Spinning a War

By Maggy Zanger, TomPaine.com. Posted August 14, 2001.

A few weeks into the Palestinian uprising, which flared up during the fall of 2000, Israeli officials concluded the "media war" wasn't going their way.

Nachman Shai, the Israeli spokesman during the Gulf War, hastily organized a special media unit, not long after the UN Security Council last October condemned Israel for excessive use of force. "We assumed that the U.S. media would be on our side," Shai told a group of Israeli officials in a teleconference, according to the May issue of Harper's magazine.

But instead, Israeli government officials had major problems with U.S. media coverage, he told the group. They were especially upset with CNN's coverage. The network employs two Palestinian reporters, Shai said. "And we are putting real pressure on the heads of CNN to have them replaced with more objective, pro-Israeli reporters."

It's little wonder Shai assumed the U.S. media would be on "their" side. American coverage of the long-standing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has almost always been sympathetic to Israel. For most U.S. news organizations, "objective" has long meant "pro-Israeli." That's something that journalists from a range of publications including the Washington Post and Newsweek struggle with every day.

The Israeli Story Line

The U.S. media have historically reported on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through the Israeli lens. Call this lens what you will -- the conventional wisdom, the dominant interpretation, or the story line -- it is the Israeli version that has framed how American news editors and producers view and interpret the conflict. Any presentation that does not enhance Israel's image is labeled biased.

Most reporting on the uprising has implied that Israel is a peace-loving democracy that made generous concessions to the Palestinians at the Camp David negotiations in 2000. The unreasonable Palestinians rejected the offer and turned to terrorism to achieve their goals, press reports inferred. The U.S. State Department, powerful Jewish-American organizations, and the well-oiled Israeli media machine tightly adhered to this narrative.

On CNBC's May 21 broadcast of "Hardball," host Chris Matthews said in his opening remarks about Camp David: "I look at the Israelis offering the best possible deal to the Palestinian side under Barak," he said. "They turned him down. It looks to me like Yasser Arafat doesn't have the political power or the will to cut a reasonable deal with Israel."

Former U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig, and Israeli Consul General in New York Alon Pinkus, both guests on the show, reinforced this description of events. "We thought it was the most fair, honorable and equitable deal not just -- not just in town, but -- but in history, for that matter, for the Palestinians, yet, Arafat rejected it," Pinkus said. Haig's comments were similar. "From that point on, whether it's Wye or the two Camp Davids or the December meeting in the Oval Office, we extracted concession after concession from Israel," he said. Wye refers to the 1998 accord mediated by then-President Bill Clinton between Israel and the Palestinian government at a plantation in Maryland.

In fact, there was nothing the journalist and his two guests disagreed on. Matthews simply affirmed his guests' statements. If this is what passes for "Hardball" journalism, the profession needs a hefty dose of Viagra.

Lost in the rhythm of nodding heads is any analysis of why the Palestinians rejected the Camp David "concessions." Palestinian officials and independent analysts say Israel's offer of only 75 percent of the West Bank (not 90 percent as widely repeated, because Israel excluded metropolitan Jerusalem and the fertile Jordan valley) was untenable. This would have bisected the proposed Palestinian state with blocs of Israeli settlements, which are illegal but have been springing up since the late 1960s. In addition, Camp David did not address whether Palestinian refugees who have been living in temporary camps in neighboring Arab countries for more than 50 years, would be allowed to return to their homes in what is now Israel. Nor did it solve sovereignty over the important Haram al-Sharif Palestinian holy site. This angle is rarely touched on in the U.S. media.

The Palestinian point of view might challenge the "special relationship" the U.S. has with Israel. Then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright showed her own bias early in the uprising on NBC's "Meet the Press," when she stated "those Palestinian rock throwers have placed Israel under siege."

Many American reporters arrive in Tel Aviv imbued with this one-sided view. The Washington Post's Keith Richburg says he strives to accurately report what he sees. What he and other reporters see is an impoverished Palestinian people frustrated by 30-plus years of military occupation, fighting with stones, a few snipers and suicidal Islamists, and who are overseen by an inept Palestinian Authority. On the other side reporters see Israel, the world's fourth most powerful military, deploying tanks, missiles, helicopter gunships, and F-16 fighter planes, backed by a highly sophisticated spin machine and the United States.

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