinians who have been killed by Israel's
supposedly "elite" army.
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