-Caveat Lector-
Robert Fisk: When journalists forget that murder is
murder
'It's not the words Israelis and Palestinians use about
each other that concern me. It's our submission to them'
18 August 2001
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" – or at the least "assassination" – 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 realise 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" – "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" – 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 from being 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 – BBC this
time – 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?
http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=89346
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