Unless you haven’t turned on a television lately, you know that ten days ago the Israeli army launched a full-scale attack on Hamas forces in Gaza, with the stated aim of halting the barrage of homemade rockets that have been launched into Israeli towns since 2000. As I write this, the fight has left more than 530 Palestinians dead and nearly 2,750 wounded, along with two deaths and 12 injuries on the Israeli side.
As for the rockets that apparently motivated the invasion, a staggering 4,000 of them have been fired into Israeli towns since 2000, and the BBC reports that as of Jan. 2008 they had killed 13 Israelis in total. Wikipedia says two more were killed last year, and if that number seems low given the huge number of launches, it’s because Hamas’s rockets are unguided, extremely inaccurate, and generally handmade with salvaged scrap metal, sugar and fertilizer.
A few of you have asked me to weigh in on the morality of this war, but I’m not going to do that — at least not here. I like to think that people visit this site to find information they might not have found elsewhere and then make up their own minds, rather than coming here to be preached to about what’s right and what’s wrong. I’m not any better equipped to determine what’s right than you are. That said, there’s one point that I just have to bring up.
The first casualty of war
We like to think that in democracies at least, the press is free to critique and condemn, to unearth corruption and expose the unjust. To a large extent, this ideal has been achieved — in reasonably free countries, naughty leaders are routinely taken to task by fierce media scrutiny, and reporters have repeatedly brought the horrors and abuses of war into our living rooms — from Vietnam to Kosovo, from Rwanda to Iraq. They also help prevent atrocities, as the promise of worldwide headlines is sometimes enough to deter armies from massacring innocents. It’s a thankless and dangerous job, and though the media’s track record certainly isn’t perfect — they’ve missed or ignored some truly colossal human rights abuses — most of us can agree that the truth is a heck of a lot more likely to come out with a free press than without one.
But when Hiram Johnson famously declared that “the first casualty when war comes is truth,” he knew what he was talking about. Governments have always fought hard to prevent reporters from shedding light on the dark endeavours of war, and Israel in this case is no different. Since November, Israeli troops have prevented international reporters from entering the Gaza Strip, initially claiming that it was too dangerous, then saying that there was simply no time to process reporters’ papers because the border guards were so busy handling all the Palestinians trying to get out of Gaza.
On New Year’s Eve, Israel’s own Supreme Court ruled that the army must allow journalists into the war zone, but even this ruling continues to be ignored, with Israeli officials insisting that lifting the press ban is just “a question of working out the logistics,” whatever that means. Though eight hand-picked reporters have since been allowed in, the world is still getting nearly all its Gaza War reporting from a handful of poorly equipped, semi-professional Palestinian reporters who can’t pretend to be neutral as they see their neighbourhoods destroyed. In their shoes, I sure wouldn’t be.
As for the real reason behind the press ban, it seems to me that the Jerusalem Post says it best:
Banned from Gaza, the foreign press has been reporting on the assault on Hamas from the Gaza-Israel border, and using Palestinian reports and video from inside the territory.
In the past, Israeli officials have voiced displeasure over the international media’s coverage of events in Gaza, saying it inflates Palestinian suffering while not always making clear that Israeli military actions were in response to Palestinian attacks.
[…] “The foreign press must not be allowed to open a PR office for terrorism and terrorists,” [Shas leader Eli] Yishai said in a statement, adding that the recent petition to the High Court on the issue had been filed “in the name of phony principles to promote a terror organization.”
Whether the war is justified or not, equating the entire international media with “a PR office for terrorism” is ridiculous at best. The world’s news agencies cover the entire spectrum, from violently pro-Palestinian stances to violently pro-Israeli ones, and with the vast majority somewhere in between. Besides, it’s hard to see how fairness and neutrality in the news can be achieved by leaving all the reporting to Palestinians whose houses are on fire and whose relatives are being bombed.
Israel’s government has repeatedly told Palestinians to address their grievances within the confines of the rule of law, and obeying its own courts would increase its credibility in this department. Israel’s army says too that it’s taking extraordinary measures to minimize civilian casualties — this should be praised if it’s true and condemned if it isn’t. Either way, we can’t confirm or discredit this claim without reporters on the ground, and the world ought to know the truth. While it’s true that a good chunk of the reporting on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict hasn’t been fair to one side or the other, this refusal to even let the story be told is unfair in the extreme.
Image via the New York Times.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Rawda // Jan 5, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Mark, if this war was waged only on Hamas or at least was fair where the two sides are equally equipped and ready, then people will still condemn and regret it, but both sides will feel the reality of its ugliness and will gravitate towards a fair and just peace. Unfortunately, this is not a war, it’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians on their own land. I fully understand that people living under Hamas’s rockets are annoyed and scared (because hardly anyone is really hurt as you mentioned in your post), but why would Hamas be doing that continuously since 2000 knowingly risking the lives of thousands do you think?
Palestinians are living the lives of dogs in a country that was snatched from them some 60 years ago. Israel repeatedly broke promises and truces including the most recent agreed upon “truce” and is wondering why Hamas is attacking?? Even during Oslo, Israel was demolishing houses, building settlements, and giving the PLO “the most generous offer” AT THE SAME TIME!
When Israel attacks or retaliates, hundreds and thousands of innocent people will pay the price, and maybe a few Hamas fighters are hit. When Hamas attacks, it’s a reaction to the miserable lives those people lead under constant aggression, humiliation and occupation.
I am not trying to defend Hamas, I am against violence at all cost, but Palestinians are being massacred and no one is lifting a finger, which inevitably strengthens Hamas’s position and makes more people who have lost friends and family members to want to join Hamas in retaliation.
There will be hope for peace if Israel leaves Gaza, the West Bank and tries to “really” sit down at the negotiation table and offer real and tangible solutions to Palestinians and stop toying with them.
I agree that news reporting should not take sides, but do we see the whole truth and nothing but the truth on those news networks???
Until I do, I will side with the oppressed, because silence means that you side with the oppressor.
Here are two very interesting link to look at:
1- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mustafa-barghouthi/palestines-guernica-and-t_b_153958.html
2- http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/03/israel-palestinians-gaza-attacks
2 Jen B // Jan 6, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Hey Mark: just to follow up, I was pointing out that in the G&M today, the headline is: Strike on Gaza school kills ‘at least 40′
with the subtitle:
Two tank shells exploded outside the UN school, residents say, spraying shrapnel on people inside and outside the building
and only about 2/3rds of the way through the article does it mention that Isreali soldiers said that mortars were being fired from the school at them. The BBC mentions this as well, but the reporter they actually do have inside does not confirm it. In a way, letting a few people in polarizes the issues further if they cannot access information from outside.
3 mark // Jan 6, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Jen, I think that’s all the more reason to let the reporters flood in. There will inevitably be biased reporting, but having a multitude of reporters on the ground, producing news through all their different filters, is the best and only way to get the truth out. It’s also the only way to provide independent verification of claims coming from both sides — as it is we have no independent reports that there were indeed 350 people in the school, as Palestinian officials claim, or that shells really were being fired out of the school, as Israeli officials claim. Having a hundred reporters in the area, all from different agencies and different countries, would fix this in a hurry.
This is an imperfect solution, because it’s then up to the reader to check various sources and get informed, but this at least is better than ensuring that all reporters covering the conflict are on one side of it, as is the case now.
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