Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts Issue No. 34 October 7 - 13, 2001 Quezon City, Philippines |
When Journalists Forget that Murder is Murder
BY
ROBERT FISK Back to Bulatlat.com Alternative Reader Index What
on earth has happened to our reporting of the Middle East? George Orwell would
have loved a Reuter's dispatch from the West Bank city of Hebron last Wednesday.
"Undercover Israeli soldiers," the world's most famous news agency
reported, "shot dead a member of Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction yesterday in
what Palestinians called an assassination." The key phrase, of course, was
"what Palestinians called an assassination". Any sane reader would
conclude immediately that Imad Abu Sneiheh, who was shot in the head, chest,
stomach and legs by 10 bullets fired by Israeli "agents" had been
murdered, let alone assassinated. But no. Reuters, like all the big agencies and
television companies reporting the tragedy of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,
no longer calls murder by its real name. Back
in the days of apartheid, no one minced their words when South African death
squads gunned down militant opponents. They talked about murder and
assassination. They still do when Latin American killers murder their political
opponents. I've yet to find a newspaper which shrinks from reporting the
"murder" AD or at the least "assassination" AD of IRA or UDA
gangsters in Belfast. But not when the Israelis do the murdering. For when
Israelis kill, they do not murder or assassinate, according to Reuters or CNN or
the most recent convert to this flabby journalism, the BBC. Israelis perpetrate
something which is only "called" an "assassination" by
Palestinians. When Israelis are involved, our moral compass our ability to
report the truth dries up. Over
the years, even CNN began to realize that "terrorist" used about only
one set of antagonists was racist as well as biased. When a television reporter
used this word about the Palestinian who so wickedly bombed the Jerusalem
pizzeria last week, he was roundly attacked by one of his colleagues for falling
below journalistic standards. Rightly so. But in reality our reporting is
getting worse, not better. Editors
around the world are requesting their journalists to be ever softer, ever more
mealy mouthed in their reporting of any incident which might upset Israel. Which
is why, of course, Israelis are so often reported as being killed by
Palestinians while Palestinians, some as young as 10, are killed in
"clashes" AD "clashes" coming across as a form of natural
disaster like an earthquake or a flood, a tragedy without a culprit. One
sure way of spotting Israel's responsibility for a killing is the word
"crossfire". Mohamed el-Dura, the little Palestinian boy shot dead by
Israeli troops in Gaza last year, became an iconic symbol of the Palestinian
"intifada". Journalists investigating the boy's death, including The
Independent's Jerusalem, correspondent were in no doubt that the bullets which
hit him were Israeli (albeit that the soldiers involved may not have seen him).
Yet after a bogus Israeli military inquiry denounced in the Knesset by an
Israeli member of parliament, all the major Western picture agencies placed
captions on the photo for future subscribers. Yes, you've guessed it, the
captions said he was killed in "crossfire". Wars
have always produced their verbal trickeries, their antiseptic phrases and
hygienic metaphors, from "collateral damage" to "degrading the
enemy". The Palestinian-Israeli conflict has produced a unique crop. The
Israeli siege of a city has become a "closure", the legal border
between Israel and the occupied territories has become the "seam
line", collaborators for the Israelis are "co-operators",
Israeli-occupied land has become "disputed", Jewish settlements built
illegally on Arab land have become "neighourhoods" AD nice, folksy
places which are invariably attacked by Palestinian "militants". And
when suicide bombers strike "terrorists" to the Israelis, of course
the Palestinians call them "martyrs". Oddest of all is Israel's creepy
expression for its own extrajudicial murders: "targeted killings". If
a dark humour exists in any of this dangerous nonsense, I must admit that Israel
has found a real cracker in its expression for Palestinians who blow themselves
to bits while making bombs: they die, so the Israelis say, from "work
accidents". But
it's not the words Israelis and Palestinians use about each other that concern
me. It's our journalistic submission to these words. Just
over a week ago, I wrote in The Independent that the BBC had bowed to Israeli
diplomatic pressure to drop the word "assassination" for the murder of
Palestinians in favour of Israel's own weird expression, "targeted
killings". I was subsequently taken to task by Malcolm Downing, the BBC
assignments editor who decreed this new usage. I was one-sided, biased and
misleading, he said; the BBC merely regarded "assassination" as a word
that should apply to "high-ranking political or religious figures". But
the most important aspect of Mr Downing's reply was his total failure to make
any reference to the point of my article the BBC's specific recommended choice
of words for Israel's murders: "targeted attacks". The BBC didn't
invent that phrase. The Israelis did. I
don't for a moment believe Mr Downing realises what he did. His colleagues
regard him as a professional friend. But he has to realise that by telling his
reporters to use "targeted killings", he is perpetrating not only a
journalistic error but a factual inaccuracy. So far, 17 totally innocent
civilians including two small children have been killed in Israel's
state-sponsored assassinations. So the killings are at the least very badly
targeted indeed. And I can't help recalling that when the BBC's own Jill Dando
was so cruelly shot dead on her doorstep, there was no doubt that she was killed
by a man who had deliberately "targeted" her. But that's not what the
BBC said. They called it murder. And it was. Within
the past week, CNN, the news agencies and the BBC have all been chipping away at
the truth once more. When the Jewish settlement at Gilo was attacked by
Palestinian gunmen at Beit Jalla, it once more became a "Jewish
neighbourhood" on "disputed" land even though the land, far
frombeing in "dispute", legally belongs to the Palestinian people of
Beit Jalla ("Gilo" being the Hebrew for "Jalla"). But
viewers and readers were not told of this. When
the next state-sponsored assassination of a Palestinian Hamas member took place,
a television journalist AD BBC this time AD was reduced to telling us that his
killing was "regarded by the Israelis as a targeted killing but which the
Palestinians regard as an assassination". You could see the problem. Deeply
troubled by the Israeli version, the BBC man had to "balance" it with
the Palestinian version, like a sports reporter unwilling to blame either side
for a foul. So just watch out for the following key words about the Middle East in television reporting over the next few days: "targeted killings", "neighbourhood", "disputed", "terrorist", "clash" and "crossfire". Then ask yourself why they are being used. I'm all for truth about both sides. I'm all for using the word "terrorism" providing it's used about both sides' terrorists. I'm sick of hearing Palestinians talking about men who blow kids to bits as "martyrs". Murder is murder is murder. But where the lives of men and women are concerned, must we be treated by television and agency reporters to a commentary on the level of a football match? Back to Bulatlat.com Alternative Reader Index We want to know what you think of this article.
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