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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (20413)	3/3/2002 12:33:03 AM
From: LLLefty	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

>>>>I think people have a tendency to confuse the level of ink spilled over the Israeli/Pal situation with the level of blood. They are also encouraged in this belief by hyperbolic Arab rhetoric, which continually speaks of Israeli "massacres", "genocides", etc. etc. Meantime the conflict in Algeria, which is killing at a rate several orders of magnitude greater, gets no ink in the US at all<<<< It should be apparent to you that the flow of ink stems from the fact that the conflict has the ingredients of touching off a much wider conflagration that involves the interests of many countries. Its political, economic and societal impact extends well beyond the immediate region, not to mention the nuclear overhang. It is not the amount of 'Arab hyperbolic rhetoric' that keeps it on the front page. It's a made-for-print long-running drama with personalities who have become household names; it has heroes and villains, isssues that seem (but really aren't) clear-cut, tear-jerking stories easily accessible to reporters, even a little love interest now and then (he's Jewish; she's Palestinian.) Both Israel and Palestinians have extensive PR machinery but the fact is that the Palestinians have built a more sophisticated and well-controlled setup. They speak with one voice and keep on message, whether it's a doctor detailing (often to a Palestinian reporter working for a Western agency) the bullet wounds on a child or blaming a hold up at an Israeli checkpoint for the death of a baby. (The AP was required to run a correction because the doctor lied about the reason for a baby's death, as I recall). One reason for the disparity in effectiveness, of course, is that Israel has a wildly free press and journalists roam, write and film without fear of expulsion or, for that matter, fear of their lives from the populace. Western reporters covering the Palestinian side are aware that their material is monitored; at least one I know of was yanked quickly by his agency after filming the bloody hands of a Palestinian after he slit the throats of two Israeli reservists. Others have had their film confiscated for filming material considered injurious to the cause. As for the Israelis, they seem to have tired of telling their story, particularily to people who have little or no background of the history of the conflict. Moreover,they are always playing catchup, failing to explain promptly the reasons why they take such and such an action. Almost two generations have passed since Israel was the world's darling little David against Goliath. The world's left loved them. There's not a little irony in that today.