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What 'calm' means for the US media
By Ahmed Bouzid
If a rational, empirically driven Martian were to land on earth now, after four innocent Israeli civilians were killed and scores of others wounded in a suicide bombing attack in the city of Tel Aviv, and if he were handed a stack of US newspapers to examine, no doubt he would reach the conclusion that a period of truce between the two warring people of Israel and Palestine, during which peace and calm had prevailed and neither side attacked the other, had sadly come to an end, shattered by an attack by the aggressive, war-mongering, and powerful people of Palestine against the passive, peace-loving and defenceless people of Israel. The Martian would have reached such a conclusion because he would have read headlines such as, “Suicide Bomb at Tel Aviv Club Shatters Palestinian-Israeli Truce” (The New York Times), “Attack Outside Nightclub Shatters Truce” (The Washington Post), “Blast shakes Mideast peace” (The Austin American-Statesman), “Bomb Ends Mideast Quiet” (The Hartford Courant), “Tel Aviv Bomber Imperils Truce” (The Houston Chronicle), “Suicide Bomber Shatters Mideast Ceasefire” (The Indianapolis Star), “Attack Shatters Calm in Mideast” (The Los Angeles Times), “Bombing shatters delicate truce in Mideast” (The Miami Herald), “Bomb shatters Mideast Calm” (The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel), “Bombing Shatters Mideast Calm” (The Orlando Sentinel), “Unofficial Ceasefire Broken by First Major Attack in Months” (The San Francisco Chronicle).
Having reached the obvious conclusion the headlines had dictated, the Martian no doubt would have been shocked to learn that during the period of so-called truce and calm the media were referring to (Jan. 15-Feb. 25), no less than 31 Palestinian civilians, among them 11 children, had been killed by the Israeli army; hundreds more Palestinians had been wounded; the construction of a wall that tore into Palestinian land continued unabated; the shelling of Palestinian areas by the Israeli army was still taking place just as it did before “the truce”; the houses of Palestinian civilians were still being demolished by the Israeli army; land belonging to Palestinians had been officially confiscated right after “the truce” was announced.
Faced with this stark disconnect between basic facts and the shrill headlines about a “shattered peace”, the Martian would have had to come to one of two conclusions: 1) the press of the United States had engaged in a deliberate, coordinated, and massive campaign of lies and distortions, or 2), the press of the United States, as a matter of common course, simply did not assign “calm” and “truce” the same meaning one would usually assign to a situation where two sides are enjoying such a “calm” and are engaged in such a “truce”. Shunning conspiracy theories and resisting the natural impulse to assign ill intent to those who behave badly, our Martian would have found himself forced to conclude the obvious: the US must be operating with a peculiar understanding of what “calm” and “truce” mean.
Indeed, there was a period of calm between Jan. 15, when the president of the Palestinians assumed office, and Feb. 25, the day of the bombing that killed four Israeli civilians. During this period, no Israelis were killed by Palestinians. In fact, this so-called period of calm started as far back as Nov. 1, 2004. But during the same period there was no such period of calm for the Palestinians, since their people continued to be violently attacked by the Israelis.
What is a Martian to conclude, then, but that when the US press says “calm” it means calm for the Israelis, regardless of what is happening to the Palestinians, and when it refers to “truce”, it means a situation where only one side (the Palestinians) refrains from engaging in hostile actions, with the other side (the Israelis) reserving for itself the right to act as violently as it deems necessary or convenient.
The writer is founder and president of Palestine Media Watch. pmwatch.org He contributed this article to The Jordan Times.
Tuesday, March 1, 2005
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