Reporting crime
Media alert: Blaming the victim in Gaza
July 10, 2006
Traditionally, British media reporting of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict has been heavily biased in favour of the United States’ major
ally in the region, Israel. A 2002 Glasgow University Media Group report
found that television broadcasters were six times as likely to present
Israeli attacks as "retaliating" or in some way hitting back as
Palestinian attacks. This caused many viewers to believe that the
Palestinians were to blame for the conflict. (Greg Philo and Mike Berry,
‘Bad News from Israel’; http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/sociology/units/media/israel.htm)
Reporting on the June 25 capture of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, by
Palestinian militants at an army post at Kerem Shalom near Gaza
demonstrated the same bias. The BBC, ITV News, The Guardian,
The Independent and most other media described the incident
as a "kidnapping".
We emailed Guardian journalist David Fickling: "In today’s
article, ‘Israel detains Hamas ministers’, you write: ‘Israeli troops
arrested dozens of Hamas ministers and parliamentarians today as they
stepped up their campaign to free a soldier kidnapped by militants in Gaza
at the weekend’ (http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1808570,00.html).
"Why do Israeli militants ‘detain’ and ‘arrest’, whereas Palestinian
militants ‘kidnap’?" (Email, June 29, 2006).
Fickling replied: "There is a well-attested distinction between arrest –
an action carried out by a state as the first step of a well-defined legal
process – and kidnap, which is an action carried out by private
individuals with no defined outcome, enforceable purpose or rights of
review or release" (Email, June 29, 2006).
In reality there is no "well-defined legal process" protecting the
Hamas politicians "arrested" by the Israelis. Of what crimes have they
been accused? Are we to believe that they have any rights of review or
release whatever? Quite the reverse; the press reports that the subsequent
bombings of empty Hamas political offices were intended as a clear signal
that Hamas’s leaders can be assassinated if Israel so desires.
The media have emphasised the capture of the Israeli soldier as key in
escalating tensions. On June 29, Stephen Farrell reported in The Times
"a dramatic escalation of the conflict sparked by the abduction" (Farrell,
‘Tanks go into Gaza as Jewish settler is murdered’, The Times, June
29, 2006).
On June 30, the Financial Times reported "the rapid escalation
of the crisis sparked by last Sunday’s kidnap" (Ferry Biedermann and Roula
Khalaf, ‘Abbas appeals to UN over arrests’, Financial Times, June
30, 2006). The BBC described the Palestinian attack as "a major escalation
in cross-border tensions" (BBC World News, June 25, 2006).
Few readers will be aware that on June 24, the day before the
"kidnapping", Israeli commandos had entered the Gaza Strip and captured
two Palestinians claimed by Israel to be members of Hamas. (See our Guest
Media Alert by Jonathan Cook, ‘Kidnapped by Israel’; http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060630_kidnapped_by_israel.php)
Nor have the press suggested that the one-sided nature of the killing in
the weeks leading up to the capture of the Israeli soldier might have
"sparked" Palestinian actions.
On June 8, the Israeli army assassinated the recently appointed
Palestinian head of the security forces of the interior ministry, Jamal
Abu Samhadana, and three others. On June 9, Israeli shells killed seven
members of the same family picnicking on Beit Lahiya beach. Some 32 others
were wounded, including 13 children.
On June 13, an Israeli plane fired a missile into a busy Gaza city
street, killing 11 people, including two children and two medics. On June
20, the Israeli army killed three Palestinian children and injured 15
others in Gaza with a missile attack. On June 21, the Israelis killed a
35-year-old pregnant woman, her brother, and injured 11 others, including
six children. Then came the Israeli capture of two Palestinians, followed
by the Palestinian capture of the Israeli soldier and the killing of the
two other soldiers. After the beach deaths, Hamas, the ruling party in the
Palestinian Authority, broke an 16-month ceasefire and joined other
militant groups in firing Qassam rockets into Israel. The Financial
Times reported on June 23 that the missiles, principally targeted
towards the Israel town of Sderot, have caused damage and some casualties
but no fatalities in the recent barrages. A June 29 Guardian leader
noted that the home-made Qassam rockets are "not in the same league as
Israel’s hi-tech (though not always accurate) weaponry" (Leader, ‘Storm
over Gaza’, The Guardian, June 29, 2006).
In an interview for Democracy Now, Norman Finkelstein, professor
of political science at DePaul University in Chicago, compared the
lethality of Israeli and Palestinian weapons:
"Since Israel withdrew from Gaza in September 2005 till today, the
estimates run between 7,000 and 9,000 heavy artillery shells have been
shot and fired into Gaza. On the Palestinian side, the estimates are
approximately 1,000 Qassam missiles, crude missiles, have been fired into
Israel. So we have a ratio of between seven and nine to one.
"Let’s look at casualties. In the last six months, approximately 80
Palestinians have been killed in Gaza due to Israel artillery firing...
There have been exactly eight Israelis killed in the last five years from
the Qassam missiles. Again, we have a huge disproportion, a huge
discrepancy" (‘AIPAC v. Norman Finkelstein: A Debate on Israel’s Assault
on Gaza’, June 29, 2006; http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/29/1420258).
Finkelstein also compared the situation with regard to hostages: "let’s
talk about those 9,000 Palestinians who are effectively hostages being
held by Israel. One thousand of them are administrative detainees...
Administrative detainees who are being held without any charges or trial.
