Uri Avnery
April 2, 2003
A Crooked Mirror
George Bush, we are told, is a deeply religious person,
and so is his yeoman, Tony Blair. It is a pity that they do
not read the Bible more.
One of the most beautiful Hebrew sentences can be
found in I Kings XX. When he threatened Israel, the King
of Syria boasted of his mighty army and demanded
surrender. King Ahab replied with four immortal Hebrew
words, rendered thus in English: "Let not him that girdeth
on (his harness) boast himself as he that putteth it off."
Retroactive Terrorists.
Schoolbooks in dozens of languages must now be
rewritten.
The old books said that the men and women of the
French resistance in World War II were heroes. These
civilians went out in the night to bomb German trains,
kill German soldiers and execute collaborators.
The instructions came from London. They knew that
if they were caught, they would undergo gruesome
tortures and be put to death. American and British
movies sang their praise.
The Russian partisans, whose slogan was "Death to
the Invader!" made the life of the German soldiers hell.
The partisans were hanged in droves. The original
guerillas - for whom this Spanish word meaning
"little war" was coined - attacked Napoleon's soldiers.
Goya immortalized them in his magnificent painting.
A whole generation of Israeli children was taught to
admire the Irgun and Stern Group fighters, all civilians,
of course, who blew up the installations of the British
army and killed its soldiers. It appears now that they were
all vile terrorists.
Presstitution.
In the Middle Ages, armies were accompanied by large
numbers of prostitutes. In the Iraq war, the American
and British armies are accompanied by large numbers
of journalists.
I coined the Hebrew equivalent of "presstitution" when
I was the editor of an Israeli newsmagazine, to denote
the journalists who turn the media into whores.
Physicians are bound by the Hippocratic oath to save life
as far as possible. Journalists are bound by professional
honor to tell the truth, as they see it.
Never before have so many journalists betrayed their
duty as in this war. Their original sin was their agreement
to be "embedded" in army units. This American term
sounds like being put to bed, and that is what it amounts
to in practice.
A journalist who lies down in the bed of an army unit
becomes a voluntary slave. He is attached to the
commander's staff, led to the places the commander is
interested in, sees what the commander wants him or her
to see, is turned away from the places the commanders
does not want him to see, hears what they want
him to hear and does not hear what the army does not
want him to hear. He is worse than an official army
spokesman, because he pretends to be an independent
reporter.
The problem is not that he only sees a small piece of
the grand mosaic of the war, but that he transmits a
mendacious view of that piece.
In the Falklands and the first Gulf wars, journalists
were simply not allowed to reach the campaign area.
It seems that a bright fellow at the Pentagon had an idea:
"Why keep them out? Let's allow them in, they'll be told
what to write and broadcast and eat out of our hands like
puppies."
Shame.
Since the age of 19, I have been a journalist.
I was always proud of it. On innumerable forms I wrote
"Profession: Journalist."
I am ashamed when I see a large group of journalists
from all over the world sitting in front of a many-starred
general, listening eagerly to what is called a "briefing"
and not posing the simplest relevant question. And when
a courageous reporter does stand up and ask a real
question, no one protests when the general responds
with banal propaganda slogans instead of giving a real
answer.
Remember the virtual surrender of the Iraqi 51st
division? The "uprising" of the people of Basra that never
was? The thousand and one other lies, that have gone
with the wind? Where were the journalists when all this
happened?
Almost all the journalistic reports of this war are a
crooked mirror. We see in it a manipulated, distorted and
mendacious picture. Therefore, praise be to the few who,
like Peter Arnett, are ready to sacrifice their career on
the altar of truth.
[
See:
"Just fired, Peter Arnett hired by British paper"
cnn.com
]
The bottom of the barrel.
I am ashamed of being a journalist. I am doubly
ashamed of being an Israeli journalist.
In this war, all sections of the Israeli media have sunk
to a new low. No criticism at all gets published.
The opponents of the war have effectively been silenced.
Even in the American media, some voices of dissent are
being heard. In Israel, this is not possible. It would be
worse than treason.
The only exception I know of is the TV reporter
Dan Semama, who stole into Iraq, was caught by the
Americans, imprisoned in a jeep and starved for 48
hours.
See:
"U.S. military detains, beats and threatens
to kill four foreign journalists in Iraq.
A Democracy Now! interview with
Israeli reporter Dan Scemama"
democracynow.org
He saw what was really happening.
Parts of his reports were published here and there,
and then the curtain of silence came down. All the rest -
journalists, pundits, the bunch of ex-officers and so on -
appear on our screens, hour after hour, and repeat like
parrots the American propaganda-line, even when it is
manifestly ridiculous.
Toy soldiers.
I am especially allergic to "military correspondents".
They are indeed a unique human species, the ultimate
he-men, the ultimate soldiers. They are also ridiculous
frauds.
I saw them first in our 1948 war, when I was a combat
soldier. When we were lying in the mud and crawling
among the thorns, from time to time we saw such a
"soldier", clean shaven, in a fresh uniform, wearing a
helmet and radiating all the martial virtues. These were
the military correspondents, attached to brigade
headquarters, associating with senior officers, far from
the front line.
(I really shouldn't complain. When I published my
combat-diary after the war it became a run-away
bestseller overnight - simply because not one of these
toy soldiers was able to write an authentic book about
the war.)
The theater of operations.
I read somewhere that the briefing room of General
Tommy Franks was created by a professional designer
for a quarter of a million dollars. The American army
does invest a lot of money in designing this theater.
I assume that much bigger sums are paid to the
professional designers who shape the public
appearances of President Bush. One should pay
attention to the scenery - much more interesting
than George W.'s words.
For some months now, Bush is almost always seen
against a background of soldiers. The stage designer
sees to it that the soldiers are all around the President,
so that from any photo angle the admiring faces shine
behind him.
A few days ago, the designers achieved a special
effect: behind the President there stood a white Coast
Guard ship, with red-uniformed sailors tastefully
dispersed on it in photogenic groups. Other sailors were
in front and on either side of the President. No scene
from opera could have been better arranged. I would not
have been surprised if the President had started to
render an aria. But he only uttered his usual inanities.
The Great Patriotic War.
When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, Stalin
understood that the Russian people would not lay
down their lives for Marxism-Leninism. Overnight he
changed his message. Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great,
Field Marshal Suvorov and Prince Kutuzov were
resurrected in order to win the masses for what was
officially named the Great Patriotic War.
Saddam Hussein does it now. He calls upon his
people to stand up and kill the invaders - not in the
name of the Ba'ath party (whose founders were
Christians) but in the name of Allah and the Muslim
homeland. |
