-Caveat Lector-
>From http://counterpunch.com/cockburnnews1.html
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April 3, 2002
American Journal
Sharon's Wars:
How The News Gets Through
By Alexander Cockburn
Here we are, twenty years on , and many of the reports of what's been happening as
the Israeli army smashes its way through Ramallah and Bethlehem and the other
Palestinian towns remind me of what came out of Lebanon in 1982 as Sharon and
his invading army raced north: Israeli troops beating, looting, destroying; Palestinian
families huddling in refugee camps, waiting for the killers to come.
But there is a difference. A huge one. Twenty years ago, at least for people living
here in the United States, it was harder, though far from impossible, to get first-
hand
accounts of what was going on. You had to run out to find foreign newspapers, or
have them laboriously faxed from London, or Paris. Reporting in the mainstream
corporate press here was horrifying tilted into putting the best face on Israeli deeds.
Mostly, it still is. But the attempted news blackout by the Sharon government and the
Israeli military simply isn't working.
Here's Aviv Lavie, writing in Ha'aretz: "A journey through the TV and radio channels
and the pages of the newspapers exposes a huge and embarrassing gap between
what is reported to us and what is seen, heard, and read in the world On Arab TV
stations (though not only them) one could see Israeli soldiers taking over hospitals,
breaking equipment, damaging medicines, and locking doctors away from their
patients. Foreign television networks all over the world have shown the images of
five Palestinians from the National Security forces, shot in the heads from close
range; one was apparently the manager of the Palestinian Authority orchestra. Some
of the networks have claimed they were shot in cold blood after they were disarmed.
The entire world has seen wounded people in the streets, heard reports of how the
IDF prevents ambulances from reaching the wounded for treatment. The entire world
has heard testimony by Palestinian families who have been imprisoned in their
homes for 72 hours, in some places without electricity or water, and the food is
running out."
As always, there are the courageous witnesses. These days we have the enormously
brave young people in the International Solidarity Movement sending back daily e-
mails and phone calls to the United States that flash their way round the internet and
even translate into important interviews in the mainstream press, or on tv news
shows.
Meet a few of them. Here's Jordan Flaherty, filing this account from a few days ago:
"Last night the Israeli Military tried to kill me. I'm staying in the Al Azzeh refugee
camp, in Bethlehem, along with about twenty other international civilians. We're here
to act as human shields, because we've heard an Israeli invasion is imminentOn the
hill above the camp is a Israeli military sniper's post. The main street that runs down
the village is in plain sight of the snipers' post. To get where we were staying in the
village, most of us had to cross this street. It was a quick, low, dash across the
street. As I ran, the sniper fired. I heard at least six shots fired in the short
distance I
ran, exposed. The shots began as I came into view, and stopped shortly after I made
it to the other side. They were clearly aimed at me. And, by the sound of them, they
were close. All night long, there was the sound of gun shots, as the military shot into
our village. We stayed clear of the windows. Some of the windows were blocked with
sandbags. The gun and bullets were, no doubt, paid for by my tax dollars. Which is,
of course, why we are here."
Or Tzaporah Ryter, filing this account yesterday: " I am an American student from the
University of Minnesota. I currently am in Ramallah. We are under a terrible siege
and people are being massacred by both the Israeli army and armed militia groups of
Israeli settlers. ..On Thursday afternoon, the Israeli army began sealing off each
entrance to RamallahThose traveling in began desperately searching for alternative
ways and traveling in groups, but the Israelis were firing upon them and everyone
was running and screaming. Women carrying their children were trying desperately
to flee from Ramallah, carrying infants and toddlers, and their young children were
running along in the rain through the fields, slipping and falling on the rocks,
trying to
reach safety. Israeli jeeps were speeding across the terrain pulling up from every
direction and shooting at the women and children, and also at me, as we ran in
opposite directions. They were chasing down people, hunting them like that in the
fields."
Or the extremely articulate and self-possessed Adam Shapiro, whose testimony
ended up in the New York Daily News and on CNN, where he told Kyra Phillips: "This
is not about politics between Jew and Arab, between Muslim and Jew. This is a case
of human dignity, human freedom and justice that the Palestinians are struggling for
against an occupier, an oppressor. The violence did not start with Yasser Arafat. The
violence started with the occupation."
PHILLIPS: "I'm just curious, have you -- did you take the opportunity to say to Yasser
Arafat, why not come and condemn what is going on, come out and make a
statement in Arabic because that is what the President of the United States is just
asking for?"
SHAPIRO: "President Arafat has done this repeatedly. I understand Arabic. I read
the newspapers and I listen to the TV stations here. President Arafat, after every
terrorist incident, every suicide bombing, after every action, has condemned this loss
of life, of civilian lives on both sides. The Sharon government, sometimes will
apologize after it kills an innocent civilian, but it does not apologize for raping the
cities and for going in and carrying out terrorist actions, going to house to house
much like the Nazis did in World War II, going house to house to house tearing holes
through the walls, roughing up people, killing people, assassinating people."
Most of the time you open up a newspaper, as I did the Los Angeles Times the other
day and read a robotic column by Ronald Brownstein about Palestinian terrorism and
the wretched Arafat's supposed ability to quell the Palestinian uprising with a few
quick words. And then you turn on the Lehrer News Hour on PBS and there, of all
people, is Zbigniev Brzezinski, stating the obvious, on April 1. "The fact of the
matter
is that three times as many Palestinians have been killed, and a relatively small
number of them were really militants. Most were civilians. Some hundreds were
children In the course of the last year, we have had Palestinian terrorism but we have
also had deliberate, overreactions by Mr. Sharon designed not to repress terrorism
but to destabilize the Palestinian Authority, to uproot the Oslo Agreement, which he
has always denounced, in a manner which contributed to the climate, that resulted in
the killing of one of the two architects of the Oslo Agreement."
After predictable dissent from Henry Kissinger, Brzezinski went on, "It's absolute
hypocrisy to be claiming that Arafat can put a stop to the terrorism - and it's --
let's
put it mildly -- poor information on the part of the President to be maintaining that.
This guy is sitting isolated. Sharon is trying to repress the Palestinians and
terrorism
is not stopping. How is Arafat supposed to put a stop to it? but the fact of the matter
is that his ability to control the situation would be greatly increased if there was
serious movement towards political process, towards a political settlement and that
the United States took the lead."
Between this brisk statement of the obvious and the eloquent courage Adam Shapiro
and his brave fellow internationalists, the truth is getting out, not fast enough, not
loud enough, but better than twenty years ago.
End<{{{
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