And the other 8,000 are being held after military courts have convicted
them, almost always on the basis of confessions which were extracted by
torture. So if we’re going to look simply at the numbers, we have one
hostage on the Palestinian side and effectively we have about 9,000 on the
Israeli side."
Earlier this month, the Israeli human rights organisation, B’Tselem,
published fatality figures for June 2006 in the Occupied Territories and
Israel. Forty-two Palestinians, six of them minors, were killed by Israeli
armed forces. Twenty-four of the fatalities were bystanders not involved
in the conflict. (http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/EKOI6RC53K?OpenDocument&rc=3&cc=isr)
B’Tselem’s figures do not include the seven members of the Ghaliya family
killed on Beit Lahiya beach. However, a June 17 report by Donald Macintyre
in The Independent "cast doubt on crucial elements of the
conclusion of the military investigation which absolved Israel of any
responsibility" (Macintyre, ‘Hospital casts doubt on Israel’s version of
attack that killed seven Palestinians’, The Independent, June 17,
2006).
According to B’Tselem, in May 2006, 36 Palestinians were killed by Israeli
security forces, one Israeli civilian died from injuries he sustained the
previous month. At time of writing, Israeli soldiers have killed a total
of six Palestinians since the re-invasion.
Collective punishment – frailer Palestinians are dying
Having killed many more people in recent weeks, Israel’s response to
the soldier’s capture has been to heap yet more suffering on the
Palestinian people. Israel re-invaded Gaza with 5,000 troops on June 27
and then bombed Gaza’s only electrical generating station, so depriving
half a million people of electricity. Human Rights Watch commented: "The
destruction of the power station could quickly cause a humanitarian crisis
in Gaza, as electricity is essential to power the water system, sewage
treatment and medical services" (‘Gaza: Israeli Offensive Must Limit Harm
to Civilians’, June 29, 2006; http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/06/29/isrlpa13662.htm).
In the same attack, Israel destroyed three bridges and the main water
pipes for two refugee camps. Will Hutton noted in The Observer:
"Sealing off access to water and food can only inflict acute discomfort on
the people there; already, frailer Palestinians are dying" (Hutton,
‘Israel’s act of war is inexcusable’, The Observer, July 2, 2006).
The Guardian wrote: "The electricity supply to half of Gaza has
been cut and all supplies of fuel and food have been halted." Amazingly,
the same article added: "Israeli aircraft and forces operated without
harming anyone" (Conal Urquhart, ‘Israel rounds up Hamas politicians’,
The Guardian, June 29, 2006).
Prior to these attacks, Save the Children’s UK programme manager, Jan
Coffey reported that 78 per cent of the population in Gaza were living
below the poverty line with 10 per cent of children under five suffering
from chronic malnutrition. In June, the World Food Programme reported that
51 per cent of Palestinians – two million people – were unable to meet
their food needs without aid and that in Gaza, "the situation is becoming
critical" (Justin Podur, ‘Summer rains’, ZNet; http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10500).
The extent of media bias is exemplified by The New York Times,
which reported July 3: "for all the pyrotechnics, the (Israeli) operation
has been relatively restrained" (Ian Fisher and Steven Erlanger, ‘Israel
steps up Gaza raids in bid to free soldier’, The New York Times,
July 3, 2006).
This represents the view of western journalists numbed to the suffering
the West and its allies consistently heap on impoverished Third World
people. To merely inflict intense suffering on hundreds of thousands of
people, rather than to kill them, is "relatively restrained" for elite
media executives. On July 2, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported
that "Israel’s ‘public diplomacy’ efforts", aimed at getting the western
media to support Israeli army operations had borne fruit: "The American
newspapers The New York Times and The Washington Post have
published editorials that placed responsibility for the crisis on Hamas" (Aluf
Benn, ‘US warns Israel not to harm Abbas or civilians’, Haaretz,
July 2, 2006). Quite an achievement.
On the BBC’s July 3 Newsnight programme, anchor Jeremy Paxman
reported breaking news that a Palestinian had been killed and two wounded
in an Israeli air strike in northern Gaza. Paxman then went on to
interview an Israeli government spokesman, Mark Regev. Regev said: "Our
preference, our chosen policy preference, is that he (Shalit) is released
and this can end peacefully." Paxman said not a word in response about the
death he had just reported, about the five other deaths or about people
dying because of the attack on the power station.
In a rare departure from western silence, the Swiss foreign ministry
declared this week: "A number of actions by the Israeli defence forces in
their offensive against the Gaza Strip have violated the principle of
proportionality and are to be seen as forms of collective punishment,
which is forbidden" (Bradley S. Klapper, ‘Switzerland: Israel violating
law in Gaza’, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 3, 2006; http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/
national/1103AP_Switzerland
_Israel.html).
The Swiss statement referred to provisions of the 1949 treaty of the
Geneva Conventions, regarded as the cornerstone of international law on
the obligations of warring and occupying powers. A key section reads: "It
is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects
indispensable to the survival of the civilian population" (Cited, ‘PCHR
Warns of a Humanitarian Crisis in the Gaza Strip’, July 2, 2006; http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/PressR/English/2006/66-2006.htm).
At time of writing, the word ‘Gaza’ has been mentioned in 314 UK
newspaper articles over the previous two weeks. The words ‘Geneva
Conventions’ have been mentioned in just 12 of these. n
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